Organizationalresources and group solidarityare centralfoci in literatureon social movements generally and worker insurgency specifically. Research, however, seldom deals with both simultaneously and theirpotentialinterrelations. In thisarticle, we examine the complex relationships between union organization and workersolidarity relative to strikeaction. We draw on a data set of 133 content-coded workplace ethnographies and use a combination of qualitative comparative analysis and more standard statistical techniques. Consistent with expectations, results suggest union presence and worker solidarity, in and of themselves, havelittlemeaningfulassociation with strikes. Rather, it is their co-presence that bolsters strikelikelihood. Conversely, a lack of union presence in combination with a lack of collective mobilization history diminishes overall strike potential. We conclude by discussing the implications ofour argument and findings for more general social movement perspectives as well as prior work dealingspecifically with unions, solidarity, and collective resistance.The relative importance attributed to organizational resources, on the one hand, and collective identity processes and related cultural, emotional, and cognitive dynamics, on the other, represent somewhat distinct approaches to understanding social movement emergence and success (see Jenkins 1983; Polletta & Jasper 2001; Taylor & Whittier 1992). Although few would argue with the point that both organizational resources and internal activist solidarity are necessary, little research explicitly considers their joint impact. This may be a function of theoretical and, thus, empirical prioritization -prioritization, in the case of resource mobilization theorists, on organizational presence and '"We are grateful for the helpful comments and suggestions ofthe editor and anonymous reviewers of Social Forces. Direct correspondence to Marc Dixon,
During the late 1990s, college students across the United States mobilized around labor issues. Our research explores whether this explosion of student protest activity was generated, in part, by concerted efforts of the AFL-CIO through its Union Summer college student internship program. A statistical analysis of factors infl uencing the location of Students Against Sweatshops chapters and student labor protest confi rms that the Union Summer program has successfully mobilized a generation of college students for labor activism. This research extends the labor literature by providing evidence of the revitalized labor federation's success in forming bridges to non-traditional constituencies. Our fi ndings inform social movement scholarship and studies of interorganizational infl uence by demonstrating that a professional social movement organization can strategically generate mobilization among a new constituency.
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