Labor Unions and Unequal Representation

Stegmueller, Daniel; Becher, Michael; Käppner, Konstantin

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3220032

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

References 80 publications

(74 reference statements)

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“…Teachers face naturally monopsonistic labor markets (see, e.g., Ransom and Sims 2010) and thus have particularly strong needs for collective representation and policy influence. They have built their political power both in the electoral process, by making campaign contributions to politicians and mobilizing their members and local communities to vote for favored candidates (Becher, Stegmueller, and Käppner 2018; Feigenbaum, Hertel-Fernandez, and Williamson; Moe 2011; Rosenfeld 2014; Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2012; Stegmueller, Becher, and Käppner 2018), and in the legislative process, by lobbying elected officials in local, state, and national government (Hacker and Pierson 2010; Lichtenstein 2002). Since the New Deal, unions have also established an especially close “enduring” or “anchoring” alliance with the Democrats, trading grassroots mobilization and campaign support for influence on party legislative agendas (Dark 1999; Schlozman 2015).…”

Section: Unions and The Political Logic Of Public Sector Strikesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These findings have implications for a variety of literatures. Most directly, they document the effectiveness of strikes as a political strategy for unions, adding to the existing literature on unions as political organizations that shape the preferences of their members (Ahlquist and Levi 2013; Kim and Margalit 2017), teach their members civic skills and recruit them to participate in politics (Macdonald 2019; Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2012), mobilize working-class voters in elections (Feigenbaum, Hertel-Fernandez, and Williamson 2019; Leighley and Nagler 2007; Rosenfeld 2014), make campaign contributions to pro-labor candidates (Stegmueller, Becher, and Käppner 2018), and lobby local, state, and national governments (Anzia and Moe 2015; Becher, Stegmueller, and Käppner 2018; DiSalvo 2015; Hacker and Pierson 2010; Moe 2011). Strikes, we show, can complement these other tactics by building support for unions in the mass public.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Schooled by Strikes? The Effects of Large-Scale Labor Unrest on Mass Attitudes toward the Labor Movement

Hertel‐Fernandez¹,

Naidu²,

Reich³

2020

Perspect. polit.

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Strikes are a central tool of organized labor, yet existing research has focused on the economic consequences of strikes, rather than their political effects. We examine how labor actions by teachers, a well-organized group of public sector workers, affect mass attitudes about the strikes and interest in the labor movement more generally. Our context involves large-scale teacher strikes and walkouts in six states in 2018. Using an original survey in the affected states, we study the causal effect of strike exposure among parents whose children’s ages place them in or out of school. Firsthand strike exposure increased parents’ support for the teachers and for the labor movement, as well as parents’ interest in labor action (though not necessarily through traditional unions). Our results highlight the importance of strikes as a political strategy for unions: not only can they build stronger public support for the striking workers but they can also inspire greater interest in further labor action among other workers.

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Section: Unions and The Political Logic Of Public Sector Strikesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%