Principal Investigator: Caleb Southworth Institution: University of Oregon-Eugene
Intellectual Merit: This is a pilot project to assess the feasibility of collecting a dataset containing information on all national labor unions that existed in the United States between 1905 and 2005. The data will be collected from archival documents in several research libraries around the U.S., based on a 10% stratified random sample of the population of all U.S. unions. Annual data will be collected on union membership, mergers, splits, new starts, dissolutions, employer opposition and large strikes. Periodic information on union government and structure, organizing efforts, jurisdictional disputes, raiding, politics of union leaders, leadership turnover, closeness of elections, and officer salaries will also be collected. The industries in which different unions operate will be assessed with data on employment, unemployment, and occupational characteristics, such as the gender and racial composition of the workforce.
Broader Impacts: The most significant broader impact of this project is that it will provide a dataset that allows researchers to analyze the population of national and international unions rather than data aggregated to the union federation level. This will allow for more detailed and nuanced analyses of the determinants and consequences of union growth, conflict, and change.
