This project examines how different types of labor organizations respond to political opportunities in times of an economic downturn. How do labor unions react to economic crisis? In what ways do unions change their strategy in response to recessions, such as the recession of 2008 or the Great Depression of 1929? What is the relationship between organizational traits, such as the credential of labor leaders or the type of management hierarchy, and changes in unions' response to economic crisis? Political opportunity theory suggests that social movement organizations will increase political action, while business cycle theory predicts that economic crisis will be detrimental to unions, reducing membership and power. As a case in point, this dissertation compares different types of labor unions during the Great Depression and the economic crisis of 2008 and, in the process, creates a dataset on the political, economic, and organizational activity of 30 labor unions both before and after the onset of the crisis of 2008. Researchers will collect and code data on political activity, organizing activity, organizational characteristics, and alliances from constitutions, convention proceedings, and other union records located at the Kheel Center Archives in Ithaca, NY, University of Washington libraries, union websites, and the Office of Labor-Management Standards.
The intellectual merit of this project lies in four areas. First, it considers the range of possible activities, from conventional lobbying to radical actions, allowing for more nuanced findings. Second, focusing on organizational characteristics enables us to determine which organizational characteristics make unions more likely to take advantage of political opportunities. Third, comparing labor union activities in response to crisis with activities before the crisis began, allows for longitudinal analysis of tactical changes. Finally, the project extends research on business cycles by recording responses of labor unions to declining economic conditions.
Broader Impacts First, the project will produce a dataset on 30 labor unions from 2005-2010 using detailed organizational, financial, and political variables. Second, undergraduate coders will receive a valuable educational opportunity to learn hands-on research skills and experience a research project in progress. Third, the findings may further our understanding how organized labor, and interest groups more generally, affect work place conditions and policies.
This dissertation research examined the conditions under which organizations are able to respond to the political and economic opportunities in an economic crisis. The responses of unions during the Great Depression and during the economic crisis of 2008 were compared. Unions in both time periods exhibited increased political activity in response to crisis; both were marked by the creation of new competitor labor federations. These conclusions suggest that, in contrast to the expectation that unions experience decline when the labor market is slack due to unemployment, economic crisis is an opportunity that can be exploited by enterprising leadership. This is analogous to the behavior of other organizations, such as firms, that experience an increasingly open field during moments of economic decline. The research further produced a detailed dataset on an additional 10 labor unions from 2005-10. These cases were analyzed with a method called Qualitative Comparative Analysis that looks at the observed pattern of reaction to economic crisis. This method is one way that conclusions historical case studies can further generalized to a larger population. Contrary to the common belief that new, innovative organizations should react to opportunities more quickly, the analysis her shows that older, more established organizations often have more resources and more entrepreneurial staff than new organizations and, therefore, they can more readily take advantage of new opportunities. The data collection for this project had broader impacts on graduate and undergraduate teaching. The data served for one PhD dissertation in sociology and five undergraduate students were involved in the coding of data from union constitutions, proceedings and other historical documents.
