'Union free and proud': America's anti-union culture and the decline of organized labor.

摘要

This study sets out to examine the attitudes of the large number of workers who have told pollsters since the 1970's that they would vote against a union were an election held at their place of employment. What was it that they saw in unions that they did not like? By better understanding why so many workers have opposed the idea of unionism we can gain a more complete picture of the causes for union decline in the post-war period.; The dissertation argues that this hostility to organized labor was the result of a pervasive anti-union culture in the United States. Workers raised in this culture have embedded in them ideas about what unions are like and what they represent, many of which disposed them to distrust unionism. Chapters 1 and 2 examine the content of this culture using polling data, studies by sociologists, and media representations of unions. From there the dissertation moves on to examine a number of organizing drives to see how this anti-union culture has operated to hinder unions' efforts to organize the unorganized.; Chapter 3 provides a case study of an unsuccessful organizing drive by the Textile Workers Union in 1980 at a Charlottesville, Virginia, textile factory. Its goal is to examine how blue-collar workers responded to labor's overtures and what concerns were most prominent in their decision to either accept or reject the union. Chapter 4 examines clerical workers at New York University in 1970 and the failed attempt by District 65 to organize them. It explores why these pink collar workers, living in the most heavily unionized community in America, rejected unionization. Finally, Chapter 5 examines the competition between the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) for members during the 1970's. The concern in this chapter is to understand how America's anti-union culture impacted organized labor's ability to organize white-collar professionals. It makes the ironic conclusion that America's largest union (the NEA) was, in part, successful because of its self-portrayal as the non-union alternative to the AFT.