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This paper explores the theory and practice of community unionism. It is now widely argued that if trade unions are to reach employees in small workplaces, those on part-time or temporary contracts, and women, black and ethnic minority workers, they need to sustain alliances beyond the walls of the workplace. Increasing the scale of political mobilization in this way can help secure trade union organization amongst new groups of workers while giving unions the power to raise questions of economic and social justice at a wider scale. After summarizing current developments in North America, the paper focuses on the situation in the UK in more detail. By highlighting the pioneering community unionism of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (ISTC) and Battersea and Wandsworth Trades Union Council (BWTUC), the paper explores the implications of community unionism for the future of trade unionism in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the impact of class position on collective action by comparing workers' and business' associational organizability. Hypotheses on this are derived from class theory, collective action theory and organization theory. When examining them via a crossnational comparison of labor unions and business interest associations, class-specific differences arise: a higher organizability accrues to business interest associations in terms of the ability to recruit members, but to unions in terms of internalizing interests and making members comply. No theory's hypotheses are completely consistent with these findings. Their shortcomings are discussed, and a revised theoretical approach is developed. The paper's final section discusses some consequences of the observed differences for business' and unions' interest policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unions can have either positive or negative effects on risk-adjusted returns in pension plans. On the positive side, a union can improve monitoring of pension advisors and asset managers. On the negative side, the union may sacrifice returns by making investments that promote union goals. This paper discusses how the structure of the pension plan affects the union's ability and willingness to sacrifice returns to promote union goals. Using panel data on over 38,000 pension plans drawn from IRS Form 5500 filings between 1988 and 2008, we find the lowest performing plans are unionized multi-employer plans. Among defined contribution plans, the underperformance of multi-employer union plans disappears when the pension is controlled by individual participants. ( JEL J32, J51) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]