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This article explores how cohesive labour movements are created. Although overlooked by previous research, strategic labour leaders that act as identity entrepreneurs can play a decisive role in class formation processes. Using the Swedish trade union movement during the crucial period from 1910 through the 1930s as a case, I examine the labour leaders' strategic actions to create cohesiveness in the movement. Being pressured by emerging left-wing organizations in the 1910s, Swedish labour leaders realized that the Trade Union Confederation needed a strong organizational identity. The threat of the fragmentation of the trade union movement into different organizations fighting over the same members made the leaders formulate and implement a strategy for cohesion. Through an extensive education campaign to teach trade union members the aim and meaning of the reformist union movement, the leaders hoped to solve the fragmentation problem. This article indicates not only that labour leaders actively managed identity formation in the Swedish case, but also that internal education served as a means for creating cohesiveness in the movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Equity ownership gives labor both a fractional stake in a firm's residual cash flows and a voice in corporate governance. Relative to other firms, labor-controlled publicly traded firms deviate more from value maximization, invest less in long-term assets, take fewer risks, grow more slowly, create fewer new jobs, and exhibit lower labor and total factor productivity. Therefore, we propose that labor uses its corporate governance voice to maximize the combined value of its contractual and residual claims, and that this often pushes corporate policies away from, rather than toward, shareholder value maximization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comparison of labor-management relations at Deutsche Telekom (DT) and NTT Group (formerly Nippon Telephone and Telegraph) demonstrates the value of considering both institutions and strategic decision-making to understand the interaction between companies and unions. As corporations diversify, multi-divisional or holding company structures emerge, but the degree of diversity introduced in employment relations within the corporate group depends on the interaction between corporate strategy and the strategy of organized labor. The authors' field research, based on interviews with managers and labor leaders, shows that despite a broadly similar corporate strategy of diversification by DT and NTT after the liberalization of telecommunication markets, employment relations became more decentralized--both for unions and for works councils--within the DT group than within the NTT group. This difference in outcomes is explained by the relative power and strategic choices of labor and management, rather than by constraints and opportunities specific to the existing national institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When members of the Office and Professional Workers Organizing Committee (opwoc), employed by the Banque Canadienne Nationale (bcn), set up picket lines at branches in Montreal on 30 April 1942, they began the first strike in the Canadian banking industry. This article analyzes the four-week strike, and the organizing drive that preceded it, as a way of exploring how changes in the relationship between labour, capital, and the state during the Second World War helped or hindered unionization in unorganized industries – areas with limited or non-existent levels of union representation and often predominantly female and racialized workforces. By examining this failed white-collar strike in relation to the substantial increase in labour organizing that occurred in the 1940s and the concomitant changes to the labour relations system, we can consider the effect that these changes had for different types of workers. A closer look at the first Canadian bank strike shows that the changes made to the labour relations system in this period made little difference for the men and women who joined opwoc: the state continued to hamper their organizing efforts, and the banks continued to oppose and work to thwart unionization. Half-hearted support from labour leaders compounded the problem. Ultimately, the bank's anti-union behaviour, the regional war labour board's drawn-out and disappointing decision on bcn employees' application for increased compensation, and labour leaders' willingness to accept the board's decision undermined the strike and hindered bank workers' efforts to unionize in the early 1940s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many studies have investigated the determinants of union representation election outcomes, none has examined union organizers' influence on those outcomes. Based on a literature review and interviews with the directors of organizing of eight unions, the author of this study hypothesizes that certain personal characteristics of organizers are associated with success in organizing campaigns. An analysis of survey questionnaires completed by 64 organizers supports the general hypothesis that some personal and demographic characteristics of organizers affect both the percentage of pro-union votes and election outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors of this literature review find that empirical research on unions' political activity since World War II has failed to answer many important questions. Not only have researchers neglected some issues outright, but disparate data sources and statistical methods, lack of a guiding theory, inconsistent findings, and hidden normative assumptions about the propriety of unions' political involvement limit the generalizability of reported results. The review nevertheless confirms that union members and leaders often differ in political orientation, though the extent of disagreement varies across political issues. Also, unions apparently have been more successful at achieving political objectives only weakly supported by their members than at achieving the objectives their members strongly support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the perpetuation of the number of terms labor union leaders in the U.S. can serve, as of January 1948. Since labor unions greatly expanded during the period 1900 to 1940 it may prove profitable to contradict the earlier with the later period. There are several factors contributing to the increasing entrenchment in office of labor leaders. As the financial status of the unions improved, leaders had themselves voted adequate salaries and expense accounts. Prosperity is a tool for them to expand their headquarters staffs and reward trusted associates with good jobs. Occasionally, leaders also used their financial control to eliminate factionalism.

This article presents an examination of AFL-CIO President George Meany. The author discusses some of Meany's accomplishments as president as well as the evolution of the American labor movement during his tenure. The article also examines some of the AFL-CIO's history since the organization's founding. The author discusses Meany's expulsion of the International Longshoremen's Association from the organization due to corruption and the subsequent reaction the move caused. Meany's work with the United Textile Workers of America is also examined along with his efforts with laundry workers, jewelry workers, distillery workers, automobile workers and bakery and confectionery workers.

This article focuses on some issues involved in measuring the degree of agreement between union leaders' perceptions of members' pay preferences and the actual pay preferences of the members. From a methodological point of view, the study has developed a method that apparently is able to measure this degree of agreement. With respect to the substantive issue considered, the study offers some interesting results. Perhaps the most important of these are the findings that leaders overestimate the cash demands of the employees and, for this sample, that the leaders are generally good predictors of the members' preferences, apparently because of the close correspondence between the preferences of the leaders and the members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]