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The location, and timing of graduate employee unionizaton campaigns between 1996 and 2001 is analyzed to study the factors that influence in student-labor organizing.

The issue of daunting obstacles to unionization, significant developments in labor struggles that are giving reason for optimism about the prospects for improving working conditions in the information and communication technology sector is addressed. Highlights on efforts made by unions and community-based organizations to increase corporate social responsibility in different industries are discussed.

The significant characteristics of building workers centers and construction unions are discussed. The opportunities for collaboration between the two as well as conflicts between them are illustrated with examples.

Faced with declining union membership and a growing immigrant workforce, the US labor movement has started to realize the importance of organizing immigrant workers. Yet the conventional wisdom among many within the movement is that immigrant workers are 'unorganizable.' Based on a case study of a collaborative effort between the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and Omaha Together, One Community to organize an estimated 4,000 Latino immigrant meatpacking workers, I demonstrate not only the 'organizability' of immigrant workers, but also the fact that they have been organizing themselves, with the help of a community-based organization, in the absence of union efforts. This case study suggests that in order to facilitate successful organizing campaigns among immigrant workers, unions need to reach out to community-based organizations and institutions that have established relationships with immigrant workers. Keywords Community-based organizing * Immigrant labor. Undocumented immigrants * Unionization * United Food and Commercial Workers Union. US labor movement

Current literature generally highlights the unique differences between sports and traditional unions. In particular, the contrast between the two types of unions' approaches to the free market when it comes to wage determination--sports unions fought the 'reserve clause' to obtain free market outcomes while traditional unions fought to circumvent the market for wages--has been widely cited. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the hitherto neglected comparisons between sports and traditional unions. With respect to both economic and noneconomic issues, professional sports unions share far more in common with their traditional counterparts than the labor and sports economics literatures would lead one to believe. Keywords Professional sports unions. Traditional unionismUnion-management relations

The AFL-CIO and Change to Win have learned to co-exist without debilitating acrimony. The AFL-CIO has established Industry Coordinating Committees to facilitate cooperative bargaining and organizing ventures. On the political front, the AFL-CIO took the lead in labor's 2006 electoral operations and conducted an extensive, efficient, and unified campaign. Change to Win unions worked together to build strategies for a growth agenda. The success of UNITE-HERE's Hotel Workers Rising Campaign indicates the potential of this approach. Difficult challenges remain, but the strategic developments show signs of life and offer hope that labor may find a path to the future.

The newspaper article on transition to a market economy in Romania by H.-R. Patapievici, a prestigious and controversial Romanian public intellectual that appeared as an essay 'The Trade Union Question' in April 1999 in Revista 22 is analyzed. The essays fail to contribute to public reflection on matters of common concern, fail to facilitate social dialogue and reveal a surprising absence of human concern, understanding for and solidarity with the social groups most affected by economic transition.

Trade unions have a rational incentive to oppose the adoption of labour-saving technology when labour demand is inelastic and unions care much for employment relative to wages. Trade liberalisation typically increases trade union technology opposition. These conclusions are reached in a model of unionised international duopoly with two-way trade. We also find that the incentive for technology opposition is stronger in the more technologically advanced country and in the country with the larger home market, complementing earlier explanations for technological catch-up and leapfrogging. Keywords: Trade liberalisation; Technology adoption; International unionised oligopoly JEL classification: F12; F16; 033; J51; L13

This article examines union members 'evaluation of the relevance of unions and their identification with a traditional collective value frame for union action. It seeks to take account of the impact of increasing labor market heterogeneity, declining instrumentality, and the behavior of unions and employers. Using Canadian data gathered from individual union members and their local union leaders, the study finds that new labor market identities are not linked to weaker belief in the relevance of unions but are associated with weaker identification with the traditional value frame. Although declining instrumentality and hostile employer behavior are associated with greater identification with traditional value frames, greater union democracy is associated with less membership disaffection on both the relevance of unions and their collective modes of action. Union democracy is therefore found to be a key tool to address membership disaffection and to generate collective identities for a renewed union project. Keywords: labor union; democracy; social differentiation; workplace; union renewal

The psychology is indifferent towards labor unions are analyzed. There is reluctance to address the conflict between employers and employees and a lack of pro-union psychologists

This article discusses the transformative power of communications technology by looking at how the Internet is used by trade unions to mobilize their members and build cross-border solidarity among workers. The author asserts that the Internet leads to internationalism in trade unions; it democratizes and decentralizes unions making them more transparent and less bureaucratic; and the Internet also helps unions organize and reach new people.

This article discusses the shift in union members to a more white-collar, highly educated and female composition made up of employees from the public-sector who work in bureaucratic environments and are sheltered from market-forces; a comparison between private- and public-sector union memberships among industrialized countries internationally is given, all of which had a larger proportion of public-sector members over private-sector members. Manual labor is a little more than a quarter of the work-force, while services orientated employment has increase; this may be a cause for the decline of the manufacturing industry's hegemony over labor relations and the rise in public-sector union memberships.

Because of a change at a hospital, we are able to contrast two different structures of leadership in a union worksite. Since we had tested a cognitive construct we call 'union consciousness' before the change, the difference in structure provides a natural experiment to determine the consequences of structural change for cognition. We repeated the test after the change and found a different cognitive structure. We conclude that cognitive structures are not enduring configurations but that they change as structures change. This leads to the further conclusion that external structures are powerful determinants of patterns of thought. Keywords: experiment, cognition, structure, organized labor, unions, healthcare, culture, theory

The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, under the leadership of John Sweeney, embarked on programs starting 1995 to protect and enhance labor unions. First is the enforcement of the Union Summer program to educate young activists on the techniques of organizing. Another is the allotment of $35 million for political advertising. Lastly, meetings among activists were held to allow the sharing of experiences and lessons. These programs have resulted in the increase of union members as well as in the triumph of workers in the United Parcel Service.

There is growing interest in comparative studies of union and nonunion organizations. Based on responses from more than 1,000 employers in Atlantic Canada, this article investigates the association between union status and a number of variables relating to the economic environment, technology, change and innovation, human resource management practices, and other characteristics of the organization. In addition, implications of the findings are discussed. Index Terms: Canada; Organizing; Work organization and process; Worker attitudes., Introduction With declining union density in a number of countries and a growing recognition that nonunion organizations have generally been ignored by industrial relations scholars, researchers are beginning to place [...]

Canadian trade unions and socialist political parties enjoy more clout than their counterparts in the US. This peculiar socio-economic phenomenon is attributed to Canada's group-oriented and statist nature.