Book Abstract
Union Booms and Busts takes a bird’s eye view of the shifting fortunes of U.S. workers and their unions on the one hand, and employers and their organizations on the other. Using newly assembled and detailed data, it analyzes union density across 11 industries and 115 years, demonstrating that workers in some industries and some time periods were remarkably successful in forming and defending unions, while others were not. Union Booms and Busts traces the approaches that workers used, including organizing strategies (craft vs. industrial), strikes, and union elections, as well as those of employers, who aimed to disrupt union organizing using legal maneuvers, workforce-based strategies and race and gender divisions. Chapters are organized around time periods— the early unregulated period where unions took hold in only a handful of industries, the mid-century regulated period where strikes, elections, and union density grew in many industries, and the later dis-regulated period where union trajectories diverged, with union density drastically declining in most industries and holding steady in others. Each chapter begins with a depiction of the economic, legal and political context of the time as well as important historical trajectories. The book concludes by suggesting what might come next for workers and unions in America.
Union Booms and Busts Data Repository
Our Data Repository makes the data we collected for Union Booms and Busts available to the reader. This includes data on union power in 11 different industries over 115 years, including information on union membership and density, strikes, NLRB elections, decertification elections, Unfair Labor Practices, employment, occupation, race, and gender. We also collected yearly union membership numbers for all unions with collective bargaining agreements in more than one state.
This data was collected by Judy Stepan-Norris and Jasmine Kerrissey, with substantial help from Caleb Southworth in the earlier years of the study as well as from numerous research assistants. The data comes from various archives, government data sets, union reports, and other sources. Early funding for this project was generously provided by the National Science Foundation (grant to Southworth and Stepan-Norris, and dissertation grant to Kerrissey), the University of California, Irvine Academic Senate and administration, and UCI’s Center for the Study of Democracy.
We invite you to use this data to answer questions and to inform strategic decisions. We also welcome scholars and students to use it for research. When doing so, please cite Union Booms and Busts: The On-Going Fight Over the U.S. Labor Movement, Data Repository Table (or Graph) X.X.
View our Union Booms and Busts Data Repository
Photo attribution for mural
Hands in Solidarity, Hands of Freedom mural on the side of the United Electrical Workers union building in Chicago, Illinois. Painted by artist Daniel Manrique Arias in 1997 as part of the cross-border solidarity work between the UE and the FAT.
Photo credit: Chicago Public Art Group Photo Archives.