Unions and Communities under Siege: American Communities and the Crisis of Organized Labor (Cambridge Human Geography)

The essential argument of this book is that the current crisis facing American unions has to be considered in terms of the immediate communal context of labor-management relations. The structure of New Deal national labor legislation has sustained and maintained distinctive local labor-management practices. In response to the ever-increasing economic interdependence of American and external communities, unions have found it difficult to achieve similar scales of integration, and their fragile ideal of intercommunity solidarity has often been overwhelmed by economic imperatives operating at higher levels and in other places. Three particular themes recur throughout Professor Clark's study: the role of the community in labor-management relations, the roles of state and federal institutions in adjudicating local industrial disputes, and the significance of economic restructuring for the roles and future of industrial unions. The essential argument of this book is that the current crisis of US unions ought to be considered in terms of the local context of labor-management relations; that is, the communities in which men and women live and work. Whether by design or necessity, the structure of New Deal national labor legislation has sustained, and maintained, distinctive local labor-management practices. As the economies of American communities (and the world) have become highly interdependent, reflecting the evolution of corporate structure and trade between economies, unions movement can be traced to unions' dependence upon inter-community solidarity, a fragile democratic ideal which is often overwhelmed by economic imperatives operating at higher scales in other places. An important objective of Professor Clark in this work is to demonstrate the significance of the intersection between communities, unions, and institutions, in understanding the prospects for American unionism In an era predicted by some to be the mature, growth-consolidation phase of industrial unionism (Lester 1958), the United States labor movement is fighting for its survival. Gordon L. Clark. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 278-292).