TY - CHAP T1 - Significant Victories: An Analysis of Union First Contracts T2 - Justice on the Job: Perspectives on the Erosion of Collective Bargaining in the United States Y1 - 2006 AB -

[Excerpt] After two decades of massive employment losses in heavily unionized sectors of the economy and exponential growth of the largely unorganized service sector, the U.S. labor movement is struggling to remain relevant. Despite new organizing initiatives and practices, union organizing today remains a tremendously arduous endeavor, particularly in the private sector, as workers and their unions are routinely confronted with an arsenal of aggressive legal and illegal antiunion employer tactics. This vigorous opposition to unions in the private sector does not stop once an election is won, but continues throughout bargaining for an initial union agreement, all too often turning organizing victories into devastating first-contract defeats.

Despite these overwhelming obstacles, workers still organize and win—through certification elections and voluntary recognition campaigns in both the private and public sectors. And each year unions successfully negotiate thousands of first contracts in the United States, providing union representation for the first time to hundreds of thousands of new workers. This research takes an in-depth look at what unions achieve in these initial union contracts. Why, when confronted with such powerful opposition, do unorganized workers continue to want to belong to unions and newly organized workers want to stay union? What do these first contracts provide that makes the struggle worthwhile?

To explore these questions, we analyze and evaluate union first contracts along four primary dimensions. First, we inventory the basic workers’ rights provided by these contracts, which go beyond the very limited rights provided by federal and state labor law under the “employment at will” system. Second, we evaluate how first contracts provide workers and their unions with the institutional power to shape work and the labor process on a day-to-day basis. Third, we explore how first contracts codify the presence and power of unions in daily work life, and we evaluate which institutional arrangements provide a meaningful role for workers and their unions in their workplaces. Fourth, we examine the kinds of workplace benefits that are codified and supplemented in first contracts, gaining important insights into the types of human resource practices that exist in newly unionized workplaces. Finally, by examining the interactions among these four dimensions, we explore the limitations of what first contracts have been able to achieve in the current organizing environment, and what it would take for unions to improve the quality of first contracts.

JA - Justice on the Job: Perspectives on the Erosion of Collective Bargaining in the United States PB - W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research CY - Kalamazoo, MI L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/248/ ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Locked Out But Holding Together in Ravenswood JF - WorkingUSA Y1 - 1999 AB -

The first in a two-part series that details the Steelworkers' victory at Ravenswood Aluminum - one of labor's biggest wins in the '90s.

VL - 3 L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/824/ CP - 1 ER - TY - BOOK T1 - Ravenswood: The Steelworkers’ Victory and the Revival of American Labor Y1 - 1999 AB -

[Excerpt] When the Ravenswood Aluminum Company locked out seventeen hundred workers on October 31, 1990, it hardly looked like a big opportunity for labor. In what had become standard operating procedure for employers during the 1980s, management broke off bargaining with the United Steelworkers of America, and then brought hundreds of replacement workers into a heavily fortified plant surrounded by barbed wire and security cameras. Injunctions prevented union members from doing little more than symbolic picketing, and the wheels of justice, as they had done for more than a decade, creaked ever so slowly. All the pieces were in place for another long, drawn-out defeat for labor.

This book chronicles the twenty-month battle between the Steelworkers and the Ravenswood Aluminum Company (RAC). It is the story of an international union already reeling from heavy losses in the steel industry and desperately needing some solid ground. It is the story of a tough and determined union membership, most of whom had spent their entire working lives at the local aluminum plant.

PB - Cornell University Press/ILR Press CY - Ithaca, NY L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/549/ ER - TY - BOOK T1 - Ravenswood: The steelworkers' victory and the revival of American labor Y1 - 1999 PB - Cornell University Press CY - Ithaca, NY L2 - eng ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Steelworkers' Victory at Ravenswood: Picket Line Around the World JF - WorkingUSA Y1 - 1999 AB -

The second in a two-part series details the sophisticated international campaign and grass-roots activism that gave labor one of its biggest wins in the '90s.

VL - 3 L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/823/ CP - 2 ER -