Estimating the Effect of “Change to Win” on Union Organizing

Abstract

In a 2005 effort to reinvigorate new-member organizing efforts, seven unions split from the American federation of labor and congress of Industrial Organizations (Afl-cIO) to form a new union federation, change to Win. Using ten years of data from the national labor Relations Board and the national Mediation Board and a difference-in-difference estimator, the author estimates the effect of change to Win policies on whether a union won its certification election and the number and percentage of workers successfully organized. The results indicate no statistically significant difference in organizing success following change to Win's implementation of new organizing strategies and practices, relative to the Afl-cIO. l abor unions in the United states have a complex history of prioritizing new-member organizing. After a sharp increase in organizing activity following the enactment of the national labor Relations Act in 1935, unions' prioritization of organizing began to wane. More notably, unions' financial investment in new-member organizing began to decrease in the 1950s; organizing expenditures per nonunion worker decreased approximately 28% between 195328% between and 197128% between (Atleson 1994. Accompanying this decreased prioritization of new-member organizing was a decline in union density (farber and Western 2001).for decades, academics and unionists have chronicled the decline in union density in the United states; union leaders have begun to see newmember organizing as a potential solution and everyday priority, and academics have begun to study these organizing attempts. such research has included quantitative assessments of the effect of specific organizing tactics or strategies on union election wins (Reed 1989;

Divided We Stand? Coalition Dynamics in the German Union Movement

“…Coalitional activity requires unions to reflect on their goals as the basis for alignment with others, as this sends a clear signal on preferences to the movement at large. The consequences for union politics can be profound (Aleks 2015). Other unions might object or emphasize alternative goals, and consequently form rival coalitions to pursue such competing objectives; this gives rise to what we term competing union coalitions.…”

Unions and the organising turn: Reflections after 20 years of Organising Works

“…It can be seen in the organising policies, plans and budgets developed by national confederations and unions and also in particular campaigns, directed at individual companies or workplaces, which are often based on a mapping exercise and guided by target-setting (Waddington and Kerr, 2009). Second, organising has been accompanied by formal specialisation within trade unions, seen in the creation or expansion of organising departments and the elaboration of organising roles among both paid officials and lay representatives (Aleks, 2015; Heery et al, 2003). Third, formal management systems have been implemented to support and guide organising activity.…”

“…Finally, there has been a stress on ‘strategic targeting’, with unions identifying key industries and employers for organising activity and then investing substantial resources in break-through campaigns. Campaigns initiated by Change to Win in the USA, targeted at bus drivers, warehouse workers and Walmart, are cases in point (Aleks, 2015). Strategic targeting of this kind, with its identification of targets by a national organising department, contrasts sharply with bottom-up approaches based on responding to ‘hot shops’, to groups of workers seeking union representation to resolve immediate grievances.…”

“…Underpinning many of these problems, there is arguably a division of interest within unions, between national leaders anxious to halt union decline and who therefore wish to invest in organising, and many existing members and their representatives for whom such investment constitutes a tax from which they will incur little or uncertain benefit. In resource-constrained unions, the reallocation of resources to organising has inevitably generated conflict: exemplified in the USA by the split in the movement over organising strategy and the creation of the breakaway federation, Change to Win (Aleks, 2015).…”

“…There is an emphasis in union organising strategy, and in much academic commentary, on unions renewing themselves from within and reducing their one-time dependence on government, employer and institutional support. This feature of the organising turn was displayed most graphically in the breakaway of Change to Win from the AFL-CIO on the grounds that the latter was investing too much in support for the Democrats at the expense of investment in organising (Aleks, 2015). The latter, the breakaway declared, must become the single, overriding priority of unions and the new federation was conceptualised from the outset as a ‘strategic organising centre’.…”