High-Tech Production Workers’ Fear of Unionizing: A Wheeler–McClendon Model Analysis of a Union Organizing Campaign at a US Medical Electronics Factory

Abstract

Using the framework of the Wheeler and McClendon (1991) theory of employee support for unionization, the purpose of this article is to examine an unsuccessful unionization drive in a US medical electronics factory that the author took part in while working as a production worker during 1983 in order to gain insight into why unionization is so difficult to promote among production workers in high-tech industry. I argue that high-tech companies take advantage of the inherent fear in production employees to organize in order to defeat unionization campaigns. That is, they negatively affect employee support for unionization through the development of inhibiting conditions of the emotional path of the WheelerMcClendon theory to prevent unionization. The use of this widespread strategy is crucial for understanding such low rates of unionization in this industry.KEY WORDS: union organizing; managerial opposition; high-tech industry.With the decades-long decline in collective bargaining coverage in the United States, from a union density of approximately 37% in 1946 to little over a third of that nearly 60 years later, union organizing in the late 20th/early 21st centuries has been correctly viewed as an integral route not only for the revitalization, but also for the mere survival of the US labor movement. While the number of union members continued to increase throughout the 1970s, union density continued to spiral downward as labor organizations were unable to recruit new members as fast as the labor force was expanding. By 1980, at 21%, union density was less than 60% of its post-World War II peak; by 1995, it had fallen below 15% (Bronfenbrenner et al., 1998). In October 1995, John Sweeney won the first contested election for the presidency of the AFL-CIO in which he promised to reinvigorate union organizing on a massive scale. Shortly after taking office, he followed through with this promise by investing $ 20 million "to support coordinated large-scale industry-based organizing drives" (p. 1). And the following summer, the AFL-CIO sent more than 1000 college students and young workers into the field to help with unionization drives across the country.

Why Might a Videogame Developer Join a Union?

“…In fact, these two opposite relations could turn out in different contexts. But in high technology work environments, characterized by lightweight production capital, low capital / labor ratio and widespread sources of workforce, capital has proven to be mobile and moving business is easy (Devinatz, 2005).…”