Organized Labor and Racial Wage Inequality in the United States

Rosenfeld, Jake; Kleykamp, Meredith

doi:10.1086/663673

Cited by 92 publications

(100 citation statements)

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“…Freeman and Medoff (1984) noted the greater propensity of black workers to vote for unionization, and Freeman and Rogers (1999) used survey data to support the claim that black workers were drawn to unions as much for their ability to limit employers' arbitrary exercises of power as for the wage premiums in union contracts. Rosenfeld and Kleykamp (2012) have similarly argued with more recent data that black workers disproportionately benefited from union wage premiums, especially in industries where managers have had greater latitude in wage--setting. In a similar vein, Milkman's (2006) study of the SEIU's Justice for Janitors mobilization in Los Angeles had employment security as a goal alongside higher pay.…”

Section: Unions and Managerial Discretionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…It is possible therefore to make several predictions about the effects of unionization on workforce composition, given the findings of previous research. First, Leonard's (1985) longitudinal analysis of establishment composition, the historical study of union--membership patterns (Rosenfeld and Kleykamp 2009;Rosenfeld and Kleykamp 2012), and multiple case studies (Halpern 1997;Nelson 2001;Milkman 2006) all suggest that unionizing an establishment should limit managerial discretion in hiring, pay, and promotion, and thus make establishments more representative of their larger labor--market areas over time. Second, the findings in Leonard (1985) and Kalev (2009) It is a sad irony that, in the same period when unions have grown more diverse and inclusive, their influence has shrunk.…”

Section: Unions and Managerial Discretionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Union contracts typically limit employers' discretion over hiring, discipline, promotion and termination (Leonard 1985), exactly the reasons why many firms and executives oppose unionization. While the relationship between labor unions and minorities has historically been complicated (Botsch 1980;Nelson 2001), unions remain among the most integrated institutions in American society, and minorities frequently express support for unions because they reduce employers' arbitrary authority (Freeman and Rogers 1999;Milkman 2006;Rosenfeld and Kleykamp 2012). Studies of diversity policies typically control for the presence of unions in firms, precisely because unions are theorized to have similar effects on the formalization of employment (Dobbin and Sutton 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the long--standing debates about how unions affect workforce diversity (Leonard 1985;Milkman 1987;Nelson 2001;Rosenfeld and Kleykamp 2012), such an investigation is long overdue. Second, it suggests serious caution in interpreting previous work on the effects of managerial diversity policies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Control of Managerial Discretion: Evidence from Unionization’s Impact on Employment Segregation

Ferguson

2015

American Journal of Sociology

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Does limiting managers' discretion limit organizations' scope for discrimination? Social--psychological research argues that it limits opportunities to exercise cognitive biases. Organizational research has found that formal personnel practices that establish accountability for workplace diversity have increased women and minority representation in management. However, drawing causal inferences from such studies is complicated because adopting such policies may be endogenous to the firm's wish to hire and promote women and minorities. This study uses unionization elections to conduct a regression--discontinuity test from which stronger causal inferences can be made. I find that while unionization is associated with more representative workplaces and more women and minorities in management, these effects disappear close to the discontinuity threshold. Most of the effects of unionization on workforce diversity may be attributable to the unobserved drivers of selection into unionization. This has similar implications for the causal effects of diversity policies adopted by managers. Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Emilio Castilla, Roberto Fernandez, Aruna Ranganathan, Susan Silbey, Jesper Sørensen, and seminar participants at Stanford GSB, Berkeley--Haas, MIT--Sloan, INSEAD, and the 30 th EGOS Colloquium for comments on the manuscript. Sheldon Friedman, Alfonso Nevárez, and Gordon Pavy at the NLRB and Bliss Cartwright and Ronald Edwards at the EEOC gave invaluable support with the data. Direct correspondence to John--Paul Ferguson, Stanford Graduate School of Business. Email: jpferg@stanford.edu. suggests that it does. This work situates much employment discrimination not in the conscious actions of bigoted managers but in the unconscious impact of cognitive biases, deployed through personnel policies that fail to take such biases into account. As one classic review of the subject summarized, "We cannot rid work organizations of discrimination until we recognize both that much employment discrimination originates in automatic cognitive processes, and that it occurs because of work organizations' personnel practices" (Reskin 2000, p. 321).This social--psychological approach to discrimination reinforces an older organizational perspective on the subject. Organizational research has long emphasized the existence of informal social structures within formal organizations (Mayo 1984;Dalton 1959;Scott and Davis 2006) and recognized that, in the absence of formal structures, informal processes like ascriptive homophily will shape organizational careers and rewards. This is why, in his unromantic defense of complex organizations, Perrow (1986, p. 6) emphasizes the importance of rules that limit managers' discretion in "Purging Particularism":Particularism means that criteria irrelevant for efficient production (e.g., only relatives of the boss have a chance at top positions), in contrast to universalistic criteria (e.g., competence is all that counts), are used to choose employees. The criteria of eff...

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Section: Unions and Managerial Discretionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Unions and Managerial Discretionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Control of Managerial Discretion: Evidence from Unionization’s Impact on Employment Segregation

Ferguson

2015

American Journal of Sociology

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“…But after World War II, American unions incorporated huge numbers of previously excluded workers. Rosenfeld & Kleykamp (2012), using Current Population Survey (CPS) data from the 1970s to the Great Recession, demonstrate that black workers, especially black women, were disproportionately represented in unionized jobs. This black/white unionization difference cannot be accounted for solely by positional variables (geography, industry, occupation), a finding Rosenfeld & Kleykamp interpret as evidence that disadvantaged workers actively sought the relative protection from discrimination that unions provided.…”

Section: Ahlquistmentioning

confidence: 99%

Labor Unions, Political Representation, and Economic Inequality

Ahlquist

2017

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci.

120

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Decades of research across several disciplines have produced substantial evidence that labor unions, on balance, reduce economic disparities. But unions are complicated, multifaceted organizations straddling markets and politics. Much of their equality-promoting influence occurs through their ability to reduce class-based inequity in politics and public policy. Declining unionization across much of the developed world is eroding workers' bargaining power. Reduced economic leverage puts pressure on union solidarity and weakens labor-based political movements. Important research design problems and significant heterogeneity across unions, regions, countries, and time imply a continued need for more work.

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Solidarity and disparity: Declining labor union density and changing racial and educational mortality inequities in the United States

Eisenberg‐Guyot

Mooney

Hagopian

et al. 2019

American J Industrial Med

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Background: Recently, United States life expectancy has stagnated or declined for the poor and working class and risen for the middle and upper classes. Declining labor-union density-the percent of workers who are unionized-has precipitated burgeoning income inequity. We examined whether it has also exacerbated racial and educational mortality inequities.Methods: From CDC, we obtained state-level all-cause and overdose/suicide mortality overall and by gender, gender-race, and gender-education from 1986-2016. State-level union density and demographic and economic confounders came from the Current Population Survey. State-level policy confounders included the minimum wage, the generosity of Aid to Families with Dependent Children or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and the generosity of unemployment insurance. To model the exposure-outcome relationship, we used marginal structural modeling. Using state-level inverse-probability-of-treatment-weighted Poisson models with state and year fixed effects, we estimated 3-year moving average union density's effects on the following year's mortality rates. Then, we tested for gender, gender-race, and gender-education effect-modification. Finally, we estimated how racial and educational all-cause mortality inequities would change if union density increased to 1985 or 1988 levels, respectively.Results: Overall, a 10% increase in union density was associated with a 17% relative decrease in overdose/suicide mortality (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.70, 0.98), or 5.7 lives saved per 100 000 person-years (95% CI: −10.7, −0.7). Union density's absolute (lives-saved) effects on overdose/suicide mortality were stronger for men than women, but its relative effects were similar across genders. Union density had little effect on all-cause mortality overall or across subgroups, and modeling suggested union-density increases would not affect mortality inequities.Conclusions: Declining union density (as operationalized in this study) may not explain all-cause mortality inequities, although increases in union density may reduce overdose/suicide mortality. K E Y W O R D S fatal overdose epidemic, health disparities, health inequities, labor movement, labor unions, marginal structural models, mortality inequities, social determinants of health

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Organized Labor and Racial Wage Inequality in the United States

Cited by 92 publications

References 44 publications

The Control of Managerial Discretion: Evidence from Unionization’s Impact on Employment Segregation

The Control of Managerial Discretion: Evidence from Unionization’s Impact on Employment Segregation

Labor Unions, Political Representation, and Economic Inequality

Solidarity and disparity: Declining labor union density and changing racial and educational mortality inequities in the United States

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