The new people of power: The backgrounds and careers of top labor leaders

Quaglieri, Philip L.

doi:10.1007/bf02685317

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…First, individual members may develop their personal skills as political leaders by participating in the internal organizational life of the union. Union members have chances to build leadership and political skills as they participate in the life of the organization (Quaglieri 1988;Eaton 1995;Nesbitt 2001). They gain valuable and, for some, rare experience making collective decisions, using parliamentary procedure, bargaining for high stakes, engaging in public speech and persuasion, and building coalitions to seek internal union office.…”

Section: How Unions Support Members' Rise To Public Officementioning

confidence: 99%

Do Unions Promote Members' Electoral Office Holding? Evidence from Correlates of State Legislatures' Occupational Shares

Sojourner¹

2013

ILR Review

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. This study calls attention to a neglected effect of unions -they help members rise to elected public office -and assesses its magnitude empirically. This role of unions is part of larger debates over the promise and perils of union political influence playing out in Wisconsin and elsewhere (Mullans and McKinnon 2010, Greenhouse 2011). On one side is concern that unions use political influence to bend policy to serve their own special interests at the expense of the public interest. This concern is particularly salient regarding public-sector unions. The other side views union political influence generally and members serving in public office as socially constructive for three primary reasons: to help unions act as a counter-weight to the policy influence of organized capital; to improve the quality of legislatures' deliberations through increased diversity; and to promote members' personal development.Developing quantitative evidence on the extent to which unions help members rise to elected office is challenging. Using publicly available information, researchers cannot reliably and consistently observe whether a particular elected official has belonged to a union or not. Elected officials choose whether or not to advertise this fact. A failure to report may indicate either nonmembership or political inconvenience. Furthermore, because the probability of any particular person being elected to office is very low, one needs to study large ...

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Section: How Unions Support Members' Rise To Public Officementioning

confidence: 99%

Do Unions Promote Members' Electoral Office Holding? Evidence from Correlates of State Legislatures' Occupational Shares

Sojourner¹

2013

ILR Review

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“…As unions grow in size and the issues they deal with become more complex, elected officials become full-time employees, services to members are expanded, and more officials and staff members are hired. 1 The most extensive studies of their work (Clegg, Killick, and Adams 1961;Gray 1988;Kelly and Heery 1994;Mills 1948;Quaglieri 1988;Robertson and Sams 1976;Watson 1988) indicate that union officials have an ever-widening range of responsibilities, which fall mainly into three broad functions: servicing and representing union members, organizing and recruiting new members, and representing and promoting the policies of the union. In addition, they are often expected to "provide the integrative and inspirational leadership which will harmonize the interests of ethnically and occupationally divergent members and build solidarity towards common goals" (Gray 1975: 472-473).…”

Section: This Study Examines the Nature Of Education And Training Formentioning

confidence: 99%

Educating Labour’s Professionals

Nesbit

2002

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Summary This study examines the nature of education and training for full-time union staff and officials in Canada and explores some of the factors that affect such provision. It was designed to complement similar studies of other countries and to contribute to more general discussions of labour education. The study compares the opportunities of training for Canadian union staff with similar provision in Britain and the U.S.A. and locates the discussion about further training within the contexts of existing programs of labour education and current debates about the revitalization of the labour movement. The study concludes with a call for more systematic discussion of these issues and analysis of different programmatic models.

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“…Union officialdom has a long pedigree as a focus of inquiry (see, for example, Clegg et al 1961; Webb and Webb 1898; Wilensky 1956). Recent research has concerned such issues as: the roles and functions of officials in mediating industrial relations and class politics (see, for example, Kelly 1988); the content of union officials' jobs and behaviours (see, for example, Kelly and Heery 1994); and the characteristics and attitudes of contemporary union officials (Chaison and Andiappan 1987;Michelson 1991Michelson , 1995Quaglieri 1988;Reed 1990).…”

Section: Previous Research On Union Officialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The bureaucratisation of Australian unions ? Evidence from a national survey

Hall

Harley²,

Tomkins³

2000

Journal of Sociology

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Using data drawn from the authors' own 1996 Australian National Trade Union Survey, this paper examines the size and implications of union bureaucracies in Australia. In particular, we critically evaluate the arguments of Bramble (1995b) that the growth of Australia's 'new generation' of union officials has had the effect of 'deterring democracy'. We find that while the evidence of increasing numbers of union officials is mixed, there are some trends that are contributing to higher union official density rates while other trends are lowering those rates. However, we find no support for Bramble's central claims that union bureaucratisation and managerial-service unionism have led to less democratic practices in Australian unions. Rather than being concerned with the number or class character of officials, we suggest that organisational features such as delegate structures are more relevant to the issue of union democracy. lntroduction . The Australian trade union movement faces a difficult and uncertain future. A combination of factors including policy changes introduced by hostile state and federal governments, increasing employer militancy, massive industry restructuring, changing patterns of work and employment, declining membership levels and increasing 'globalisation' of the Australian economy pose fundamental challenges for unions (for discussion of key issues see: Deery, Union officialdom has a long pedigree as a focus of inquiry (see, for example, Clegg et al. 1961;Webb and Webb 1898;Wilensky 1956). Recent research has concerned such issues as: the roles and functions of officials in mediating industrial relations and class politics (see, for example, Kelly 1988); the content of union officials' jobs and behaviours (see, for example, Kelly and Heery 1994); and the characteristics and attitudes of contemporary union officials (Chaison and

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The new people of power: The backgrounds and careers of top labor leaders

Cited by 5 publications

References 9 publications

Do Unions Promote Members' Electoral Office Holding? Evidence from Correlates of State Legislatures' Occupational Shares

Do Unions Promote Members' Electoral Office Holding? Evidence from Correlates of State Legislatures' Occupational Shares

Educating Labour’s Professionals

The bureaucratisation of Australian unions ? Evidence from a national survey

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