Unionization of Professional and Technical Workers

Hurd, Richard W; Bunge, John

doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226261812.003.0006

Emerging Labor Market Institutions for the Twenty-First Century 2005

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226261812.003.0006

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Unionization of Professional and Technical Workers

Richard W Hurd¹,

John Bunge²

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Cited by 4 publications

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The Role of Organizational Factors in Mobilizing Professionals: Evidence from Nurse Unions in the United States and Germany

Krachler

Auffenberg²,

Wolf³

2020

Brit J Industrial Rel

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Scholars have intensely debated the conditions under which trade unions can successfully mobilize professionals. We explore an internationally comparative perspective on mobilizing professionals by asking how two nurse unions in the United States and Germany successfully limited management's prerogative over staffing levels. We found that German national institutions had little influence over the bargaining process; instead, factors at the level of organizations and their environment (leadership support, organizational restructuring, coalitionbuilding with supportive stakeholders and framing) enabled mobilization. Based on a power resources perspective, we conclude that unions can mobilize professionals using militancy, even without much support from national institutions.In response to declining densities, trade unions in the Global North have adopted militant tactics such as protests, one-to-one organizing and strikes. In the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, trade union confederations have since the 1980s created training institutions to promote organizing (Heery 2002). Since the early 2000s, German unions have also adopted organizing in Germany's coordinated, macro-institutional context (Greer 2008;Nachtwey and Wolf 2013). Moreover, Change to Win's European Organising Centre has greatly supported new strategies across Europe, including organizing in hospitals (Givan and Eaton Forthcoming).At the same time, national average densities have continued to decline (Ibsen and Tapia 2017). In the meantime, professionalization processes such as licensing have increased, perhaps indicating that such professionalization

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The Role of Organizational Factors in Mobilizing Professionals: Evidence from Nurse Unions in the United States and Germany

Krachler

Auffenberg²,

Wolf³

2020

Brit J Industrial Rel

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‘Shopping for Voice’: Do Pre‐Existing Non‐Union Representation Plans Matter When Employees Unionize?

Timur

Taras

Ponak

2011

Brit J Industrial Rel

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The transition to unionization in three workplaces with pre-existing non-union employee representation plans (NERPs) is contrasted to three matched sites, which had only individual representation. Pre-existing collective voice arrangements had substantial effects on the process and outcomes of unionization. While the individual representation sites presented a conventional process of mobilization and attachment to the union, the NERP sites revealed a more equivocal outcome. The union was used in an instrumental manner to increase NERP power and to achieve worker demands already articulated by the NERP. NERP leaders became union leaders. There remained significant attachment to the NERP and a reluctance to fully embrace unionization.

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Organising challenges in the era of financialisation: The case of videogame workers

Legault¹,

Weststar²

2021

Work Organisation, Labour &Amp; Globalisation

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A long-term study of videogame developers reveals that they face challenging working conditions and wish for unionisation, although they remain mostly non-unionised. In the broad corpus of literature on propensity to unionise, scholars often offer different explanations of feeble propensity among precarious workers in low-skilled jobs, on the one hand, and those in knowledge work, on the other. We contend that this neglects a larger shared context of increasing financialisation of organisations that has a deterrent effect on intentions to unionise. The effect of financialisation on workers' representation of interests is less studied than the process of financialisation itself and its effect on worsening working conditions. Yet financial stakeholders are now important labour relations actors even while not formally present in the system. We draw on literature on propensity to unionise and new actors in labour relations to include the effect of financialisation and challenge the dichotomous explanation of propensity to unionise that opposes low-skilled jobs to knowledge work.

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Unionization of Professional and Technical Workers

Cited by 4 publications

References 4 publications

The Role of Organizational Factors in Mobilizing Professionals: Evidence from Nurse Unions in the United States and Germany

The Role of Organizational Factors in Mobilizing Professionals: Evidence from Nurse Unions in the United States and Germany

‘Shopping for Voice’: Do Pre‐Existing Non‐Union Representation Plans Matter When Employees Unionize?

Organising challenges in the era of financialisation: The case of videogame workers

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