Union Organizing and Collective Bargaining at a Critical Moment:

Opportunities for Renewal or Continued Decline?

Edited by Howard R. Stanger, Paul F. Clark, and John T. Delaney

Union decline over the past 50 years is due to a number of factors that have negatively reinforced each other. Notable factors include structural shifts in the economy, employer opposition, weak labor laws, legislation that has substituted for union protection, the growth of human resources, and the inability of unions to respond to institutional threats with new and successful organizing and political strategies. But a number of contemporary developments suggest a revival of interest in unions. Before COVID, workers experienced less input than they expected and desired. Because unions are the main mechanism for providing workers with a greater voice in the workplace, this voice gap provides an opportunity for union growth.

Democracy and Reform in Public Schools

By Saul Rubinstein, Charles Heckscher, and John McCarthy

A thought-provoking examination of how public education systems can be strengthened through strategic relationships both within schools and with outside partners.
 
In Democracy and Reform in Public Schools, Saul Rubinstein, Charles Heckscher, and John McCarthy apply their expertise in labor relations to public school reform. They envision a model of K–12 education that shifts away from the tenets of neoliberalism and centers on productive collaboration among school boards, school administrators, teacher unions, and other education stakeholders. 

Overtime 

America's Aging Workforce and the Future of Working Longer

Edited by Lisa F. Berkman and Beth C. Truesdale

Overtime offers a current, revelatory corrective to our understanding of the future of the American workforce and aging. Experts across economics, sociology, psychology, political science, and epidemiology examine how increasing economic and social inequalities, coupled with changes across generations or birth cohorts, call for a rethinking of the working-longer policy framework. The contributors examine trends and inequalities in employment, health, family dynamics, and politics, helping to shed light on the challenges faced by traditionally marginalized social groups while showing that our society's responses to an aging workforce affect us all. Together, they argue that policies affecting work must be considered alongside policies affecting retirement and provide a path forward to achieve better retirement security for all Americans.

The Cambridge Handbook of Labor and Democracy

Edited by Angela B. Cornell and Mark Barenberg

We are currently witnessing some of the greatest challenges to democratic regimes since the 1930s, with democratic institutions losing ground in numerous countries throughout the world. At the same time organized labor has been under assault worldwide, with steep declines in union density rates. In this timely handbook, scholars in law, political science, history, and sociology explore the role of organized labor and the working class in the historical construction of democracy. They analyze recent patterns of democratic erosion, examining its relationship to the political weakening of organized labor and, in several cases, the political alliances forged by workers in contexts of nationalist or populist political mobilization.

The UAW's Southern Gamble: 

Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants

By Stephen J. Silvia

The UAW's Southern Gamble is the first in-depth assessment of the United Auto Workers' efforts to organize foreign vehicle plants (Daimler-Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Volkswagen) in the American South since 1989, an era when union membership declined precipitously. Stephen J. Silvia chronicles transnational union cooperation between the UAW and its counterparts in Brazil, France, Germany, and Japan and documents the development of employer strategies that have proven increasingly effective at thwarting unionization.

What Work Is:

Germany’s Political Economy after the Social Democratic Century

Edited By Tobias Schulze-Cleven and Sidney A. Rothstein

What Work Is:

A Distinctive Exploration of How Workers See Work

By Robert Bruno

The Future of the Office:

Work from Home, Remote Work, and the Hard Choices We All Face

By Peter Cappelli

The COVID-19 pandemic forced an experiment that turned remote work into a “new normal.” Many employees want to keep working remotely, or at least the ability to work occasionally from home. But for employers, the benefits of employees working from home or hybrid approaches are not so obvious. In The Future of the Office: Work from Home, Remote Work, and the Hard Choices We All Face, Peter Cappelli lays out the facts to provide employees and employers with a vision of their futures. He unveils the surprising trade-offs both may have to accept to get what they want.

Clean Air and Good Jobs:

U.S. Labor and the Struggle for Climate Justice

By Todd E. Vachon

The labor–climate movement in the U.S. laid the groundwork for the Green New Deal by building a base within labor for supporting climate protection as a vehicle for good jobs. But as we confront the climate crisis and seek environmental justice, a "jobs vs. environment" discourse often pits workers against climate activists. How can we make a "just transition" moving away from fossil fuels, while also compensating for the human cost when jobs are lost or displaced? 

Work, Retire, Repeat:

The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy

By Teresa Ghilarducci

A damning portrait of the dire realities of retirement in the United States—and how we can fix it.

Inside the Invisible Cage:

How Algorithms Control Workers

By Hatim Rahman

In a world increasingly run by algorithms and artificial intelligence, Rahman traces how organizations are using algorithms to control workers in an "invisible cage."

Disconnected:

Call Center Workers Fight for Good Jobs in the Digital Age

By Debbie J. Goldman

Debbie J. Goldman explores how call center employees and their union fought for good, humane jobs in the face of degraded working conditions and lowered wages. As the workforce coalesced to resist the changes, it demanded the Communications Workers of America ight for safe and secure good-paying jobs. But trends in technology, capitalism, and corporate governance--combined with the decline of unions--narrowed the negotiating options for workers. Goldman describes how the actions of workers, management, and policymakers shaped the social impact of the new digital technologies and gave new form to the telecommunications industry in a time of momentous change.

The Handbook on Labour Unions

Edited by Gregor Gall

LERA authors include Mark Bray (University of Newcastle), Marissa Brookes (California – Riverside), Roland Erne (University College Dublin), Lorenzo Frangi (University of Quebec – Montreal), Christian Ibsen (Copenhagen), Johanna MacNeil (RMIT University), Jörg Nowak (University of Brasilia), Zachary Russell (Xavier), Ed Snape (Hong Kong Baptist University), Maite Tapia (Michigan State) and Tingting Zhang (Illinois).

Negotiating High Performance-Focused Partnerships:

The Five Stages of Effective Labor Management Negotiations

 By William N. Cooke, John D. Butler and Thomas D. Posey

Negotiating High Performance-Focused Partnerships: The Five Stages of Effective Labor Management Negotiations investigates labor-management contract negotiations in an operational context. The textbook is designed to guide readers through five key stages of contract negotiations, aiming to align human resources and negotiation strategies with broader business objectives for optimizing workplace performance and institutional competitiveness.

50 Years of Breakthroughs and Barriers

Women in Economics, Policy, and Leadership

Francine D. Blau & Lisa M. Lynch

This NBER paper provides an overview of what has happened over the past fifty years for women as they worked to break through professional barriers in economics, policy, and institutional leadership. It charts the progress of women in higher education at the college level and beyond and then goes on to examine women’s representation at the upper levels of academia, government, law, medicine, and management.

Was the 401(k) a Mistake?

Teresa Ghilarducci (The New School) is extensively cited and quoted in The New York Times Magazine story (May 8, 2024): How an obscure 45-year ago tax change transformed retirement and left so many Americans out in the cold.