THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT’S (SURPRISING) ECONOMIC IMPACT: HOW UNIONS CHALLENGE CONSUMERISM AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

Abstract

Many traditional economists view trade unions as monopolies; unions challenge capital by having control over labor as a production input and threatening to withhold it to achieve union goals. Yet, unions also strategize around citizenship and consumer roles with political action and consumer boycotts. Little researched is how unions challenge corporate authority by encouraging workers to defer consumption and become owners of capital through pension funds. This new role as capital owners is leveraged through pension fund activism, which challenges corporate decisions that are not much affected by political action, organizing, or collective bargaining. This chapter puts these developments in the context of familiar theories of the economic effect of trade unions and the history of union pension activism.

Citation

Ghilarducci, T. (2004), "THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT’S (SURPRISING) ECONOMIC IMPACT: HOW UNIONS CHALLENGE CONSUMERISM AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE", Myers, D.J. and Cress, D.M. (Ed.) Authority in Contention (Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Vol. 25), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 231-252. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-786X(04)25009-1