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The U.S. labor movement is in decline and a crisis of national leadership has emerged over conflicting prescriptions for labor's revival. Union leaders have seemingly established consensus on the need for change, but disagree about the nature of needed reform, and methods for accomplishing meaningful changes that might address the long-term crisis.

This paper strives to inform and advance debates on these issues. Two national union surveys conducted in 1990 and 1997 provide the primary evidentiary base. Given their critical role in this study, measures from the surveys and certain aspects of the surveys are scrutinized. These surveys span the “Sweeney Insurgency” and the early years of the Sweeney AFL-CIO administration. Although both surveys have supported previous cross-section based studies, no published work has expressly focused on the change and stability within national unions or the longitudinal potential these data collectively provide. Using this potential to reexamine relations between union structures, strategies, and performance, this paper seeks to establish an evidentiary base to inform the current debate about union reforms and their likely consequences. In addition, suggestions for future research on unions and approaches to studying unions are offered.

The question of why workers support unions is one of the most fundamental in employment relations. Using Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior we conduct a selective review of literature and evidence on union voting, joining, and participation. We focus primarily on the question of motivation as stemming from self-interest or from pro-social considerations. Secondary attention is given to the influence of others’ views (subjective norms) and worker perceptions that they can achieve desired behaviors (perceived control or self-efficacy). We find support for the notion that workers are concerned with neither member self-interest (“just us”) alone, nor pro-social (“justice”) alone, but rather that they are motivated to form, join, and participate by both considerations. This micro-foundation for considering unions as institutions suggests that unions are neither narrow self-interested institutions nor purely pro-social movements, but “a little bit of both.” We offer propositions and consider implications for theory, practice, and future research.

Aims to review British labour union leaders’ views on the use and importance of information and communications technology (ICT) within their unions.

An open‐ended e‐mail survey and personal interviews conducted in 2000‐2001 with union leaders provides the primary original data for this research. Responses are content analysed to assess the importance leaders assign to ICT for unions, to review the ways in which ICT is used, and the costs and benefits associated with ICT use. Charts and verbatim quotes are used to summarise respondents’ views. These views are compared and contrasted with data from the USA.

Union leaders were generally enthusiastic about the importance of ICT for unions, citing various examples of ICT‐based benefits to their unions. Some, however, expressed reservations about members’ access to ICT and potential “digital divides”, while others warned that ICT may encourage unions to neglect worker desires for “a human touch” in helping them resolve problems. British union leaders’ views generally reinforce findings from an earlier survey in the USA, although direct comparisons are limited.

Provides information on ICT views from a reasonably broad sampling of British union leaders and demonstrates similarity of views across Britain and the USA.

Although the study of unions and their effects has a long history, only recently have researchers begun to analyze unions as organizations. In such studies, the union itself is a focus, rather than its effects or the behavior of individuals in relation to unions. Some key topics include union environments, goals, strategies, structures, and outcomes, including innovation and effectiveness. This paper reviews recent research in order to summarize current knowledge on national unions as organizations, and offers suggestions for further research. Particular attention is devoted to national unions, as they occupy a critical place in the network of union organizations. U.S. unions have faced serious challenges in recent decades, and their efforts to cope with these and adapt to their changing environments may have lessons for the study of organizations more generally.

The aim of this paper is to give a critique of the extant literature on union commitment and participation in order to develop remedies to identified weaknesses

The paper uses a critical assessment of extant literature.

A number of critical deficiencies exist in the literature to which remedies are proposed.

The remedies need testing through empirical research.

Future research needs to have different research foci and questions.

With a reorientation of future research on union commitment, participation and leadership, unions may be better able to benefit from academic research in the area.

The paper suggests that a reorientation of future research on union commitment, participation and leadership will allow more incisive and more robust contributions to be made to understanding unions as complex social organisms.

A labor union's strength is a crucial factor when considering outcomes such as its constituents' empowerment. One of the most important goals of any labor union is to achieve increased balance‐of‐power between the labor and management groups; hence, union strength is an accomplishment of this fundamental aim. It follows that stronger unions, measured by their perceived effectiveness in dealing with management, will contain more empowered constituents. Previous union‐related research typically considered employee empowerment at the group‐level of analysis (e.g. improved work rules, pay, and benefits for entire groups of employees). The purpose of this paper is to propose and test hypotheses on the relationship between perceived union strength, a micro‐ or workplace‐level analog of union bargaining power, and perceptions of shared leader‐member expectations using supervisor‐subordinate dyads as a unit of analysis.

Working adults across the USA were sampled (n=347), through the use of a survey software company that makes survey panels commercially available. Respondents were racially/ethnically diverse, with a mean age of about 41 years (range of 18 to over 62 years), and slightly more females than males (about 65 percent female). Also, about 13.5 percent were members of a labor union.

Employees who belonged to more powerful unions (i.e. compared to employees who belonged to less powerful unions) demonstrated increased shared‐leadership expectations with their supervisors. In support of Hypothesis 1, non‐union employees also possessed increased shared leadership expectations in comparison to union workers where the union was perceived as weak. As proposed in Hypothesis 2, unions perceived as strong produced more empowered constituents relative to unions perceived as weak. Finally, non‐union employees did not appear to differ in shared‐leadership expectations from employees perceiving strong unions, contrary to Hypothesis 3.

A contribution of the present study is to show that unions also have significant connections with supervisor‐subordinate relations (i.e. shared leadership), and that simply having a unionized workplace does not guarantee increased employee empowerment; unions must also be strong.

Volume 15 of Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations (AILR) contains 10 papers, four of which deal with human resource management and six with unionization. Six of the papers were originally presented in “Best Papers” sessions at the 57th and 58th annual meetings of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA). In keeping with AILR's global perspective and global sourcing of leading research, the studies contained in these papers draw on data from the United Kingdom, France, Asia, Canada, and the United States.

A large earnings gap between men and women has persisted in the USA despite legislation intended to reduce it. One cause of this has been thought to be systematic marketplace undervaluing of tasks performed by women. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sought to address this perceived inequity by reviving a 1940s concept, “comparable worth”. This article examines litigation that sought to enforce the legal requirement of “equal pay for comparable worth” and the implementation problems and controversies that ensue.