Despite the law: Union organizing in contemporary America

This dissertation analyzes the evolution and success of contemporary labor organizing strategies as they develop in response to the inadequacy of current labor law to protect the right to organize. The framing argument is that it is the unique role of the American state that has given U.S. labor relations their distinctive shape. State influence on labor strategies and success is both direct, by circumscribing what means unions can use in their efforts to organize workers and limiting their arsenal of tactics; and indirect, by shaping employer behavior and strategies, which in turn bear on union strategies and outcomes. The understanding of how these variables interact is grounded in a theory of power that conceptualizes power as inhering in the contributions that social actors make in interdependent relationships. Innovative strategies being pursued by the labor movement today grow out of the recognition that workers' relationship with the state is, at best, of no help in winning union recognition, and are generally characterized by an effort to draw into the union-employer relationship other relationships in order to leverage the interdependencies of the third party to the union's advantage; among those third parties, other state actors have emerged particularly critical. Unions are trying to gain leverage through a complex of legislative, electoral, regulatory and other strategies. The state was in the past and remains today the most important third party in determining the outcome of the struggle between employers and workers. The precise unfolding of these relationships is explored through case studies of three high-profile cutting-edge industrial organizing campaigns: SEIU Local 1199FL, HERE Local 226 and CWA Local 37083.