# data[].attributes.body
“…it has been easy for employers to frustrate its decisions (Taras 1997). This, along with norms supporting "free" markets and "free" contracts, has helped employers to ensure weak provisions for good-faith bargaining and the absence of first contract arbitration . Norms giving primacy to private property have formed the basis for Supreme Court decisions permitting the use of permanent striker replacements (NLRB U. Mackay Radio) and the denial of union access (Lechmere, Inc v. NLRB).”

Godard, John. “The Exceptional Decline of the American Labor Movement.” ILR Review, vol. 63, no. 1, 2009, pp. 82–108. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25594545. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.

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“Employers prevented unionization through legal means as well. As in previous decades, labor laws permitted managers to hold mandatory antiunion meetings with workers, distribute antiunion literature, and delay the negotiation of labor contracts following successful organizing drives. What changed was employers' willingness to deploy such tactics. Over time, they became almost reflexive responses to the threat of unionization. In combination with unlawful tactics, and advised by a flourishing industry of union-busting consultants, employers managed to stifle labor organizing, and union election activity plunged in the early 1980s.”

Western, Bruce, and Jake Rosenfeld. “Workers of the World Divide: The Decline of Labor and the Future of the Middle Class.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 91, no. 3, 2012, pp. 88–99. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23217969. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.

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“First, the labor movement, already weakened by decades of stagnation and with few meaningful protections under the law, was severely affected by the recession of 1982-83 (manyunions had to resort to extensive stafflayoffs) and unable to respond to an increasingly hostile ideological environ-ment. Unions were thus virtually defenseless against management attacks, freeing employers from the need to engage in the "realism" of the postwar era and allowing them to pursue a more openly anti-union and in many cases anti-worker agenda.”

Godard, John. “The Exceptional Decline of the American Labor Movement.” ILR Review, vol. 63, no. 1, 2009, pp. 82–108. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25594545. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.

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“…the 2008 financial crisis nevertheless did impact the labor movement. It opened up political space for right-wing attacks on the rights of unions to exist and bargain collectively in both the private and public sectors, further eroding an already hostile institutional environment. Steep job losses in traditionally unionized industries during and after the Great Recession added to the challenge for the labor movement in maintaining union density.”

Ruth Milkman, and Stephanie Luce. “Labor Unions and the Great Recession.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, vol. 3, no. 3, 2017, pp. 145–65. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.7758/rsf.2017.3.3.07. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.

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“A comparative and historical reformulation of the business-cycle theory associates persistent cross-national variability and secular change in inflation and unemployment with diverse unionization trends. This re-formulation is put sharply by Freeman (1989, p. 1) who relates divergent patterns of unionization to worldwide recession through the 1970s. He argues: "The post-oil-shock world economy created a 'crisis of unionism' throughout the western world." Employers intensified their opposition to unions in response to mounting cost pressures that came from high inflation and slow economic growth.”

Western, Bruce. “Unionization and Labor Market Institutions in Advanced Capitalism, 1950-1985.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 99, no. 5, 1994, pp. 1314–41. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2781151. Accessed 13 Nov. 2023.

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“The Conference Board predicts a 96 percent likelihood of a recession in the US within the next 12 months, based on our probability model. This supports our expectation of a recession before the end of 2022 caused by the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes. The last quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023 are likely to see negative real GDP growth rates.”

“US Recession Probability Reaches 96 Percent Heading into Q4.” The Conference Board, 29 Sept. 2022, www.conference-board.org/topics/recession/US-recession-probabilities-reach-96-percent. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.

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“…unions have been--and remain important forces in American life, both economically and politically. Labor unions--in both the private and public sectors--remain potent players in the political process, making endorsements, using members' dues to support political candidates, providing manpower and infrastructure support (such as phone banks and membership communications) for "get out the vote" drives, and the like. They are among the largest contributors to political campaigns, with expenditures amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars each election cycle.”

Pulliam, Mark S. “The Exploitation of Labor and Other Union Myths.” The Independent Review, vol. 24, no. 3, 2019, pp. 409–31. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/45238864. Accessed 17 Nov. 2023.

# data[].attributes.body
The poll confirms a 2022 survey conducted by Gallup, which finds that 71% of Americans approve of unions, the highest since 1965.

“New Poll Shows 7 in 10 Americans Support Labor Unions.” AFGE, The Insider, 13 Oct. 2023, www.afge.org/article/new-poll-shows-7-in-10-americans-support-labor-unions/#:~:text=The%20poll%20confirms%20a%202022,unions%2C%20the%20highest%20since%201965. Accessed 17 Nov. 2023.

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“Over the past thirty to forty years, union membership especially among private sector employees has declined dramatically from a high of 35% in the mid 1950s to 7.2% today. As a result of these developments, industrial relations dispute resolution procedures are employed in a smaller proportion of American workplaces.”

Craver, Charles B. “The Impact of Labor Unions on Worker Rights and on Other Social Movements.” ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law, vol. 26, no. 2, 2011, pp. 267–78. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41320577. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.

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“A similar split operates in regard to strikes: Workers are guaranteed the right to strike and may not be penalized for doing so, but employers are guaranteed the right to maintain production during a strike and may hire permanent replacement workers. Thus, workers may not be fired for engaging in a strike, but they may be permanently replaced- an academic distinction at best (Fantasia 1993).”

Clawson, Dan, and Mary Ann Clawson. “What Has Happened to the US Labor Movement? Union Decline and Renewal.” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 25, 1999, pp. 95–119. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/223499. Accessed 17 Nov. 2023.

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“Decline of unionization can also be attributed to the reduction in the collective action due to changes in the wage structure of the workers where in the role of pay for performance and fringe benefits have increased tremendously. The workers do not want to risk losing the sizeable chunk of benefits and hence collective action and strike activities have reduced leading to a decline in unionization.”

Balasubramanian, Girish. “Union Decline: A Geography Based Assessment.” Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 50, no. 3, 2015, pp. 373–85. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24549101. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.

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“Replacement workers, having previously operated on the fringes of U.S. labor relations in the Deep South and other nonunion strong-holds, began rapidly moving into the main-stream. By the mid-1980s, employers were hiring replacement workers, or threatening to do so, in more than one-third of all labor negotiations (Cramton and Tracy 1998). To stem the rising tide of strikebreakers, labor's allies in Congress repeatedly tried but failed to pass legislation banning or restricting replacement workers, leaving the United States as one of the few industrial democracies in violation of the International Labour Organization's principles for safeguarding the right to organize (Spector 1992). The subsequent extension of employment security to

"permanent replacements," including the possibility of suing employers for wrongful termination, has largely eviscerated the right to strike, accelerating the decline in unionization (Finkin 1990).”

Kimeldorf, Howard. “Worker Replacement Costs and Unionization: Origins of the U.S. Labor Movement.” American Sociological Review, vol. 78, no. 6, 2013, pp. 1033–62. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43188370. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.

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“If the employer resisted to the point the union filed an unfair labor practice charge, the union success rate fell to just below 10 per-cent. These results suggest that, in reality, employers decide whether workers who express a desire for union representation will get it.”

Kochan, Thomas A., and William T. Kimball. “Unions, Worker Voice, and Management Practices: Implications for a High-Productivity, High-Wage Economy.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, vol. 5, no. 5, 2019, pp. 88–108. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.7758/rsf.2019.5.5.05. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.

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“Employers—including many respectable, name-brand companies—collectively spend $340 million per year on “union avoidance” consultants who teach them how to exploit these weakness of federal labor law to effectively scare workers out of exercising their legal right to collective bargaining.”

Lafer, Gordon, and Lola Loustaunau. “Fear at Work: An inside Account of How Employers Threaten, Intimidate, and Harass Workers to Stop Them from Exercising Their Right to Collective Bargaining.” Economic Policy Institute, 23 July 2020, www.epi.org/publication/fear-at-work-how-employers-scare-workers-out-of-unionizing/. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.