OnLabor

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Author:Jake Rosenfeld

Jake Rosenfeld is Associate Professor of Sociology at Washington University-St. Louis. He is the author of What Unions No Longer Do (Harvard University Press, 2014). For more on his work, see www.jakerosenfeld.net.

The Democrats: Unmoored, and Unable to Compete

Oct 24, 2017 Jake Rosenfeld

Recently the Times chronicled the devastation of the Democratic Party in Iowa, a former swing state that now has a Republican Governor, two Republican Senators, three Republican Representatives (out of four total), and an electorate that voted for Donald Trump decisively. Assessing his state’s transformation, Iowa’s former Democratic Governor Tom Vilsack noted that “Republican-leaning institutions […]

The Union Household Vote Revisited

Apr 11, 2017 Jake Rosenfeld and Patrick Denice

A spate of labor-related election postmortems converged on one key theme: Donald Trump managed to cleave significant union support away from the Democrats. “Donald Trump Got Reagan-Like Support from Union Households,” ran one typical headline; “It Looks Like Donald Trump Did Really Well With Union Households,” declared another. But what if these prognoses have it […]

Labor and Politics: Learning the Right Lessons from 2016

Nov 23, 2016 Jake Rosenfeld

This post is part of a series on Labor in the Trump Years. A presidential loss, especially an unexpected one, produces no shortage of scapegoating and second-guessing among activists and insiders of the defeated party. In this regard, the otherwise unprecedented 2016 election proved utterly normal. The emerging narrative pins the Clinton campaign’s shocking Electoral College […]

French Lessons: Why Labor and Laborism Need One Another

Jul 7, 2016 Jake Rosenfeld

The 2008 election produced the only institutional arrangement seemingly able to break legislative logjams in our age of polarization: consolidated party control over the entire federal government, alongside a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Union leaders and their allies saw an opening for significant labor law reform, a goal that had proved elusive for over […]

Pay Transparency at Work: The Great Equalizer?

Mar 1, 2016 Jake Rosenfeld

“Pay secrecy fosters discrimination and we should not tolerate it.” So declared President Obama in the Spring of 2014 upon signing an executive order ratcheting up punishments for federal contractors that maintain pay secrecy policies. Two years on and legislators in dozens of states are following the President’s lead by introducing policies that would crack […]

Friedrichs Versus Wisconsin’s Act 10: A Brief Primer

Jan 13, 2016 Jake Rosenfeld

This week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Friedrichs case, and unions and their supporters are bracing for the worst. The legal case in support of the Abood precedent has been persuasively defended by Benjamin Sachs, Katherine Fisk, and Andrew Strom on this blog. Alas, if the oral arguments provide a guide, a […]

Wealth Inequality and the Labor Movement: What’s the Connection?

Dec 7, 2015 Jake Rosenfeld

Tuesday’s report from the Institute for Policy Studies exposes an enormous concentration of wealth among America’s elite. Among the shocking findings: The country’s wealthiest 20 people have a combined worth equal to the bottom half of the U.S. population, and the wealthiest 100 households hold as much wealth as the entire African-American population – all […]

Guest Post: Public Sector Unions and the Poor

Jul 22, 2014 Jake Rosenfeld

Jake Rosenfeld is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington and Co-Director of the Scholars Strategy Network Northwest. His book on the consequences of labor union decline, What Unions No Longer Do, is available from Harvard University Press. This post is the next in a series on progressives and public sector unions—the entire series is […]

Guest Post: Public Sector Unions and the Public Interest–Rosenfeld Responds

Jul 17, 2014 Jake Rosenfeld

Jake Rosenfeld is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington and Co-Director of the Scholars Strategy Network Northwest. His book on the consequences of labor union decline, What Unions No Longer Do, is available from Harvard University Press. This is his response to Dmitri Mehlhorn’s post, responding to Professor Rosenfeld’s reply to Mr. Mehlhorn’s […]

Guest Post: The Importance of Public Sector Unions

Jul 14, 2014 Jake Rosenfeld

Jake Rosenfeld is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington and Co-Director of the Scholars Strategy Network Northwest. His book on the consequences of labor union decline, What Unions No Longer Do, is available from Harvard University Press. Dmitri Mehlhorn’s provocative article, “Why Progressives Shouldn’t Support Public Workers Unions,” deserves points for creativity. It is […]

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OnLabor

Law. Workers. Organizing.

OnLabor is a blog devoted to workers, unions, and their politics. We interpret our subject broadly to include the current crisis in the traditional union movement (why union decline is happening and what it means for our society); the new and contested forms of worker organization that are filling the labor union gap; how work ought to be structured and managed; how workers ought to be represented and compensated; and the appropriate role of government — all three branches — in each of these issues.

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The Democrats: Unmoored, and Unable to Compete

The Union Household Vote Revisited

Labor and Politics: Learning the Right Lessons from 2016

French Lessons: Why Labor and Laborism Need One Another

Pay Transparency at Work: The Great Equalizer?

Friedrichs Versus Wisconsin’s Act 10: A Brief Primer

Wealth Inequality and the Labor Movement: What’s the Connection?

Guest Post: Public Sector Unions and the Poor

Guest Post: Public Sector Unions and the Public Interest–Rosenfeld Responds

Guest Post: The Importance of Public Sector Unions