Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu; Sat,  1 Aug 1998 14:57:57 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 15:01:00 -0400
From: Dan Clawson <clawson@sadri.umass.edu>
Subject: ASA  labor  section "vision statement"
To: Labor Research and Action Project <Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu>
Here is the draft "vision statement" for a proposed American Sociological
Association section on Labor and Labor Movements.  I have also posted
another message, containing a call to join the section, and information on
how you can do so (by sending a message to Judy Stepan-Norris,
jstepann@uci.edu).  Discussion of any of the issues raised by this draft
statement is very welcome, but remember that if you join, don't hit reply
and send the news to the entire list; send a message only to
jstepann@uci.edu.

I hope we'll have a chance to revise this statement, but given the
compressed timetable, and the fact we will discuss this at the Sociology
Labor Network meeting at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday August 22, it'll be a
challenge to make changes before the meeting of the relevant ASA committee,
which I believe is the next day.

Dan Clawson

>
>VISION STATEMENT FOR PROPOSED SECTION
>ON LABOR AND LABOR MOVEMENTS
>
>     Sociologists have devoted surprisingly little attention to
>the labor movement.  A discipline centrally concerned with class,
>organizations, and social movements produces many more studies of
>welfare and the poor, despite the fact there are more people in
>union families than in poverty families.  (Some, of course, are
>in both).  Even left academics who study class or the labor
>process tend to neglect the importance of group processes of
>struggle (in practice, unions).  For economics, Freeman and
>Medoff found that the percentage "of articles in major economic
>journals treating trade unionism dropped from 9.2 percent in the
>1940s to 5.1 percent in the 1950s to 0.4 percent in the early
>1970s" (in The Public Interest, 1979, 57:69).  We know of no
>comparable study for sociology, but would expect similar results.
>
>     Unions provide a laboratory for the analysis of a variety of
>social phenomena.  Thirteen million members are in AFL-CIO
>unions, including over 5 million women, 2 million African
>Americans, and 1 million Latino/as -- not to mention the workers
>in non-AFL-CIO unions, or the effects of unions on family
>members.  Consider just one example of the potential for
>developing sociological theory and insight:  Even at the present
>time, unions successfully organize more than 150,000 workers a
>year, and strikes involve around 300,000 members a year.  Many
>more workers are involved in unsuccessful organizing drives, or
>efforts that are aborted before they receive official notice.
>These organizing drives and strikes provide repeated instances of
>similar actions, and thus the opportunity to study the effects of
>variation by the strategy and tactics of the campaign, the nature
>of the employer's counter-campaign, or the characteristics of the
>firm, industry, workers, or sponsoring union.  A similar point
>could be made regarding a host of other issues.
>
>     A section on the Sociology of Labor and Labor Movements, as
>we understand it, is far broader than the study of unions per se.
>The labor movement, broadly conceived, includes not only unions,
>not only labor-like associations (such as the National Education
>Association or the American Association of University
>Professors), but also environmental groups that collectively
>contest workplace issues (various COSH, Committee on Occupational
>Safety and Health, groups; some struggles about company pollution
>or waste dumping), cultural productions centrally concerned with
>labor issues, actions centered around plant closings, corporate
>campaigns and boycotts such as current anti-sweatshop actions,
>community and religious coalitions addressing labor issues,
>student groups that mobilize around a grape boycott, and a host
>of other phenomena.
>
>     But even with this broader understanding of what we mean by
>the labor movement, we intend the section to cover more.  The
>"labor and" portion of our name indicates, for example, that we
>hope section activities will include such issues as:  What does
>the rise of part-time and contingent work mean for the ability to
>organize, for the kinds of movements that would be possible
>and/or necessary?  How does the post-war increase in the
>proportion of married women who work for pay change the sorts of
>goals workers would like to see addressed?  In what ways does
>globalization change the labor process, and what transformations
>does this imply would be needed to successfully contest corporate
>power?
>
>     It goes without saying that these examples are partial and
>selective indications of the full range of section activities.
>In some sense, every A.S.A. section overlaps with every other
>section.  In our case, the potential for overlap is probably
>greatest with the section on Collective Behavior and Social
>Movements at one end, and with the section on Work, Organizations
>and Occupations at the other.  But, whether it be viewed
>positively or as a drawback, our activities would connect with a
>host of other sections.  The Culture Section, for example, gave
>its "best book" award to Rick Fantasia's Cultures of Solidarity,
>a study of the labor movement; the Political Economy of the World
>System gave a recent best paper award to Beverly Silver's work on
>labor in the world system; Hector Delgado, recent chair of the
>Latino/a section, wrote a book on New Immigrants, Old Unions;
>members of the Political Sociology section might well wish to
>study the character of the political process inside the 70,000
>union locals in the United States; Marxist sociology is centrally
>concerned with our issues; and we could go on in this fashion for
>virtually every existing section.
>
>     One of the points we were asked to consider was the
>intellectual rationale for the section, and evidence that the
>area generates a substantial quantity of scholarly work.  It
>would be easy to list, and to discuss, enormous quantities of
>material, but we assume that this is not necessary.  Several
>issues of the Annual Review, for example, contain review articles
>on one or another aspect of the labor movement, and articles on
>section related topics are frequently found in the pages of ASR.
>
>     Finally, we want to address one non-issue that some might
>consider an issue, our relation to political practice.  This will
>be the third year in a row that a Sociology Labor Network has
>held a well-attended meeting at the A.S.A. convention to discuss
>labor related issues, and these have included both intellectual
>and political concerns.  (We also have an electronic listserv,
>Labor-Rap.)  The Sociology Labor Network discussions debated the
>issue of whether or not to form a section; those who decided to
>do so intend the section to be for intellectual purposes.  The
>Sociology Labor Network will continue to exist; our expectation
>is that most of the past participants will wish to be involved
>both in section activities and in the more political activities
>of the S.L.N., but some will be interested only in the section,
>and others only in the S.L.N.  Many groups that form sections may
>be beginning from scratch; we have a stable on-going existence, a
>history of past meetings and activities, 200 subscribers to our
>listserv, and the potential for substantial growth.
>
>
>
>
>--
>Dan Clawson                    413-545-5974 (work)
>Dept. of Sociology             413-545-0746 (fax)
>W-36 Machmer Hall              413-586-6235 (home)
>Univ. of Massachusetts
>Amherst MA 01003               email = clawson@sadri.umass.edu
>