The fall and future of unionism in construction

Journal of Labor Research

Volumn 22, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 287-306

  Thieblot, A J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BALTIMORE   (United States)

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EID: 20144379027     PISSN: 01953613     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s12122-001-1035-6     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. Data for the construction work force in the early post-World War II years are found in Leo Troy and Neal Sheflin, UNION SOURCEBOOK (1985), at 3-15, Table 3-63,
2. and for more recent years in the monthly U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly publication, Employment and Earnings, typically in the January issue, but sometimes in February.
3. Considering that the South, traditionally inhospitable towards unions, was already a large and rapidly growing construction market in the war years, plus the fact that residential construction throughout the country (about a quarter of the total market) has always been done by smaller, nonunion firms, the extraordinary percentage of the industry work claimed for unions is hard to reconcile. From this distance, however, it's difficult to reconstruct the data, and little would be gained from doing it in any case. There is general agreement in all sources that construction was much more highly organized than the average, then.
4. At various times since World War II, the American Federation of Labor has been in competition with or has been partners with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). As a matter of notational convenience, "AFL" is used herein to refer to the federation in either state.
5. Seymour Martin Lipset and Ivan Katchanovski, The Future of Private Sector Unions in the U.S. 22 J. Lab. Res., 229-44 (Winter 2001).
6. Id., at 6-12.
7. Id., Table 9.
8. Herbert R. Northrup, OPEN SHOP CONSTRUCTION REVISITED 537 (1984).
9. "The Top 400 Contractors," Engineering News Record (May 22, 2000), 95-115.
10. Lipset and Katchanovski, supra n. 4, Table 10.
11. Samuel Cook, Pros and Cons of Operating Union and Nonunion Dual Shops, THE MCGRAW HILL CONSTRUCTION BUSINESS HANDBOOK (1984), lists 26 items for special attention of contractors contemplating operating double-breasted, ranging all the way from "vesting overall policy as well as day-to-day control of labor relations in the second firm's management" to "use different telephone lines."
12. By the late 1990s, 80-85 percent of Fluor Daniels's work reportedly had migrated to its open-shop arm.
13. "Roundtable Quits Construction," Engineering News Record (December 20, 1999), 12.
14. See, e.g., Marc Linder, WARS OF ATTRITION: VIETNAM, THE BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE AND THE DECLINE OF CONSTRUCTION UNIONS (1998).
15. For the times of passage or elimination of individual state prevailing wage laws, see Armand J. Thieblot, State Prevailing Wage Laws, An Assessment at the Start of 1995, a study prepared for Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc., 1995.