Labor in the US – Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
SOC2-5b-Thu2
Mark Erlich
This course will take place virtually on Zoom. Participation in this course requires a device (ideally a computer or tablet, rather than a cell phone) with a camera and microphone in good working order and basic familiarity with using Zoom and accessing email
October 24 - November 21
The 2023 annual Gallup poll showed a 67% approval for labor yet private sector unionism is at an all-time low. Are the organizing drives by the UAW and at Starbucks and Amazon a harbinger of labor revival or an anomaly? The first part of this course will look at the past, present, and future of unions and work in general. In the late 19th century, unions established a presence in our political and economic life, facing constant violence and opposition. Workers organized on an unprecedented scale in the 1930s, leading to a long period of prosperity and labor peace in the post WWII era. Millions of Americans entered the middle class and established organized labor as a vehicle for social mobility.
In the late 1970s and 1980s the business community, supported by an emerging right-wing political opposition, launched an assault on union influence and drove an agenda that diminished the percentage of American workers in unions from 35% to 10%. Globalization and the fissuring of the economy also contributed to labor’s decline. There are signs of creative forms of organizing in the changing workforce – among low-waged workers, women and workers of color, and workers in the new “innovation economy.” The last two sessions will focus on the increasingly precarious conditions at work, the gig economy, some of the new forms of organizing, and whether organized labor can address fundamental issues of extreme income inequality and global corporate power. I expect to draw on the students’ work experiences as we cover events during their lifetimes.
More lecture than facilitated discussion.
Beaten Down, Worked Up by Steven Greenhouse ISBN9781101872796.
1 hour per week
Mark Erlich is a Wertheim Fellow at the Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program after retiring as Executive Secretary-Treasurer (EST) of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters in 2017. In addition to his career in the trades and the labor movement, Erlich has written and lectured extensively on labor issues. He is the author of The Way We Build: Restoring Dignity to Construction Work (2023) as well as two other books and dozens of essays, articles, and op-eds on labor history, politics, and contemporary union issues.