Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Politics of Union Decline: Business Political Mobilization and Restrictive Labor Legislation, 1938-1958

尽管有相当多的社会科学研究与战后美国劳工运动的衰落有关，但人们对帮助塑造美国劳工政策的政治斗争以及在过去半个世纪持续存在的工会化的地理和行业模式知之甚少。这项研究考虑了1938年至1958年期间各州限制性劳动立法的激增，包括激烈竞争的工作权法，这些法律削弱了劳工的财务和组织能力。我们质疑，在一个前所未有的增长和人数优势时期，工人运动如何遭受如此一连串的政治失败。我们认为，反劳工的政治活动，工会的反应，以及它的跨时间和空间的展开是最好的政治过程框架内理解。 因此，分析，这期间从国家一级的定量数据和深入的档案材料，从特定的情况下，考虑如何重要的尺寸的雇主和工会的实力，以及不同的国家结构，这些竞争群体面临的，可能会影响政策的制定。 事件历史的方法首先使用，以确定更一般的过程，导致所有国家的限制性劳动立法。 定性事件结构分析（ESA），然后用来检查三个具体的反劳工运动的动员范围的代表，成功和失败，在我们感兴趣的时期。 这一比较战略将使我们能够系统地处理当地行为者试图改变政策的复杂机制和因果联系。 再加上反劳工活动的定量事件历史模型，这些分析将（1）提高我们对美国劳工历史上一个重要而未被充分研究的时期的理解，（2）说话和告知国家的社会学概念，（3）通过考虑劳工运动的政治解体和紧缩，扩展了关于新政政策形成的大量文献。这是那个时代的历史性成就。通过系统地分析不同时间和社会政治背景下的多个政策结果，我们还解决了社会运动参与者更普遍地影响政治进程的能力。这种方法及其产生的理解将为现有的关于政策结果和社会运动过程的社会科学观点提供信息。 它还将服务于向学生和更广泛的公众介绍美国工会的历史和与之相关的政治动态。

Despite considerable social science research pertaining to the decline of the American labor movement in the postwar era, relatively little is known about the political struggles that helped shape U.S. labor policy and the geographic and industrial patterns of unionization that have persisted over the last half century. This research considers the surge of restrictive labor legislation that spread across states between 1938 and 1958, including intensely contested Right-to-Work laws that diminished labor's financial and organizational capacity. We question how the labor movement, during a period of unparalleled growth and numerical strength, suffered such a string of political defeats. We suggest that anti-labor political activity, union response, and its unfolding across time and space are best understood within a political process framework. Consequently, analyses, which draw from state-level quantitative data over the period and in-depth archival material from particular cases, consider how important dimensions of employer and union strength, and the varying state structures these contending groups face, may influence policy enactment. Event history methods are first used in order to identify more general processes leading to restrictive labor legislation across all states. Qualitative event structure analysis (ESA) is then used to examine three specific anti-labor campaigns that are representative of the range of mobilization, and successes and defeats, during our period of interest. This comparative strategy will enable us to systematically address the complex mechanisms and causal linkages through which local actors attempt to alter policy. Coupled with the quantitative event history modeling of anti-labor activity, these analyses will (1) improve our understanding of an important and understudied period in American labor history, (2) speak to and inform sociological conceptions of the state, and (3) extend the substantial literature on new deal policy formation by considering the political unraveling and retrenchment of the labor movement=s historic legislative gains of that era. By systematically analyzing multiple policy outcomes across varying temporal and sociopolitical contexts, we also address the ability of social movement actors to influence the political process more generally. This approach, and the understanding it will generate, will be informative to existing social science perspectives on policy outcomes and social movement processes. It will also serve the purposes of informing students and a more general public about the history of, and political dynamics associated with, labor unions in the U.S.