Labor Law Reform in a World of Competitive Product Markets
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Description
U.S. private sector unionism is in decline. From a high watermark in 1953 of around 35.7% of the private nonagricultural workforce, union membership has fallen to 11.5% and unions represent under 13% of private sector workers.' Absent reform of the labor relations system, the trend is clear. Unions will remain a significant force in government employment, big-city commercial construction, rail and air transportation, and certain shrinking mining and manufacturing industries. Aside from these pockets of unionism, however, workplace-based representation of the interests of working people will become a distinctly marginal phenomenon in our society. The falling fortunes of the organized labor movement do not, standing alone, establish a case for reform of existing arrangements. However, whatever our views of unions, collective bargaining, strikes, and the like, the prospect of a virtual disappearance in private firms of mechanisms for employees to have a say in the terms and conditions of their employment should be a cause for public concern. With a new labor-friendly administration in Washington, and the appointment of the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations (chaired by former U.S. Secretary of Labor John T. Dunlop), a window of opportunity has opened to revisit basic ground rules. Such openings are rare in our political history and should not be squandered. In shaping the reform agenda, we need to squarely confront the underlying causes of labor's decline.
Source Publication
The Legal Future of Employee Representation
Source Editors/Authors
Matthew W. Finkin
Publication Date
1994
Recommended Citation
Estreicher, Samuel, "Labor Law Reform in a World of Competitive Product Markets" (1994). Faculty Chapters. 476.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/476
