Unions and Legitimacy

Legitimacy is vital to unions. Without it, they lose political and ideological support, members, and access to funds. Gary Chaison and Barbara Bigelow use the concept of legitimacy as a lens through which to understand the steady decline in union size and influence and to suggest new strategies for union revitalization.Chaison and Bigelow relate legitimacy to five case studies: the UPS strike, the organization of clerical workers at Harvard, the AFL-CIO associate membership campaign, the fight against NAFTA, and the Massachusetts Nurses Association Campaign for Safe Care. The cases show the need for unions to move beyond pragmatic concerns and link their activities to the broader interests of their constituencies, demonstrating not only that they offer something tangible in return for support (pragmatic legitimacy) but also that they are doing the right thing (moral legitimacy).Chaison and Bigelow's work has practical implications for the management of unions' core activities—organizing, collective bargaining, and political action.

This book aims to construct a new prism through which to analyze the behavior and fate of unions. While it deals almost exclusively with the situation of U.S. unions and their place in American society, the authors advance the view that their work can act as analytical tool for union movements in other countries.... Chaison and Bigelow provide us with another way of looking at the issue of union renewal., Using the concept of legitimacy as a lens to review the steady decline in union size and influence, this volume suggests new ways to reverse the trend., Gary Chaison and Barbara Bigelow present a fresh and lucid discussion of legitimacy as it applies to labor unions and their role in society. The authors note that unions can attain legitimacy even though their efforts in a particular situation fail. They also make the point that successful pragmatic efforts often have a moral dimension as well., The authors articulate a promising framework for assessing union behavior and understanding its effects on union fortunes.... Recommended for public and academic library collections., The book is a concise... overview of recent labor activism, realistic in its recognition of obstacles to union resurgence.

Gary Chaison is Professor of Industrial Relations at Clark University. His previous books include Union Mergers in Hard Times: The View from Five Countries, from Cornell. Barbara Bigelow is Professor of Management at Clark University and coeditor of Health Care Management Review.