Labor Movements and Unions
Labor movements are collective activities by wage and salaried workers in market societies to improve their economic, social, and political status. The main manifestations of such movements are labor unions and political parties, but sometimes they include producer and consumer cooperatives; credit unions; newspapers; and educational, welfare, cultural, and recreational organizations. Labor movements and unions need sociological analysis because they are integral parts of two major and related institutions of society, the economy and polity. Apart from bringing about changes in these institutions, they are the main vehicles for mobilizing the class interests of wage and salaried employees. No other social science discipline offers such a broad perspective of study.
Yet, in the United States since the inception of sociology, labor movements have received surprisingly little attention. From their founding up to 1999, three main journals—The American Journal of Sociology, The American Sociological Review, and Social Forces—together representing 219 years of publication, published only sixty-three articles whose titles mention labor movements, unions, or strikes. American sociological research on the topic has fluctuated with labor's fortunes. As union membership grew from 1940 to 1960, research expanded and then lagged, with falling membership in the 1970s. The more rapid decline of labor since 1980 has recently stimulated research on the causes.
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