This response to “When the Workplace is a Home: A Dialogue on the Complexities of Power, Care, and Human Rights for Domestic Workers” examines worker responses to the care crisis as exacerbated by the pandemic. We draw upon transcripts of 2023 focus groups of cleaners, nannies, and home attendants to probe the meaning of regulation and rights. Worker organizations, we argue, provide a framework and a space for those laboring in home workplaces to end their isolation, speak out, and support each other. Their voices are necessary, but shifts in understandings of the home as a workplace must also occur.
Historically, voting in the National Labor Relations Board representation elections has been conducted “in-person” at designated election sites, with “mail-balloting” used under limited circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly changed this dynamic, as mail-balloting became widely used across the country. The adoption of mail balloting has been controversial. This article examines this issue using data on 5981 elections for labor union representation conducted by the U.S. National Labor Relations Board, both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Our sample, which includes information about labor elections conducted by mail and in-person, allows us to analyze how election modality impacted voter participation and election outcomes. Our analyses show that there is a lower voter participation rate among workers in mail ballot elections, but that unions receive a larger share of votes in said elections. We discuss the implications of these results, drawing primarily from the industrial relations literature.
Using Current Population Survey (CPS) data, I conduct an inductive exploration of the change in immiseration for working persons in the United States, 2003 to 2025. Four measures are tracked: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit usage, Medicare usage, workplace pension non-participation, and underemployment. Trends for each measure are decomposed along five occupation-based class groupings. Data patterns reveal intensified immiseration over the period for all groups, which is confirmed by logit regression analyses. Lower-class occupations fared worse overall; however, there is a trend toward class convergence on food insecurity and workplace pension non-participation. Potential causes and implications for policy and electoral politics are discussed.
Using the employed subsample of a broader Ontario-wide online survey, this article compares union and non-union experiences of COVID-19 safety in 2020. We examine infection control, paid time off, anxiety, and awareness of union advocacy, using this non-probability sample for analytic generalization rather than population estimates. In this sample, union-covered respondents more often reported visible ventilation and filtration, referenced joint committees or designated representatives in their accounts, and reported more usable paid sick leave, while stress and anxiety were high in both groups, and differences by union coverage were small within this sample. We discuss what these patterns suggest for unions, employers, and policy as temporary COVID-19 leave has ended and long-term protections are debated.
Migrant rights and justice movements in Canada have arisen within an increasingly hostile political and discursive environment marked by restrictive immigration policies, precarious labor regimes, and the racialized marginalization of migrant communities. Yet these conditions have also generated various forms of collective resistance that contest the exclusionary boundaries of citizenship, labor rights, and national belonging. Drawing on a case study of a migrant domestic workers’ organization and Migrant Spring rallies in Vancouver, this article examines how migrant workers and their allies organize under precarious conditions. The analysis shows that migrant activists transform structural marginalization into symbolic power through public protests, intersectional coalition-building, and media interventions. By challenging nationalist narratives that frame migrants as disposable labor or social burdens, these movements articulate a more inclusive and transformative vision of political belonging and social change.
Total Worker Health ® (TWH) represents a novel approach to occupational health and safety, emphasizing the integration of workplace health promotion and traditional safety practices. This article presents the design and implementation of the Healthy Workplace Participatory Program for Unions and Worker Organizations, which utilizes a participatory approach to address worker health and safety concerns within unionized settings. Through a comprehensive examination of program methodologies and outcomes, this study elucidates the role of participatory approaches in promoting worker resilience and well-being amid evolving workplace challenges.
The successful union organizing drive and first contract campaign of the tenure track faculty at Illinois State University (ISU) came after a string of unsuccessful organizing campaigns which took place circa 1998 to 2018. After the tenure track faculty of four Illinois public universities unionized during the 2010s, the United Faculty Illinois State University's (UFISU) successful organizing campaign initially emerged out of discussions regarding COVID-19 virus health and safety concerns prior to the delivery of classes during the 2020 fall semester. After more than two years of one-on-one and small group discussions among union rank and file organizers, union staff and faculty members, UFISU filed for and obtained union certification on January 8, 2024, with a first contract negotiated on April 4, 2025. The purpose of this article is to present and discuss the lessons that have been learned from the UFISU union organizing drive and the first contract campaign to help college/university faculty obtain union certification and negotiate a strong first contract. The paper also includes a discussion of the importance of utilizing Jane McAlevey's whole worker organizing during union organizing drives and contract campaigns.
Which working conditions shape workers’ assessment of the quality of their job or employment? Using a primary dataset ( N = 3,784), from a unique survey, we examine the association between a comprehensive range of working conditions and workers’ evaluations of the quality of their own job and employment situation. We create ten dimensions of job quality, distinguishing broadly between objective and subjective determinants. We estimate the relative contribution of each dimension and its several components. Regression results indicate that while objective factors like compensation play a role, a large proportion of the variation in perceived job quality stems from subjective aspects, including job security, meaningfulness of work, and workplace relationships. These findings highlight the importance of non-monetary factors in shaping workers’ job quality, most of which could be improved at least indirectly via practices and policies.
This theoretical essay offers a critical analysis of competency-based management through the lens of the human capital theory, situating these organizational practices within broader neoliberal rationalities. The study begins with the recognition that the discourse of competencies, widely disseminated in the field of human resource management, is grounded in economic assumptions that equate individual value withi the capacity to produce results based on knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Within this framework, the essay examines how competency-based management functions not merely as a development technique, but as a technology of power that shapes subjectivities aligned with the demands for performance, productivity, and self-responsibility. Drawing on Michel Foucault's contributions on discourse, biopolitics, and governmentality, the article argues that the contemporary worker is interpellated as an enterprise-self, a subject who must continuously investing in their human capital and optimise their competencies. This process ultimately transforms individuals into “machine-competence”, normalizing self-exploitation and shiffing the costs of training and the risks of the economic system onto workers themselves. At the same time, it naturalizes social exclusion by framing unemployment or marginalization as personal “incompetence.” By highlighting the subjective and social consequences of such managerial practices, this essay contributes to a critical understanding of human resource management and call for reflection on the ethical and political limits of performance centered discurse in contemporary organizational.
Union organizing has swept U.S. campuses as graduate assistants formed a common identity as university employees. In this article, theories and empirical evidence relevant to worker identity formation are used as a basis for empirical research. The hypothesis that deteriorating career prospects have brought employee identity to the fore receives support from survey data. The traditional socialization process whereby graduate students become academic scholars and researchers is undergoing partial disintegration with the rise of more contingent employment in academia. Many graduate students continue to identify as apprentices, particularly those who receive strong support from faculty advisors, but this need not be a barrier to simultaneous identity as a worker in need of union representation.
When a corporation files for bankruptcy, it is usually bad news for workers. That is because most corporations are usually looking to slash wages or seek other concessions from workers. Unions that fight back risk having the bankrupt corporation seek judicial approval to set aside their collective bargaining agreement. The news is not much better for public sector workers when a government goes into bankruptcy because the law forces governments to prioritize debt payments to financial creditors over workers. Certain funds, often called “vulture funds,” opportunistically purchased distressed governmental debt such as Puerto Rico's cheaply and then used the bankruptcy process to extract profits. What happened in Puerto Rico's bankruptcy challenged that convention. This article explains how unions learned from previous engagements to engage their membership, organize with public allies, and use the bankruptcy code to bargain for the common good to prevent pension cuts and protect their collective bargaining agreements.
This study examines the association between unionization, working conditions, and mental health among hospital healthcare workers. Survey data were collected from 1,466 unionized and non-unionized hospital workers in a city in Western Pennsylvania. Using propensity score matching to control for confounding factors, we found that unionization is significantly associated with predictable raises, not holding multiple jobs, not working overtime due to pressure, access to dental insurance and retirement programs, receiving higher raises, experiencing less workplace harassment. Additionally, unionization is linked to a lower likelihood of screening positive for posttraumatic stress disorder and lower perceived stress levels.
Pension funds for unionized workers increasingly invest with private equity asset managers. In this paper, we provide an overview of the private equity business model and the ways it can both negatively impact workers and their communities and create risks for pension funds' investment returns. Drawing on a case study of the 2023-2024 hotel workers' strike in Southern California, we also show how pension fund leaders can and increasingly are taking steps to mitigate the risks posed by private equity managers. We argue that such measures are not only permitted but mandated by trustees' fiduciary duty to safeguard beneficiaries' interests when making investment decisions.
This research explores how changes in the educational attainment of American union members influence their partisanship, racial resentment, and support for social welfare. While the decline in union membership in American society is well-documented, the shifts in education levels among union members and the resulting effects on their political views remain largely unexamined. The importance of these changes is examined in the context of Donald Trump's populist movement. This research addresses the question of whether American union members with lower levels of education continue to identify with the Democratic Party. This research also examines whether union membership leads to reduced racial resentment and support for social welfare policies as previous research indicates it has. Political views among union members vary significantly, heavily influenced by their level of educational attainment. This empirical research tests whether union membership prevents citizens from supporting right-wing populist party movements as prior theory maintains.
