Lois S. Gray

Adapting Union Administrative Practices to New Realities: Results of a Twenty-Year Longitudinal Study

Abstract This chapter reports the results of a 20-year longitudinal study of how American unions have adapted their internal administrative practices to meet the significant external challenges they face. In previous scholarly work, researchers have reported that the administrative practices of American unions were far more informal, ad hoc, and political than those of business, government, and other nonprofit organizations. The authors’ 2010 survey asked US-based national and international unions to provide data concerning their internal administrative practices. The results were compared with findings from similar surveys conducted in 1990 and 2000. The results of these surveys indicate a steady increase in unions’ adoption of more formal personnel policies, budget practices, strategic planning processes, and efforts to evaluate planned activities over the 20-year period studied. They also indicate that unions increasingly recruit individuals meeting college, technical, and professional qualifications. Taken together, the results suggest a recognition on the part of many unions that adapting their internal administrative practices to the new realities they face is a fundamental and a necessary part of any effort at organizational renewal.

Book Review: Women and Trade Unions: A Comparative Perspective

D the fact that women now constitute close to half the labour force in most industrialised countries, ‘quantitative increases in female labour force participation have not been matched by qualitative improvements; occupational segregation persists; the glass ceiling is cracked but not broken; pay inequity remains’ (ILO Survey of Practices in Member Countries in 1999). Noting that the role of trade unions is crucial to changing this universal state of gender disparity, the ILO reports that women throughout the world ‘join unions in fewer numbers than do men’ and ‘do not have proportional representation in union leadership’. In Women and Trade Unions, Jennifer Curtin, an Australian scholar, seeks to advance our understanding of various strategies which have been employed to effect a partnership between women workers and trade unions and to assess their effectiveness. She dedicates her book to Professor Alice Cook, an American scholar who pioneered in comparative studies of the struggle to achieve gender equality at work and in trade unions (see Women and Trade Unions in Eleven Industrialized Countries, 1984). For her study, Curtin selected Australia, Austria, Israel and Sweden on the basis of their perceived similarities: (i) ideological linkages between trade unions and left political parties, (ii) strong centralised labour confederations, and (iii) ‘corporatist’ institutional arrangements which involve trade unions in formulation and implementation of policies. The implicit assumption is that unions with left oriented ideologies are more likely to support gender equality and that those with links to power and policy making roles will be more successful in effecting change. It turns out that the four countries, despite their progressive social policy orientation, share histories of ‘protecting’ women from work outside the home, encouraging gender segregation at work, and discouraging female participation in unions. They have pursued separate paths in response to female activism in recent years reflecting distinctive histories and institutional constraints, which in practice, outweigh their perceived similarities. For example, building a Jewish homeland has been the principal focus of all institutions in Israel, including Histradrut, its trade union centre. Class and gender solidarity takes second place. Austria’s strong unions and left parties were wiped out during its Nazi period and a conservative post war consensus developed around productivity which eclipsed concern with equality. The Australian industrial and labour system, although coloured by its frontier history with male ‘mateship’ the predominant value, has placed increasing emphasis on equal treatment in the workplace, a value which has been implemented in recent years through heavy government intervention in its wage structure (see, for instance, a 1998 arbitration decision which