Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Driven by economic globalization, the American trade unions in the 1980s experienced a sharp decline in membership and political influence, part and parcel of a broader impoverishment of American workers and a rapidly growing polarization of wealth. Unions responded to this decline by integrating themselves more closely with major corporate concerns and the Democratic Party, beginning with the bailout of the Chrysler Corporation in 1979 with the cooperation of the United Auto Workers (UAW). Using media accounts of major strikes in the 1980s as well as secondary literature from several fields, this paper (1) demonstrates empirically the decline of the unions, (2) draws out its connection with globalization, and (3) argues that, in the process, the period sets off a transformation of the basic political economy of industrial relations in the U.S.