Includes bibliographical references (p. [227]-237) and index.
Contents
The union image in the age of industrialization -- The postwar offensive against organized labor -- The postwar boom and organized labor's lost legitimacy -- Union outsiders versus the Ix family : blue-collar workers and unions in the late twentieth century -- Antiunionism in the citadel of organized labor : organizing clerical workers at New York University -- The union that wasn't : organizing white-collar professionals.
Summary
"Union-Free America: Workers and Antiunion Culture confronts one of the most vexing questions with which labor activists and labor academics struggle: why is there so much opposition to organized labor in the United States? Scholars often point to powerful obstacles from employers or governmental policies, but Lawrence Richards offers a more complete picture of the causes for union decline in the postwar period by examining the attitudes of the workers themselves. Large numbers of American workers in the 1970s and 1980s told pollsters that they would vote against a union if an election were held at their place of employment, and Richards provides a provocative explanation for this hostility: a pervasive strain of antiunionism in American culture that has made many workers distrustful of organized labor."--BOOK JACKET.
