Starting in the 1980s, US employers revived aggressive action against unions. Employers’ public opposition to unions yielded a scholarly consensus that US employers actively and consistently discriminate against union supporters. However, evidence for widespread employer anti-union discrimination is based mainly on employer reactions to rare union organizing campaigns. To measure baseline or preventive anti-union discrimination, the authors field the first ever US-based résumé correspondence study of employer responses to union supporter applicants. Focus is on entry-level, non-college degree jobs and findings show no difference in employer callback rates for union supporter applicants relative to non-union applicants. Drawing on interviews and survey data, the authors suggest that union weakness itself may have hollowed preventive employer discrimination against union supporters.
AganAmandaStarrSonja. 2017. Ban the box, criminal records, and racial discrimination: A field experiment. Quarterly Journal of Economics133: 191–235.
2.
AmeriMasonSchurLisaAdyaMeeraBentleyF. ScottMcKayPatrickKruseDouglas. 2018. The disability employment puzzle: A field experiment on employer hiring behavior. ILR Review71(2): 329–64.
3.
BaertStijn. 2018. Hiring discrimination: An overview of (almost) all correspondence experiments since 2005. In GaddisS. Michael (Ed.), Audit Studies: Behind the Scenes with Theory, Method, and Nuance, pp. 63–77. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International.
4.
BaertStijnOmeyEddy. 2015. Hiring discrimination against pro-union applicants: The role of union density and firm size. De Economist163(3): 263–80.
5.
BronfenbrennerKate. 2009. No holds barred—The intensification of employer opposition to organizing. EPI Report, Briefing Paper #235, May20. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute.
6.
BurnsJanet. 2018. Report: Amazon’s anti-union training is revealed in leaked video. Forbes, September27.
7.
CarnevaleAnthony P.JayasunderaTamaraRepnikovDmitri. 2014. Understanding online job ads data. Technical Report. Washington, DC: Georgetown University, Center on Education and the Workforce.
8.
ClawsonDan. 1980. Bureaucracy and the Labor Process: The Transformation of U.S. Industry, 1860–1920. New York: Monthly Review Press.
9.
CorrellShelley J.BenardStephenPaikIn. 2007. Getting a job: Is there a motherhood penalty?American Journal of Sociology112(5): 1297–339.
10.
DaroliaRajeevKoedelCoryMartorellPacoWilsonKatiePerez-ArceFrancisco. 2016. Race and gender effects on employer interest in job applicants: New evidence from a resume field experiment. Applied Economics Letters23(12): 853–56.
11.
DobbinFrankSuttonJohn R.1998. The strength of a weak state: The rights revolution and the rise of human resources management divisions. American Journal of Sociology104(2): 441–76.
12.
FarberHenry S.SilvermanDanvon WachterTill. 2016. Determinants of callbacks to job applications: An audit study. American Economic Review106(5): 314–18.
13.
FergusonJohn-Paul. 2008. The eyes of the needles: A sequential model of union organizing drives, 1999–2004. Industrial and Labor Relations Review62(1): 3–21.
14.
RosemaryFeurerPearsonChad (Eds.). 2017. Against Labor: How U.S. Employers Organized to Defeat Union Activism. Working Class in American History Series. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
15.
FoulkesFred K.1980. Personnel Policies in Large Nonunion Companies. Hoboken, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
16.
FrancoAnnieMalhotraNeilSimonovitsGabor. 2014. Publication bias in the social sciences: Unlocking the file drawer. Science345(6203): 1502–505.
17.
GaddisS. Michael. 2015. Discrimination in the credential society: An audit study of race and college selectivity in the labor market. Social Forces93(4): 1451–79.
18.
GaddisS. Michael. 2017. How Black are Lakisha and Jamal? Racial perceptions from names used in correspondence audit studies. Sociological Science 4(September): 469–89.
19.
GreenhouseSteven. 2015. How Walmart persuades its workers not to unionize. The Atlantic, June8.
20.
HackerJacob S.PiersonPaul. 2010. Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. New York: Simon & Schuster.
21.
HarcourtMarkLamHelenWoodGeoffrey. 2014. US union revival, minority unionism and inter-union conflict. Journal of Industrial Relations56(5): 653–71.
22.
Hertel-FernandezAlexanderNaiduSureshReichAdam. 2019. Do teacher strikes make parents pro- or anti-labor? The effects of labor unrest on mass attitudes. Working Paper, October. Washington, DC: Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
23.
HipesCrosbyLucasJeffreyPhelanJo C.WhiteRichard C.2016. The stigma of mental illness in the labor market. Social Science Research56(March): 16–25.
24.
HirschBarry T.2008. Sluggish institutions in a dynamic world: Can unions and industrial competition coexist?Journal of Economic Perspectives22(1): 153–76.
25.
HirschBarry T.MacphersonDavid A.2020. Union Membership and Coverage Database from the CPS. Online database. Accessed at https://www.unionstats.com.
26.
JacobySanford M.1997. Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since the New Deal. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
27.
JacobySanford M.2004. Employing Bureaucracy: Managers, Unions, and the Transformation of Work in the 20th Century. Revised ed. Series in Organization and Management. New York: Psychology Press, an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group.
28.
KangSonia K.DeCellesKatherine A.TilcsikAndrásJunSora. 2016. Whitened résumés: Race and self-presentation in the labor market. Administrative Science Quarterly61(3): 469–502.
29.
KimeldorfHoward. 1988. Reds or Rackets? The Making of Radical and Conservative Unions on the Waterfront. Berkeley: University of California Press.
30.
KochanThomas A.KatzHarry C.McKersieRobert B.1994. The Transformation of American Industrial Relations, 2nd ed.Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press.
31.
KochanThomas A.McKersieRobert B.ChalykoffJohn. 1986. The effects of corporate strategy and workplace innovations on union representation. Industrial and Labor Relations Review39(4): 487–501.
32.
LeapTerry L.HendrixWilliam H.CantrellR. StephenTaylorG. Stephen. 1990. Discrimination against prounion job applicants. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society29(3): 469–78.
33.
LoganJohn. 2006. The union avoidance industry in the United States. British Journal of Industrial Relations44(4): 651–75.
34.
LussierRobert N.HendonJohn R.2017. Human Resource Management: Functions, Applications, and Skill Development. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
35.
McCartinJoseph A.2011. Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America. New York: Oxford University Press USA.
36.
MeyerDavid S.StaggenborgSuzanne. 1996. Movements, countermovements, and the structure of political opportunity. American Journal of Sociology101(6): 1628–60.
37.
MilkmanRuth. 1991. Japan’s California Factories: Labor Relations and Economic Globalization. Monograph and research series. Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California, Los Angeles.
MobasseriSanaz. 2019. Race, place, and crime: How violent crime events affect employment discrimination. American Journal of Sociology125(1): 63–104.
40.
NeumarkDavidBurnIanButtonPatrick. 2019. Is it harder for older workers to find jobs? New and improved evidence from a field experiment. Journal of Political Economy127(2): 922–70.
41.
NunleyJohn M.PughAdamRomeroNicholasSealsR. Alan. 2015. Racial discrimination in the labor market for recent college graduates: Evidence from a field experiment. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy15(3): 1093–125.
42.
OreopoulosPhilip. 2011. Why do skilled immigrants struggle in the labor market? A field experiment with thirteen thousand resumes. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy3(4): 148–71.
43.
OstermanPaul. 2020. Creating Good Jobs: An Industry-Based Strategy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
44.
PedullaDavid S.2016. Penalized or protected? Gender and the consequences of nonstandard and mismatched employment histories. American Sociological Review81(2): 262–89.
45.
PedullaDavid S.2018. How race and unemployment shape labor market opportunities: Additive, amplified, or muted effects?Social Forces96(4): 1477–506.
46.
PhillipsDerek L.ClancyKevin J.1972. Some effects of “social desirability” in survey studies. American Journal of Sociology77(5): 921–40.
47.
QuadlinNatasha. 2018. The mark of a woman’s record: Gender and academic performance in hiring. American Sociological Review83(2): 331–60.
48.
RiveraLauren A.TilcsikAndrás. 2016. Class advantage, commitment penalty: The gendered effect of social class signals in an elite labor market. American Sociological Review81(6): 1097–131.
49.
Rogers Electric, Inc. 2006. 346 N.L.R.B. 508 (N.L.R.B-BD 2006).
50.
RosenfeldJake. 2006. Desperate measures: Strikes and wages in post-Accord America. Social Forces85(1): 235–65.
51.
SaltzmanGregory M.1995. Job applicant screening by a Japanese transplant: A union-avoidance tactic. Industrial and Labor Relations Review49(1): 88–104.
52.
SchnellJohn F.GrammCynthia L.1994. The empirical relations between employers’ striker replacement strategies and strike duration. Industrial and Labor Relations Review47(2):189–206.
53.
SmithRobert M.2003. From Blackjacks to Briefcases: A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States. Athens: Ohio University Press.
54.
SouleSarah A.OlzakSusan. 2004. When do movements matter? The politics of contingency and the Equal Rights Amendment. American Sociological Review69(4): 473–97.
55.
TilcsikAndrás. 2011. Pride and prejudice: Employment discrimination against openly gay men in the United States. American Journal of Sociology117(2): 586–626.
WeisshaarKatherine. 2018. From opt out to blocked out: The challenges for labor market re-entry after family-related employment lapses. American Sociological Review83(1): 34–60.
58.
WesternBruceRosenfeldJake. 2011. Unions, norms, and the rise in U.S. wage inequality. American Sociological Review76(4): 513–37.
59.
WilmersNathan. 2018. Wage stagnation and buyer power: How buyer-supplier relations affect U.S. workers’ wages, 1978 to 2014. American Sociological Review83(2): 213–42.
60.
WilmersNathan. 2019. Solidarity within and across workplaces: How cross-workplace coordination affects earnings inequality. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences5(4): 190–215.
