A Working Group of the American Political Science Association

  
 

The Labor Project was launched at the 2004 American Political Science Association's annual meeting. Our aim is to harness the efforts of a working group of political scientists to encourage the study and research of labor issues and to promote labor research to the public at large particularly in relation to pressing policy issues.

We thank The Caucus for New Political Science, of which the Labor Project is an affiliated group, for its continued support of this project and for providing web space, resources, and members.

The Labor Project Explained

The Labor Project is a related group of the American Political Science Association. Related groups promote teaching and research in political science, assist in the professional development of political scientists, and sponsor panels and roundtables at the APSA's Annual Meeting. The Labor Project stands committed to advancing those goals.

Since 2006, the Labor Project has helped organize a working group on labor and politics at the annual APSA conference. The working group consists of scholars who attend panels, poster sessions, and plenaries aligned with the the study of labor. (For more information, click here.) 

The theme of the 2008 APSA meeting “Categories and the Politics of Global Inequalities” is particularly relevant to labor research. We encourage political scientists and other scholars to submit papers and organize panels for the conference on any theme related to labor, work, unions, and employment.  The Labor Project promotes diverse perspectives on these topics from any range of academic specialties including, but not limited to human rights, political economy, public policy, interest groups and social movements, comparative politics, state politics, immigration, theory, gender, race, ethnicity, history, and law.

Beyond the 2008 conference, we support continued research on relevant issues such as the role and influence of organized labor in U.S. elections, Iraq reconstruction, federal whistle-blowing laws, local and state U.S. political representation of workers, neoliberalism, guestworker programs, advocacy efforts, new union strategies, court decisions affecting work, federal policies regarding employment, changes in union politics, political organizations, and labor, work, and employment issues.

Additional information about the Labor Project is available at the "Background" link on the top left side of this page. If you have ideas for making this page more useful, we'd be delighted to hear your suggestions. Please contact Peter Francia at franciap@ecu.
 

LABOR PROJECT NEWS AND HIGHLIGHTS

Testifying before Congress

In February 2007, Professor Gordon Lafer was called to testify before the U.S. House of Representatives on the Employee Free Choice Act, which would require
employers to recognize unions whenever a majority of workers sign cards declaring their desire to represent themselves through that union.  The primary argument
against this bill, advanced by business lobbies, is that it
would rob workers of their right to a secret-ballot, democratic election under the National Labor Relations Board. 

Lafer's research — which has been supported by the American Rights at Work foundation — uses a political science framework to compare NLRB election procedures with those used to define "free and fair" elections in the American political tradition, showing how far short NLRB practice falls from traditional democratic standards. 
Lafer's testimony to the House Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions presented the key findings of this research.  

Gordon Lafer's report "Neither Free Nor Fair: The Subversion of Democracy Under National Labor Relations Board Elections" is available at the
American Rights at Work website

NEW LABOR RESEARCH

Assembling Women: The Feminization of Global Manufacturing (Cornell/ILR Press)
Teri Caraway, University of Minnesota

The Future of Organized Labor in American Politics (Columbia University Press)
Peter L. Francia, East Carolina University

Unexpected Power: Conflict and Change among Transnational Activists (Cornell/ILR Press)
Shareen Hertel, University of Connecticut

Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (Rowman & Littlefield)
Frances Fox Piven, CUNY Graduate Center

Building States without Society: European Union Enlargement and the Transfer of EU Social Policy to Poland and Hungary (Lexington Books)
Beate Sissenich, Indiana University