Unions and Legitimacy

Gary Chaison is Professor of Industrial Relations at Clark University. His previous books include Union Mergers in Hard Times: The View from Five Countries, from Cornell. Barbara Bigelow is Professor of Management at Clark University and coeditor of Health Care Management Review.

This book aims to construct a new prism through which to analyze the behavior and fate of unions. While it deals almost exclusively with the situation of U.S. unions and their place in American society, the authors advance the view that their work can act as analytical tool for union movements in other countries.... Chaison and Bigelow provide us with another way of looking at the issue of union renewal.- Michael Crosby (Journal of Industrial Relations) Gary Chaison and Barbara Bigelow present a fresh and lucid discussion of legitimacy as it applies to labor unions and their role in society. The authors note that unions can attain legitimacy even though their efforts in a particular situation fail. They also make the point that successful pragmatic efforts often have a moral dimension as well.- Joy K. Reynolds (Monthly Labor Review) The authors articulate a promising framework for assessing union behavior and understanding its effects on union fortunes.... Recommended for public and academic library collections.(Choice) The book is a concise... overview of recent labor activism, realistic in its recognition of obstacles to union resurgence.- Rich Barlow (Boston Globe) Using the concept of legitimacy as a lens to review the steady decline in union size and influence, this volume suggests new ways to reverse the trend.(Business Horizons)