UC Berkeley

In this dissertation, I examine whether labor unions politically influence their members, how union members constrain union leaders, and how workers want their workplaces to be structured. The first paper challenges a longstanding assumption in American politics: that is, labor unions transform union members' political behavior, making them more liberal and participatory. Using panel studies ranging from the 1950s to the present, I find little evidence for this political effect. The second paper explores the mechanisms behind this lack of political effect by focusing on union leaders. I link administrative data from over 200,000 unique union officers to the voter file. I find that local union leaders have become less Democratic as rank-and-file members have shifted away from the party, a reflection of the democratic institutional design of unions at the local level. Members may constrain their leaders from engaging in as much pro-Democratic politics as we might have expected. The final paper uses a conjoint survey and a survey experiment to investigate whether Americans want more voice in their workplaces. My co-author and I show that Americans want more democratic workplaces and that they are willing to forgo substantial wages in exchange for more say over how their workplaces are governed. Together, these papers show how workers increasingly constrain labor unions from working with their traditional ally, the Democratic Party, while still wanting more power in the workplace.