Profiles of union organizers from manufacturing and service unions

This study uses data on 229 organizers from eight unions to assess differences in characteristics of organizers employed by manufacturing and service unions. The results suggest that a new breed of organizer is entering the labor movement through service unions-organizers who are younger, more highly educated, more socially mobile, and have less experience in the union movement than organizers from manufacturing unions. This article is based on data collected for a dissertation written at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University. I gratefully acknowledge the support of committee members David Lewin, James Kuhn, Casey Ichniowski, and Seymour Spilerman of Columbia and Charles A. O’Reilly III of the University of California at Berkeley. I thank John Delaney for his many helpful insights and suggestions during the course of my research and Shannon Ratcliff and Rick Fuentes for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. This research was financially supported by the Industrial Relations Research Center and the Management Institute at Columbia University and the Department of Management at Texas A&M University.