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10 - Coming Apart

How Union Decline and Workplace Disintegration Imperil Democracy

from Part III - Labor, Diversity, and Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2022

By
Cynthia Estlund
Edited by
Angela B. Cornell  and
Mark Barenberg
Angela B. Cornell
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Mark Barenberg
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
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Summary

This chapter explores the importance of intergroup solidarity in combatting ethnonationalist populism and in sustaining healthy forms of democratic contestation, and the distinctive capacity of trade unions to cultivate intergroup solidarity and elevate it from the workplace level up to the plane of national politics.  That distinctive capacity stems in part from unions’ roots in the experience of shared work and the common interests and intergroup ties that can grow out of that experience, and in part from unions’ ability, and indeed their need, to link intergroup solidarity to economic self-interest.  That is, unions can and must encourage workers to make common cause and to overcome racial and ethnic divisions in order to pursue shared economic interests.

Keywords

solidarityethnonationalist populismdemocratic contestationtrade unions
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Labor and Democracy , pp. 163 - 179
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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