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11 - Unions Can Help White Workers Become More Racially Tolerant

from Part III - Labor, Diversity, and Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2022

By
Paul Frymer ,
Jacob M. Grumbach  and
Thomas Ogorzalek
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

Labor unions are important organizations in shaping worker attitudes about their political world. In this chapter, we build and contextualize with recent work by Frymer and Grumbach (2020) that finds that being a union member leads workers to be more tolerant towards racial diversity and more supportive of civil rights policy. Here, we argue that for this dynamic to occur, unions need to be active in promoting greater racial diversity to its members. After examining the historical variation with regards to union advocacy, we focus on the recent era in which unions have increasingly promoted and prioritized civil rights causes, in part because of new leadership and in part because of an increasingly diverse workplace. Unions are critical organizations in the promotion of civil rights and greater racial tolerance in America.

Keywords

labor unionscivil rightsracismracial attitudesorganizations
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Labor and Democracy , pp. 180 - 198
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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