The Paradox of American Unionism: Why Americans Like Unions More Than Canadians Do But Join Much Less (review)

Various authors have tried over the years, with varying degrees of success, to explain America's low union density. Seymour Martin Lipset and the late Noah Meltz embark along this same path in The Paradox of American Unionism: Why Americans Like Unions More Than Canadians Do But Join Much Less. Their ambitious comparative study of unionism in Canada and the United States is a short volume full of statistical analysis that does not fully explain many of the concepts that are presented in it, and occasionally raises more questions than it answers.

Lipset and Meltz present four main hypotheses to explain why unionization is lower in the United States than in Canada and why Americans want to join unions more than Canadians. Both countries moved to the left of the political spectrum in the 1930s, but this development was more anomalous in the United States than in Canada. American labor law and its administration are not conducive to unionization. Approval of unions in the U.S. is negatively related to union power. Lastly, differences in political culture and values make it more difficult for unions to organize in the States. This final hypothesis is ascribed to the individualistic, limited-government political values created in the United States by the framers of the Constitution. Through the investigation of these hypotheses, Lipset and Meltz conclude that greater government support in Canada has led to it having a higher rate of unionization than the United States.

The four main arguments are accompanied by considerable statistical analysis but are still not fully substantiated. For example, Lipset and Meltz found that there is growing unionization among professionals in the United States. They also suggest that teachers and nurses are the most unionized occupational groups in Canada, and that a reduction in manufacturing jobs in Canada and the United States has led to reduced unionization. Unfortunately, none if this is revelatory information. Examining information presented by the Bureau of Labor Statistics or Statistics Canada will lead to the same conclusions. Lipset and Meltz interestingly found that managers and workers in the United States had a more favorable view of unions than their Canadian counterparts. However, the reasons for this important finding are not adequately explained. Also, readers looking for a narrative grounded within a broader theoretical framework will find some statistics based on gender, but will not find references to class or race.

The historical development of unions in both countries is examined. The importance of legislation such as the Wagner and Taft-Hartley Acts in the United States and the Industrial Relations Disputes and Investigations Act (IRDIA) in Canada are mentioned, but unfortunately the context in which these laws were passed is not fully explained. For example, the Taft-Hartley Act is not placed within a Cold War context, and further examination of the IRDIA would have revealed that it was crafted with virtually no input from the labor movement and considerable input from the business community. On another point—connection to political power—they correctly note the importance of Canadian labor's alliance with the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and its successor the New Democratic Party (NDP) and contrast it with American labor's lack of an alliance with a social democratic party in the United States. However, there is no substantive explanation presented for the absence of such an alliance. Lipset and Meltz mention such topics as Right-to-Work without discussing the extensive union-busting business in the United States and the impact of anti-communism on the American labor movement.

Finally, the authors' lengthy bibliography is filled predominantly with works by other industrial relations specialists rather than labor historians, despite the importance of labor history to their analysis. Consequently their historical narrative is not as comprehensive as it could have been.

This book will...