Reinterpreting Organized Labor's Experience in the Southeast: 1947 to Present

This paper examines the changing landscape of organized labor in the Southeast between 1947 and today. To do so, it looks at several indicators of organized labor's experience in the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The indicators examined are percentage of the nonagricultural workforce that belongs to a trade union; numbers of unfair labor practice charges filed against both unions and employers; numbers of representation elections held and percentage won by unions; and numbers of decertification elections held and percentage won by unions. The analyses show that the Southeastern United States is not uniformly anti-union in culture and that levels of class conflict, at least when measured by such variables, have often been higher in the region than in the nation as a whole. Such findings suggest the need to rethink the nature of organized labor's experience and the geography of class struggle in the region.