Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-2004

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Sociology

Major Professor

Jon Shefner

Committee Members

Sherry Cable, Thomas Hood, Robert Gorman

Abstract

Does alliance formation between national labor unions and national environmental organizations exist? Seven national labor unions and seven national environmental organizations that are representative of the two movements are selected for examination by this study to address this question. The project gathers and analyzes three types of data: documents on the web sites of the selected organizations, interviews with high ranked officials from many of the organizations examined and the hyperlinks or web links from each organization’s web page. An analysis of the document of the web sites and interviews with high ranking officials identifies three issues that national labor unions and national environmental organizations share: global trade/globalization, corporate accountability and human exposure to toxic chemicals. Next, the study examines the hyperlinks from the web sites to discover if they demonstrate a connection between national labor unions, and national environmental organizations. The study found minimal direct web links between national labor unions and national environmental organizations. From the document analysis of the web sites and the interviews conducted with high ranking officials, Warren’s (1967) typology of coalitional (temporary coalitions) and federative (permanent coalitions) arrangement is used to order the efforts of national labor unions and environmental organizations to work together. The AFL-CIO is included among the assessment of organizations participating in coalitional and federative arrangements. Twenty-one coalitional arrangements and 6 federative arrangements are discovered by this study. The majority of coalitional arrangements and 3 of the 6 federative arrangements are associated with the issue of global trade/globalization. The other coalitional and federative arrangements are associated with the issues of corporate accountability, human exposure to toxic chemicals and energy. The issue of energy as a cooperative issue emerged from the discovered coalitional arrangements. The findings of the study indicate that among national labor unions and national environment organizations, industrial labor unions and environmental lobbying organizations have the greatest success in working together. Overall, the ability of national labor unions and national environmental organizations to work together appears to be limited by their lack of shared issues and their inability to align the frames of the issues they do share. Many indicators suggest that national labor unions and national environmental organizations are moving farther away from working together. Besides the lack of shared issues, the factors of conflicts between the labor and the environmental movements, the difficulty of adopting a social justice frame, the adverse political climate, the relationship of the labor and environmental movements to capital/business, the lack of acknowledging coalitional and federative arrangements, the lack of building federative arrangements, and the general difficulties of trying to work together limit cooperation between national labor unions and national environmental organizations. These findings are discussed using a synthesis of the framing perspective, resource mobilization, and the political process model/political opportunity perspective as suggested by Oliver and Myers (2003). The project concludes with an overview of findings, questions for future research and policy recommendations that could improve the ability of national labor unions and environmental organizations to work together.

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