Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T14:44:20.889Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Organized Labor as the New Undeserving Rich?: Mass Media, Class-Based Anti-Union Rhetoric and Public Support for Unions in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2017

John V. Kane  and
Benjamin J. Newman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Labor unions play a prominent role in the economy and in politics, and have long been depicted by opponents as an overly powerful, corrupt and economically harmful institution. In labor-related news in recent years, anti-union rhetoric has regularly focused on union workers themselves, frequently portraying them as overpaid, greedy and undeserving of their wealth, while also drawing a contrast between the compensation of union vs. non-union workers. This type of rhetoric is referred to here as class-based anti-union rhetoric (CAR). Despite its prevalence, it remains unknown whether CAR affects public opinion toward unions. This study uses a series of national survey experiments to demonstrate that exposure to CAR reduces the perceived similarity of targeted union workers, unions’ perceived deservingness of public support and support for pro-union legislation. Moreover, CAR repeatedly nullified or reversed the otherwise positive relationship between the strength of worker identity and solidarity with union workers.

Keywords

labor unionsinequalitypolitical rhetoricmass media
Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 997 - 1026
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Department of Political Science, Stony Brook University (email: [email protected]); School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science, University of California, Riverside (email: [email protected]). We wish to express our deep gratitude to Chuck Taber for his assistance with this project, as well as participants at the 2015 Identity Politics Research Group meeting at the University of Connecticut for their thoughtful insights on an earlier version of this manuscript. Finally, we also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers and editor for their helpful comments and suggestions. Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: doi:10.7910/DVN/XT08HW and online appendices are available at https://doi.org/doi:10.1017/S000712341700014X

References

Aarøe, Lene, and Petersen, Michael Bang. 2014. Crowding Out Culture: Scandinavians and Americans Agree on Social Welfare in the Face of Deservingness Cues. The Journal of Politics 76 (3):684–697.Google Scholar
Arceneaux, Kevin, and Johnson, Martin. 2013. Changing Minds or Changing Channels? Partisan News in an Age of Choice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226047447.001.0001Google Scholar
Berinsky, Adam J., Huber, Gregory A., and Lenz, Gabriel S.. 2012. Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk. Political Analysis 20 (3):351–368.Google Scholar
Billig, Michael. 2003. Political Rhetoric. In The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, 1st Edition, edited by David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy and Robert Jervis, 222–250. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bruno, Robert. 2009. Evidence of Bias in the Chicago Tribune Coverage of Organized Labor A Quantitative Study from 1991 to 2001. Labor Studies Journal 34 (3):385–407.Google Scholar
Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2016. Union Members Summary 2015, 28 January. Available from http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Carreiro, Joshua L. 2005. Newspaper Coverage of the U.S. Labor Movement: The Case of Anti-Union Firings 1. Labor Studies Journal 30 (3):1–20.Google Scholar
Chandler, Jesse, Mueller, Pam, and Paolacci, Gabriele. 2013. Nonnaïveté among Amazon Mechanical Turk Workers: Consequences and Solutions for Behavioral Researchers. Behavior Research Methods 46 (1):112–130.Google Scholar
Cohn, Jonathan. 2008. Autoworkers Making $70 An Hour? Not Really. CBS News, 24 November. Available from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/autoworkers-making-70-an-hour-not-really/. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Collins, Chuck. 2012. 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality Is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It. 1st Edition. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.Google Scholar
Desilver, Drew. 2014. American Unions Membership Declines as Public Support Fluctuates. Pew Research Center, 20 February. Available from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/20/for-american-unions-membership-trails-far-behind-public-support/. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Editorial Board. 2014. Taken for a Ride by the LIRR Unions. The New York Post, 17 July. Available from http://nypost.com/2014/07/17/taken-for-a-ride-by-the-lirr-unions/. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Emmenegger, Patrick. 2009. Barriers to Entry: Insider/Outsider Politics and the Political Determinants of Job Security Regulations. Journal of European Social Policy 19 (2):131–146.Google Scholar
Engels, Friedrich. 1892. The Condition of the Working Class in England. English Edition. New York: Progress Publishers, Available from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1892/01/11.htm.Google Scholar
Erickson, Christopher L., Fisk, Catherine L., Milkman, Ruth, Mitchell, Daniel J. B., and Wong, Kent. 2002. Justice for Janitors in Los Angeles: Lessons from Three Rounds of Negotiations. British Journal of Industrial Relations 40 (3):543–567.Google Scholar
Fermino, Jennifer. 2012. Wrong-Shoremen. New York Post, 23 August. Available from http://nypost.com/2012/08/23/wrong-shoremen/. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Michael A. 2010. Amid Backlash and Budget Deficits, Government Workers’ Pensions Are Targets. The Washington Post, 6 October. Available from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/05/AR2010100506187.html. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Flynn, Francis J. 2000. No News Is Good News: The Relationship Between Media Attention and Strike Duration. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society 39 (1):139–160.Google Scholar
Fund, John. 2012. Chicago Bled Dry by Striking Teachers’ Unions. National Review Online, 10 September. Available from http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/316395/chicago-bled-dry-striking-teachers-unions-john-fund. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Gelinas, Nicole. 2014. Millionaires on Strike? The Unfair Demands of LIRR Unions. New York Post, 9 June. Available from http://nypost.com/2014/06/08/millionaires-on-strike-the-unfair-demainds-of-lirr-unions/. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Gilens, Martin. 1999. Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Greenhouse, Steven. 2014. Wisconsin’s Legacy for Unions. The New York Times, 22 February. Available from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/business/wisconsins-legacy-for-unions.html. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Gregory, Paul Roderick. 2011. American Labor Unions: Underpaid, Overproductive Or Overpaid? Forbes, 12 July. Available from http://www.forbes.com/2011/07/08/labor-unions-economics.html. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Hamill, Ruth, Wilson, Timothy D., and Nisbett, Richard E.. 1980. Insensitivity to Sample Bias: Generalizing from Atypical Cases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (4):578–589.Google Scholar
Harmon, Mark D., and Lee, Shu-Yueh. 2010. A Longitudinal Study of U.S. Network TV Newscasts and Strikes: Political Economy on the Picket Line. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 87 (3–4):501–514.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Jennifer, and Weaver, Vesla. 2015. Is the Significance of Race Declining in the Political Arena? Yes, and No. Ethnic and Racial Studies 38 (8):1250–1257.Google Scholar
Huddy, Leonie, Mason, Lilliana, and Aarøe, Lene. 2015. Expressive Partisanship: Campaign Involvement, Political Emotion, and Partisan Identity. American Political Science Review 109 (1):1–17.Google Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto, Peters, Mark D., and Kinder, Donald R.. 1982. Experimental Demonstrations of the ‘Not-So-Minimal’ Consequences of Television News Programs. The American Political Science Review 76 (4):848–858.Google Scholar
Jackman, Mary R., and Jackman, Robert W.. 1985. Class Awareness in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kane, John. 2017. “Replication Data for: “Organized Labor as the New Undeserving Rich? Mass Media, Class-Based Anti-Union Rhetoric, and Public Support for Unions in the U.S.””, doi: 10.7910/DVN/XT08HW, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:GeH640RWWsg5q3pqppLapQ==.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Karen M. 2003. Cracks in the Rainbow: Group Commonality as a Basis for Latino and African-American Political Coalitions. Political Research Quarterly 56 (2):199–210.Google Scholar
Kelloway, E. Kevin, Francis, Lori, Catano, Victor M., and Dupré, Kathryne E.. 2008. Third-Party Support for Strike Action. Journal of Applied Psychology 93 (4):806–817.Google Scholar
Kellstedt, Paul M. 2000. Media Framing and the Dynamics of Racial Policy Preferences. American Journal of Political Science 44 (2):245–260.Google Scholar
Kilkenny, Allison. 2013. BART Strike: Another Instance of Media Portraying Workers as Greedy. The Nation, 2 July. Available from http://www.thenation.com/blog/175063/bart-strike-another-instance-media-portraying-workers-greedy. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R., and Kam, Cindy D.. 2010. Us Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Klandermans, Bert. 1986. Psychology and Trade Union Participation: Joining, Acting, Quitting. Journal of Occupational Psychology 59 (3):189–204.Google Scholar
Klapper, Joseph T. 1960. The Effects of Mass Communication Vol. xii. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Krugman, Paul. 2011. Oligarchy, American Style. The New York Times, sec. Opinion, 3 November. Available from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/opinion/oligarchy-american-style.html.Google Scholar
Kumar, Deepa. 2001. Mass Media, Class, and Democracy: The Struggle over Newspaper Representation of the UPS Strike. Critical Studies in Media Communication 18 (3):285–302.Google Scholar
Lane, Charles. 2012. Charles Lane: Students Are Victims in Chicago Fight over Clout. The Washington Post, 10 September. Available from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-lane-students-are-victims-in-chicago-fight-over-clout/2012/09/10/ec4b47c2-fb66-11e1-b2af-1f7d12fe907a_story.html?amp;denied=1&socialreader_check=0. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Leone, Lew. 2014. Lew’s View: LIRR Workers’ Strike Threat. My Fox NY, 11 June. Available from http://www.myfoxny.com/story/25753400/lews-view-lirr-workers-strike-threat. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Levin, Josh. 2013. The Real Story of Linda Taylor, America’s Original Welfare Queen. Slate Magazine, 19 December. Available from http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2013/12/linda_taylor_welfare_queen_ronald_reagan_made_her_a_notorious_american_villain.html. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Lippmann, Walter. 1946. Public Opinion. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Schneider, William. 1987. The Confidence Gap: Business, Labor and Government in the Public Mind, Revised Edition. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Lovett, Kenneth. 2014. Over 10K MTA Employees Earned Six-Figure-Salaries in 2013: Report. NY Daily News, 4 June. Available from http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/10k-mta-employees-earned-six-figure-salaries-2013-report-article-1.1817547. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Macaray, David. 2013. What the Longshoremen’s Strike Was Really About. The Huffington Post, 6 February. Available from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-macaray/longshoremens-strike-was-about_b_2257917.html. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Maher, Kris, and Terlep, Sharon. 2008. For UAW, Aid Likely to Come With Strings. Wall Street Journal, 21 November. Available from http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122723654355647077. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Maitner, Angela T., Mackie, Diane M., Claypool, Heather M., and Crisp, Richard J.. 2010. Identity Salience Moderates Processing of Group-Relevant Information. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46 (2):441–444.Google Scholar
Marlow, Michael. 2012. The Huge Cost of Public Unions: Spending We Can’t Sustain. NY Daily News, 24 August. Available from http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/huge-cost-public-unions-article-1.1143138. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Martin, Christopher R. 2004. Framed!: Labor and the Corporate Media. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
McCall, Leslie. 2013. The Undeserving Rich: American Beliefs about Inequality, Opportunity, and Redistribution. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McKinstry, Leo. 2015. Unions vs. Workers – This Is David Cameron’s Chance to Strike Back. The Spectator, 11 July. Available from http://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/07/unions-no-longer-serve-working-people-its-time-to-emasculate-themcounter-strike/. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Mullinix, Kevin J., Leeper, Thomas J., Druckman, James N., and Freese, Jeremy. 2015. The Generalizability of Survey Experiments. Journal of Experimental Political Science 2 (2):109–138.Google Scholar
Nelson, Thomas E., Clawson, Rosalee A., and Oxley, Zoe M.. 1997. Media Framing of a Civil Liberties Conflict and Its Effect on Tolerance. The American Political Science Review 91 (3):567.Google Scholar
Oorschot, Wim van. 2000. Who Should Get What, and Why? On Deservingness Criteria and the Conditionality of Solidarity among the Public. Policy & Politics 28 (1):33–48.Google Scholar
Parenti, Michael. 1986. Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media. 1st Edition. New York: St. Martin’s Press.Google Scholar
Park, David J., and Wright, Larry M.. 2007. Giving Labor the Business? Changes in Business and Labor Reporting from 1980 to 2000. Labor Studies Journal 32 (1):60–81.Google Scholar
Patterson, Matt. 2012. Chicago Teachers Union: Overpaid Babysitters? Competitive Enterprise Institute, 13 September. https://cei.org/blog/chicago-teachers-union-overpaid-babysitters. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Pawlenty, Tim. 2010. Government Unions vs. Taxpayers. The Wall Street Journal, 13 December. Available from http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703766704576009350303578410. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Payne, Ed, 2012. Q&A: What’s behind the Chicago Teachers’ Strike? – CNN.com. CNN, 17 September. Available from http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/17/us/chicago-strike-explainer/index.html. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
PBS. 2011. Ohio Voters Weigh Repeal of Controversial Collective-Bargaining Law. PBS NewsHour, 14 October. Available from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics-july-dec11-ohiounion_10-14/. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Perry, Charles R. 1987. Union Corporate Campaigns. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Center for.Wharton School of Business.Google Scholar
Petersen, Michael Bang, Slothuus, Rune, Stubager, Rune, and Togeby, Lise. 2011. Deservingness versus Values in Public Opinion on Welfare: The Automaticity of the Deservingness Heuristic. European Journal of Political Research 50 (1):24–52.Google Scholar
Potts, Monica. 2012. Outrageous Teacher Pay? The American Prospect, 18 September. Available from http://prospect.org/article/outrageous-teacher-pay. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Puette, William. 1992. Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Rashbaum, William K. 2009. Carpenters’ Union Chief and 9 Others Face Corruption Charges. The New York Times, 5 August. Available from http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/carpenters-union-head-and-9-others-charged-in-corruption-scheme/. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Reich, Robert B. 2010. Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Reich, Robert B. 2011. The Shameful Attack on Public Employees. Huffington Post, 5 January. Available from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-shameful-attack-on-pu_b_805050.html. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Reich, Robert B. 2012. Beyond Outrage: Expanded Edition: What Has Gone Wrong with Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix It. Expanded Edition. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Reicher, Stephen, and Hopkins, Nicolas. 1996. Self-Category Constructions in Political Rhetoric; an Analysis of Thatcher’s and Kinnock’s Speeches Concerning the British Miners’ Strike (1984–5). European Journal of Social Psychology 26 (3):353–371.Google Scholar
Richwine, Jason. 2012. Chicago Teachers’ Retirement Benefits Are Extravagant. The Daily Signal, 13 September. Available from http://dailysignal.com/2012/09/13/chicago-teachers-retirement-benefits-are-extravagant/. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Riggins, Stephen Harold. 1997. The Rhetoric of Othering. In The Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse, edited by Stephen Harold Riggins, 1–30. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Rueda, David. 2005. Insider-Outsider Politics in Industrialized Democracies: The Challenge to Social Democratic Parties. The American Political Science Review 99 (1):61–74.Google Scholar
Ryan, Charlotte. 2004. It Takes a Movement to Raise an Issue: Media Lessons from the 1997 U.P.S. Strike. Critical Sociology 30 (2):483–511.10.1163/156916304323072189Google Scholar
Schattschneider, E. E.. 1960. The Semi-Sovereign People. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Diane E. 1993. Public Opinion and Media Coverage of Labor Unions. Journal of Labor Research 14 (2):151–164.Google Scholar
Schwander, Hanna, and Häusermann, Silja. 2013. Who Is in and Who Is out? A Risk-Based Conceptualization of Insiders and Outsiders. Journal of European Social Policy 23 (3):248–269.Google Scholar
Sherk, James. 2008. UAW Workers Actually Cost the Big Three Automakers $70 an Hour. The Heritage Foundation, 8 December. Available from http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/12/uaw-workers-actually-cost-the-big-three-automakers-70-an-hour. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Sirin, Cigdem V., Villalobos, José D., and Valentino, Nicholas A.. 2016. Group Empathy Theory: The Effect of Group Empathy on US Intergroup Attitudes and Behavior in the Context of Immigration Threats. The Journal of Politics 78 (3):893–908.Google Scholar
Smiley, Tavis, and West, Cornell. 2012. The Rich and the Rest of Us. New York: SmileyBooks.Google Scholar
Surowiecki, James. 2011. State Of The Unions. The New Yorker, 10 January. Available from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/17/state-of-the-unions. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Taber, Charles S., and Lodge, Milton. 2006. Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs. American Journal of Political Science 50 (3):755–769.Google Scholar
Tajfel, Henri. 1974. Social Identity and Intergroup Behaviour. Social Science Information/Sur Les Sciences Sociales 13 (2):65–93.Google Scholar
Tajfel, Henri, Billig, M. G., Bundy, R. P., and Flament, Claude. 1971. Social Categorization and Intergroup Behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology 1 (2):149–178.Google Scholar
The Daily Mail . 2015. PM Must Stop Greedy Unions in Their Tracks, 17 May. Available from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3084826/MAIL-SUNDAY-COMMENT-PM-stop-greedy-unions-tracks.html. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
The New York Times . 1982. Big Labor Settles for Less, 4 March. Available from http://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/04/opinion/big-labor-settles-for-less.html. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
The New York Times . 1977. Labor Loses Two in a Row, 26 March. Available from http://www.nytimes.com/1977/03/26/archives/labor-loses-two-in-a-row.html. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Tingley, Dustin, Yamamoto, Teppei, Hirose, Kentaro, Keele, Luke, and Imai, Kosuke. 2014. Mediation: R Package for Causal Mediation Analysis. UCLA Statistics/American Statistical Association, August. Available from http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/91154. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Winslow, Samantha. 2012. Union-Backed Ballot Measures Mostly Voted Up | Labor Notes, 7 November. Available from http://labornotes.org/2012/11/union-backed-ballot-measures-mostly-voted. Accessed 30 December 2016.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Kane and Newman supplementary material

Appendix

Download Kane and Newman supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.2 MB
Supplementary material: Link

Kane and Newman Dataset

Dataset

http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/XT08HW
Link