Dr. Arthur B. Shostak

Based on an invited address given as recipient of the "Lester F. Ward Distinguished Contribution to Applied Sociology" Award, 1990, at the Fall 1991 Meeting of the Society for Applied Sociology, Annapolis, MD Organized Labor, as the largest social movement in the United States, and the largest union movement in the non-communist world, beckons with many opportunities to the clinical sociologist who would help promote its well-being. I have had the privilege of working in a very board range of consulting and intervention roles for various unions and for the AFL-CIO over nearly 40 years. Accordingly, I share below some insights of mine into this relationship in hopes of encouraging you to do likewise.

Roles for Clinical Sociologists: Provider of Organizing Advice. Easily the most vital role at this time would have the clinical sociologist making his or her special contribution to the organizing challenge.

I started my still-on-going relationship with Labor in 1957 as an apprentice organizer for District 50, the "catch-all" district of the United Mine Workers. Placed with the union's Manhattan operation by my undergraduate college for the summer of my junior year, I accompanied an organizer daily for 12 weeks as we sought on warehouse platforms, factory loading docks, and in booths in "greasy spoon" cafeterias to recruit any and every new member. This colorful experience left me convinced that sociology, a subject than quite new to me, had much to add to the endeavor.

Try as hard as I did, for example, I was not able in 1957 to persuade hard-boiled District 50 leaders to include women and minorities among our organizers. Nor was I able to get seasoned staffers to concede the value of our seeking alliances with relevant locals of other unions. Happily, both of these obstacles to progress no longer hamper labor as seriously as nearly 30 years ago, though many others remain to warrant attention from clinical sociologists.

Obliged to gain about 6 percent more members every year just to stand still, organized labor has failed to do so since reaching about 35 percent of the workforce in the 1950's, and over 60 percent of this slippage has occurred since 1960 (Zieger, 1986). Last year (1995) saw another loss in union density (now barely holding at 16 percent), and certain specialists warn it could fall as low as 10 percent or less in the private sector unless organizing rapidly gains fresh momentum and sizable victories (Freeman and Medoff, 1984).

Clinical sociologists can help by researching what is actually going on, why, and with what consequences. Sociologists Diane Poland and Andrew A. Beveridge, for example, recently analyzed 81, 370 NLRB union representation elections conducted between1972 and '87, a feat that required implementation of a LOGIT analysis and several hours on the IBM 3090 Model 200 using the SAS CATMOD procedure. Their key finding - that "top unions seem to be more likely left militant or at least social democratic" - has major implications for reorienting current organizing strategy and tactics (Poland and Beveridge, 1992; 12). This reorientation requires highly-developed skills in negotiating change, the sort of sophistication labor should be able to get from clinical sociologists.

Similarly, sociologist Kate Bronfenbrenner, in cooperation with the Organizing Department of the AFL-CIO, recently analyzed 261 elections conducted by unions between 1986 and '88. Bronfenbrenner's major finding, that certain specific organizing campaign options (housecalls, active committees, social issue promotion, etc.) have substantial payoff, could help reverse labor's sagging record (Bronfenbrenner, 1992; 14). This, of course, fairly beckons out for the constructive intervention of clinical sociologists who can help overcome resistance by certain organizers to the employ of unfamiliar, but promising new tools.

Survey Research. If sociology connotes anything to professional unionists it is survey and poll data, perhaps the most highly-regarded of all the available social science offerings. Locals have used surveys for decades to secure feedback about contract proposals, work conditions, morale issues, safety and health concerns, and organizing issues, etc.

Despite many years of familiarity with questionnaires, phone surveys, and related tools, few in organized labor would claim mastery or anything approaching it. Instead, many are eager to retain (modestly-priced) consulting help in rapidly developing, readily tabulating, and cogently analyzing custom-tailored surveys. In their own untutored way they understand that amateurish efforts commonly suffer from serious errors in survey design, coding, tabulation, analysis, and presentation of finding. While intent on staying on top of the entire process, many unionists welcome cost-cutting, error-reducing and result-enhancing counsel (Lund, 1991).

Provided, that is , that a clinical sociologist paid to help out proves 1) capable of communicating in plain English; 2) genuinely interested in the well-being of the research subjects; 3) reluctant to spend one more dollar of dues receipts than absolutely necessary to do an adequate job; 4) sensitive to the internal political nuances of survey questions; 5) careful not to do or say anything that might undermine current power-holders; 6) content to treat everything as proprietary; and 7) thick-skinned enough to stand his or her grounds if the survey findings come under attack from recipients threatened by their real or perceived message.

Mistakes that unsuccessful bidders for this consulting work commonly make include 1) talking effusively in jargon; 2) urging use of high-priced add-ons like expensive computer software programs; 3) bad-mouthing survey efforts previously made by the client; 4) offering to fudge the results to flatter the client; 5) insisting on taking far more time than the politics of the situation allows; and 6) disdaining to take advice from the client, or even give that party an honest hearing.

I worked for a year and a half designing five major surveys for the Professional Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO) in 1980 just before the union went out on its disastrous 1981 strike. I directed the analysis of nearly 14,000 replies to all five waves, went around the country interpreting survey results to gatherings of PATCO leaders, met with top officers in strategy sessions, and shared the shock and pain of controllers when over 11,000 were fired by President Reagan and the union was decertified. Several years later, in 1983, I was a union-invited guest at a formal celebration of the re-unionization of the controllers: Many attendees told me the book I had written as a clinical sociologist about the entire 1981 fiasco had helped significantly in the reorganization effort. (Shostak and Skocik, 1986).

Anticipatory Research. Believing themselves under siege and liable to fresh attacks from business enemies at any time, few professional unionists think too far forward (albeit many look back and mine their union's mythologized past with great frequency and ease). Speculating about the next 5,10, or 25 years is commonly waved off as too much of a luxury in these hard times. Few elected officers think systematically beyond the next union convention and their re-election prospects.

All of which makes quite valuable any sophisticated help clinical sociologists can provide of a forecasting variety. Thanks to the "pop sociology" of the mass media many labor leaders are curious about forecasts of a radical increase in permanent joblessness, the arrival of mind-boggling cybernetic work equipment, and the 21st Century-like. Thanks also to their daily perusal of the business page of major papers and their intense study of the industry on which their members rely, most union leaders know business makes strategic use of forecasting, while organized labor continues to lag far behind.

Clinical sociologists could begin by first immersing themselves in a vast library of articles, books, journals, magazines, and reports that attest to decades of interest futurists have had in work issues, organized labor, and cultural dynamics. Especially helpful here are back issues of The Futurist, a publication of the World Future Society, along with the bound proceedings of the various global assemblies the Society has held since its 1968 founding. Particular attention should be paid to methodologies that can be readily grasped and applied by union staffers after a clinical sociologist has left the scene, methodologies like cross-impact analysis, trend extrapolation, scenario writing, and envisioning exercises.

No such relationship should be thought successful unless and until three overarching points have been driven home; viz., There is no "telling" the future, as we make it in the present. Second, a trend is not a law. Third, if you would prepare for the future, prepare to be surprised! When clinical sociologists help unionists fully appreciate the significance of these contentions labor and our discipline alike will be well-served.

I teach courses in futuristics to unionists at the AFL-CIO George Meany Center for Labor Studies (Silver Spring, MD) and provide commissioned speeches for various union conventions.

In the spirit of clinical sociology I never give the same speech twice, but instead require each client to provide me with a prioritized list of five or six questions to guide my custom-tailored address. Drawing particularly on new sociological findings I prepare special overhead transparencies for each audience, and arrange to have them reproduced and distributed to listeners at the start of my talk. Above all, I insist adequate time be reserved for the best part of the event, the question-and-answer period.

Merger Consulting. More and more unions are weighing the plusses and minuses of ending their autonomous existence in favor of some new kind of reality as part of a larger and better-off labor organization. Indeed, more mergers have occurred in the past ten years than in any period since World War II. Some experts expect the 89 unions today in the AFL-CIO to reduce through mergers to only about 40 or 45 by the 21st century (Chaison, 1986).

It is hard to imagine a topic more in need of sociological "smarts" than that of organizational mergers. As is widely understood, they require careful diplomatic skills, haunted as they are by complex and delicate problems in internal politics and local and national union inter-relations. Skeptics worry that mergers diminish the significance of the individual member by enlarging central authority. Proponents, however, insist everyone can gain from economies of scale, an end to interunion raids, and the redirection of energy into new organizing campaigns.

Clinical sociologists could help both sides in a prospective merger by mediating the pre-and postmerger process. They could prepare detailed guidelines to help apprehensive parties rationalize the merger process and restructure and revitalize its hybrid product. Above all, they could discretely help assure that the best interests of the rank-and-file are never lost sight of as powerful figures wrestle through to an organizational accommodation.

Business Research. Another relatively new role, that of business-oriented educator, has had me help union staffers and rank-and-filers learn how to do corporate network research. We study the veiled interconnection among corporate power-holders and companies (banks, vendors, lenders, etc.) that can reveal pressure points of use to unions in organizing campaigns, strikes, buyout efforts, and so on. Known to unionists as a comprehensive or corporate campaign, and buttressed by handbooks available from the AFL-CIO, this research strategy is a quintessential sociological exercise - though far too few union users seem at present to either understand this point or profit from its application.

Miscellaneous Help. While I have covered a lot of territory (organizing advice, survey research, anticipatory research, merger consulting, and corporate campaigns ), I have hardly begun, though space constraints dictate I soon end.

Were I able to continue I would highlight additional clinical consulting possibilities in diversity management (unions need all the help they can get relating to minorities in membership and on union payrolls). I would discuss our role in bringing OD (organization development) insights to those who manage union bureaucracies (Cohen-Rosenthal, 1995). I would urge attention to the "wn-win" strategies we can promote (Cohen-Rosenthal and Burton, 1987). I would raise the subject of how to protect democracy within oligarchies, and explore our role as agents of democratic gains consonant with legitimate organizational needs (Geoghegan, 1992). And to cite a particular favorite of my own, I would go on at length about how to nurture innovation and creativity in formal organizations under siege, a challenge I believe clinical sociologists uniquely competent to help meet (Shostak, 1991).

Promotional Advice. If any of the foregoing has you eager to get involved, there are excellent guides to research methods custom-tailored to union studies; e.g., Riener warns that union officials in the building trades often see a researcher as "someone who could cause unnecessary problems for them," and he offers leads to reducing this problem (Riemer, 1979). For my part I'd like to share seven concerns that draw on over 40 years of research on and involvement with organized labor.

To begin with, I'd advise clinical sociologists eager to work with unions to find a union printer in your area who can print business cards complete with the union "bug" (a tiny label used only by unionized print shops). Trade unionists in a position to make hiring decisions about consultants automatically scan the business cards tendered by "outsiders" to see if the prospective adviser has been astute enough to learn of the indispensability of the union "bug". While its presence will not assure employment, its absence will probably preclude it.

Second, you should take out a subscription to certain conversational touchstones in union matters, and backtrack and read the last five years' worth of these serials in the library of a nearly Labor Education Center (the phone number and address of which you should be able to get from the telephone yellow pages). Specifically, subscriptions are warranted to the AFL-CIO News, Journal of Labor Research, Labor Notes, Labor Research Review, Labor Studies Journal, LRA's Economic Notes, and The Labor Educator. Scanning the table of contents of such academic resources as the Industrial and Labor Relations Review , Labor Law Journal, and The Journal of Labor Research, is often rewarding, as is also union coverage in Business Week, Fast Company, Fortune, Inc., In These Times, The Nation, and the Wall Street Journal.

Third, regular attendance in the visitors section during the monthly meetings of your city's Central Labor Council will pique curiosity and probably result in useful introductions all around, Naturally, the "arm-around-your-shoulder" presence of a prominent unionist is far more desirable than attempting entry cold, though as a last resort it can suffice.

Fourth, it helps to have a one-page resume, complete, of course, with a union "bug", to hand out at any opportunity. Custom-tailored for a labor readership, it should highlight your off-campus work history, college courses of possible relevance to organized labor, and publications and consulting of direct interest to hard-boiled, no- nonsense trade unionists. If various members of your family of origin, whether nuclear or extended, have any trade union links, these might profitably be mentioned, though without exaggeration or fanfare.

Fifth, vis-a-vis presentations, handouts are almost always advisable, provided that certain conditions are met: Either one page or about ten seems best, the former evidence of competence in cogent communication, the latter indicative of the considerable work you have done for the client - while handouts of intermediate length meet neither positive criteria. Statistical formulas, concepts, and the mystifying like should be relegated to an appendix (where they will probably languish forever ignored). Any razzle-dazzle components, such as the use of color, cartoons, or engaging diagrams, should be employed.

Sixth, it is wise to be a unionist if you would "sup at labor's table," as John L. Lewis used to put it. Along with many other academics I have joined Workers Education Local 189 Communication Workers of America, a group that sends members relevant book ads, reviews, and other resource material several times a year. I have also joined my AAUP campus chapter and a campus NEA local. Two major non-union resources well-worth affiliating with are the Industrial Relations Research Association, which has chapters in most major cities, and also - if you are eligible as a teacher of unionists (even part-time) - the University and College Education Association.

Naturally, as a clinical sociologist you will profit from membership in the long-established Labor Studies Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and in a newly-created Labor Network led by sociologist William Mirola (Indiana University).

Summary. Clinical sociologists and organized labor have much to offer one another, for as labor intellectual Gus Tyler noted in 1961, " the man of theory can be helpful to the union in pointing up the long-range implication of present policies; the union activist can be helpful to the theoretician in acquainting him with the thorny road of practical action." (Tyler; 238). Here, of course, is exactly our strong suit, as we as professionals are more fully acquainted than our campus-bound peers with the realities to which Tyler alludes, and far more available for mutually-respectful consulting relationships in which "both parties agree to be both teachers and taught" (Ibid.,) 240).

Strengthened by a research history that extends back to Sorokin and beyond, one that includes such luminaries as C.Wrght Mills, Staughton Lynd, Daniel Bell, Stanley Aronowitz, and others, the sociological study of unions is an especially vital component of our profession, one likely to get more systematic and synergistic in the years immediately ahead (Cornfield, 1991; 1992).

Clinical sociologists will find many points of entry and many opportunities to "make a difference," while all the time mixing with as colorful and engaging a set of activists as in any social movement in the country (Shostak, 1995). We can find in the labor movement a uniquely satisfying venue, for at its best it "embodies the possibilities of both the freedom and the security essential to human dignity... it has survived because it satisfies the human craving for moral status in a recognizable society" (Tannenbaum; 1951, 13).

University and College Labor Education Association: Contact - Gene Daniels, Ohio State University Labor Education and Research, 1810 College Road, 2 Page Hall,Columbus, OH 43210 (Publisher of Labor Studies Journal).

Clinical Sociology and the Labor Movement:

The Two Go Better Together

Arthur B. Shostak, Ph.D.