A strategic choice framework for union decision making

This essay presents a framework for decision making by labor union leaders facing critical choices regard-ing the survival of their organizations. I argue that labor union leaders must place decisions regarding all aspects of their union life—from big picture concerns regarding political action, organizing opportunities, and collective bargaining to day-to-day issues regarding hiring of staff, resolution of contract disputes, and the amount of time and money spent on activities—into a framework that asks how those decisions will impact the union’s strength on two dimensions: external leverage and internal organizational capacity. After explaining the central features of this “strategic choice ” framework, I apply it to a wide variety of cases of union decision making to illustrate its application and importance in setting and evaluating chosen strategies. The mid-1990s to the present has marked a period of wide-scale ex-perimentation and innovation in the U.S. labor movement as well as in labor movements in many other countries. Several decades of marked decline in mem-bership, intense pressure in collective bargaining forums, and loss of influence in political arenas spurred on experimentation. At the same time, an atmosphere fostering innovation can be associated with the election of John Sweeney at th