Working papers

Working papers

The partisanship of labor leaders

Abstract: Labor unions and the Democratic Party have long been allies, yet the share of rank-and-file union members who are Democrats has steadily declined over the past fifty years. Have labor leaders followed suit? I assemble several novel administrative datasets linking over 200,000 unique union officers to voter records from 2014–2023. I find that labor leaders are becoming less Democratic, though Republicans remain underrepresented relative to member partisanship. Local union officers more closely align with members' political affiliations than higher-level officers. Using California teacher and police employment data, I further show that local officers generally mirror their members’ partisanship. I suggest a potential institutional explanation for these trends. Specifically, local union officers are more likely to reflect members’ political views than higher-level officers because federal law only requires local unions to hold direct elections. These findings suggest that union leaders may become less dependable Democratic coalition partners as union members become less Democratic.

Works in progress

The electoral consequences of large-scale strikes: The case of the 1946 strike wave

Abstract: How can internal organizational politics spillover into electoral politics? I study the case of the 1945-1946 strike wave, a large strike wave that preceded the Republican takeover of Congress and the passage of Taft-Hartley in 1947, to investigate this question. I find that the strike wave cost the Democratic Party 2.8-4\% in vote share in places that were hardest hit by the strikes in the 1946 congressional election, and I show that this penalty lasted for years following the 1946 strike wave. Additionally, I show that congressmembers from strike-hit areas were more likely to vote for anti-union legislation after the strike. I end with an examination of how union leaders were forced to balance increasing rank-and-file militancy and their alliance with the Democratic Party, and ultimately, striked even if it hurt their political allies. These findings help us understand why some organizations act in ways that are seemingly politically counterproductive.

The small effects of right-to-work laws: The case of Janus

Abstract: I examine the political effects of right-to-work (RTW) laws, specifically the Supreme Court's Janus decision to ban public-sector unions from collecting mandatory agency fees in 2018. Existing research argues that RTW reduces labor's capacity to engage politically leading Democrats to perform worse in elections and control fewer state legislative seats. I find little evidence that Janus reduced support for the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party's state legislative power, nor labor's political work. Unions spend the vast majority of their budgets on contract negotiations and maintaining the union, meaning that very little of labor's political spending was displaced. I detail why these effects failed to emerge. I also discuss how the institutional context around the enactments of state-level RTW laws limits our ability to make causal inferences using those laws.