Striking Outcomes: Analyzing the Conditions and Strategies Related to Effective Strikes

This dissertation examines why socio-economic conditions, the power resources of employers and unions, and strategies employed by these parties, lead to a variety of strike outcomes. Not only are strike outcomes since 2008 understudied in the literature, but the dynamics of strikes could hold the keys to addressing some of the fundamental challenges presented by climate change, and capitalism. The dissertation conceives of new models to evaluate how workers can achieve success in the strike context and then compares strikes, through descriptive statistics and interview informed case studies, across the healthcare and automotive sectors, within the USA in the last 4 years. It compares unemployment rates, inflation rate, and public opinion about unions (macro socio-economic conditions); the share of the firm affected by the strike, experience of firm leadership with stikes, susceptibility of the firm to public opinion (firm power); the structural, associational, institutional, and societal power of unions, and their leadership's ability to utilize these resources (union power); and the concrete strategies used by firms and unions to utilize these power resources, to evaluate why some strike have varying outcomes (See Schmalz et al., 2018; Kallas, 2024; McAlevey, 2016; Nowak, 2018; and Kimeldorf, 2013 for authors related to my theoretical model). Preliminary results suggest that macro conditions have a significant relationship with the power resources of either side. It also confirms that power resources of firms and unions are deeply related to one another and their successful employment by either side's leadership structures or union membership, drastically shapes the outcomes of a strike. Descriptive statistics will also show that open ended economic strikes are increasingly resulting in transformational outcomes, while comparative analysis provides lessons on how these outcomes could be more broadly achieved.