 Disabling suburbs?: urban sprawl and US union elections, 2010Stephen McFarland Chapter 13 in Handbook of Labour Geography, 2025, pp 244-256 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: This study draws upon United States National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) union election records and a national metropolitan area-level data set of sprawl indices to assess the correlation of sprawl with union election efforts and outcomes. The Labour Studies literature has identified suburbanisation and sprawl as significant historical culprits in disabling the labour movement by undermining union density and strength. Contrary to expectations this literature might prompt, this study finds no significant correlation between NLRB voting efforts or outcomes and sprawl in US metropolitan areas as of 2010. The chapter goes on to consider why this might be the case, positing two explanations. The first is that the hypothesised impact of suburbanisation and sprawl upon union organising has been historically overemphasised. The second is that although sprawl may have historically interrupted labour organising, this has become less so over time as unions have adjusted to the new geographies of work and residence. Keywords: Labour Geography; Urban sprawl; Union elections; Union decline; Labour urbanism (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:16884_18 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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