Document Type
Article
Language
eng
Format of Original
35 p.
Publication Date
5-2014
Publisher
Sage Publications
Source Publication
Work and Occupations
Source ISSN
0730-8884
Original Item ID
doi: 10.1177/0730888413498756
Abstract
Debates over America’s heavy reliance on employer-provided private pensions have understated the profound role organized labor played after World War II. Archival evidence from prominent unions and business associations suggests that the shift in organized labor’s strategy after the New Deal toward electoral activity helps explain critical interventions by Northern Democrats into the system of private pensioning in the postwar period that laid the foundation for America’s old-age security system. Such a strategy was insufficient, however, to expand Social Security. This article offers a political mediation account of electoral activity as a source of labor influence on social policy that draws on political institutionalist and class power theories.
Recommended Citation
McCarthy, Michael A., "Political Mediation and American Old-Age Security Exceptionalism" (2014). Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications. 77.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/socs_fac/77
Comments
Accepted version. Work and Occupations, Vol. 41, No. 2 (May 2014): 175-209. DOI. © 2014 SAGE Publications. Used with permission.
Michael McCarthy was affiliated with The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies at the time of publication.