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.

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.

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