Kate Bronfenbrenner, the Union Organizer’s Scholar
Kate Bronfenbrenner, who retired this year from Cornell University, has studied how workers win unions, how employers stop them, and how organizers can learn from one another for four decades. Her findings have changed how unions think about organizing.
The contemporary labor movement’s approach to union organizing and strategic corporate research is deeply indebted to labor scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner. (Michael Nagle / Bloomberg
Kate Bronfenbrenner started by asking union organizers to walk her through their campaigns, from beginning to end.
Bronfenbrenner, who retired this year from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) after more than twenty-five years teaching and researching there, has spent four decades studying why some union campaigns succeed while others fail.
What happened after workers first began talking to one another? When did management realize there was an organizing drive? Who served on the organizing committee? Why did one campaign succeed while another failed? Those questions first emerged in her dissertation research in the late 1980s.
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