Incidence and Patterns of Representation Campaign Tactics: A Comparison of Manufacturing and Service Unions

Data on 430 union organizing campaigns in the US are used to examine the incidence and patterns of organizing tactics in representation campaigns. The results show that most traditional tactics were widely used, but most new organizing strategies and tactics were infrequently used in the sample of representation campaigns. None of the corporate power tactics were used in more than 5% of the campaigns. The community acceptance and integration tactics tended to be used less often than the classical approach tactics but more often than the corporate power tactics. Service unions tended to use the classical approach tactics less often and the corporate power and the community acceptance and integration tactics more often than manufacturing unions. Manufacturing unions used paid advertisements more often than service unions, perhaps because they have more resources at their disposal to do so. The importance of new organizing strategies seems to have been exaggerated in the literature.