ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the capacities of unions in New York City to sustain wage and income levels. Taking Marks’s argument into account, it considers the different effects of rising unemployment on the capacities of unions in four distinct sectors of the local labor market to defend the wages and jobs of workers. From the 1960s to the 1990s the New York economy was transformed from one with a broad industrial base into an economy dominated by finance, insurance, real estate, and consumer services. Although manufacturing never dominated the New York economy exclusively in the way that automobiles dominated Detroit or steel ruled Pittsburgh, the industry has historically provided the most important source of employment for the city’s working poor. As manufacturing declined, the city lost its historic function as a staging ground for unskilled newcomers. While the construction industry employs far fewer workers than the manufacturing industry, it has maintained a consistent number of workers over few decades.