Previous research suggests that higher incomes, safe workplaces, job security and healthcare access all contribute to favorable health. Reflecting the interest of economic and political sociologists in power relations and institutions, union membership has been linked with many such influences on health. Nevertheless, the potential relationship…

The economic boom of the 1990s veiled a grim reality: in addition to the growing gap between rich and poor, the gap between good and bad quality jobs was also expanding. The postwar prosperity of the mid-twentieth century had enabled millions of American workers to join the middle class, but as author Arne L. Kalleberg shows, by the 1970s this…

Analyzes union effects on patterns of job mobility. It finds that the union effects vary by type of union and by type of job change, with industrial unions promoting the incidence of intrafirm occupation changes and craft unions decreasing the incidence of interoccupation moves. (CT)

Utilizing Federal census data from 1960 and 1970, this study provides (1) an overview of the job structure of the entire American economy as of 1970, by arranging the jobs in a new occupational-industrial matrix and ranking them in terms of average annual earnings; and (2) an analysis of the structural factors that distinguish the better from the…