Participation in Local Unions: A Comparison of Black and White Members

This article compares the participation of black and white union members in their local unions. Using more detailed measures of union participation than those employed in earlier studies, and focusing on members, not just leaders, the authors find little difference between the extent of participation by blacks and that by whites. This surprising result, which contradicts the finding of previous studies that blacks participate in unions less than whites, holds even with controls for gender, salary, education, number of years as a member, the presence of friends in the union, the strength of a sense of efficacy, confidence in the ability to gain local union office, and the liberalness of attitudes about civil rights.