The End of Pluralism

Note: Below is selected text from my LERA Presidential Address delivered at the 78th Annual Meeting in Minneapolis (May 30, 2026). You can watch the full address in this LERA presidential address video 

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The 1930s ushered in a new era of labor policy in the United States under the banner of “The New Deal.” Many pieces are likely familiar to you, such as social security, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and for private sector labor relations, the National Labor Relations Act that was passed in 1935. But of course new federal legislation and policies didn’t emerge from a vacuum. The passage of the NLRA was the culmination of various twists and turns, including a number of important strikes in 1934. This includes the West Coast longshore and San Francisco general strikes, the southern textile strikes, and the Minneapolis Teamsters strike (Bernstein 1970; Millikan 2001).

If you went to the Lynx game on Wednesday night, or have had dinner in the warehouse district, you’ve been walking in the shadows of armed battles from the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike. I found this really cool map where someone overlaid existing Minneapolis landmarks onto the 1935 neighborhoods. We’re in the central business district, which a University of Minnesota sociology professor labeled as including “shady hotels” in 1935 (Schmid 1937, p. 361). 

Map by Tessera Design; photos from the Minnesota Historical Society.

As best as I can determine, during the intense Teamsters Strike, The “Battle of Deputies’ Run” in May 1934 occurred just next to where the Target Center is now located, just a couple blocks from here (Minneapolis Tribune, May 22, 1934). Two months later, Bloody Friday occurred a few blocks north, in what’s still known as the warehouse district (Minneapolis Tribune, July 21, 1934). The Citizens Alliance, which is what the employers called their anti-union open shop organization, reportedly planned this attack in the original Radisson Hotel that stood where we are today (The Organizer, July 21, 1934).

I think it’s fair to say that these events helped usher in the National Labor Relations Act a year later, which provides the foundation for private sector U.S. labor relations, and the model, later on, for public sector labor relations, too (Budd 2025). I think it’s important to appreciate that this system is not just a set of laws and practices. It’s also the embodiment of essential, foundational ideas that are different from, for example, the belief in unregulated competition that characterized policy-making before the New Deal. In industrial relations lingo, these foundational ideas are called “pluralism” (Budd 2025; Budd, Kammeyer-Mueller, and Pohler 2026). 

Pluralism believes that labor markets favor employers, who typically have deeper pockets than individual workers. Pluralism believes that labor is more than a commodity, and that worker dignity and workers’ rights are essential. So pluralism embraces the need for labor standards, like minimum wage laws or laws regulating AI and work, and the need for institutions like labor unions to give workers collective voice. 

But in some respects, pluralism is conservative. It mostly draws a circle around the work sphere and doesn’t pay deep attention to interconnected social inequalities. It doesn’t reject capitalism, and instead, in the words of John R. Commons, seeks to “save Capitalism by making it good” (Commons 1934, p. 143; Kaufman 2003). So pluralism sees both employers and employees as having legitimate interests in the employment relationship. This is where the “pluralism” label comes from: the employment relationship includes multiple stakeholders whose interests are legitimate, even when they conflict with the goals of others—akin to a pluralist political system.

I love this illustration’s representation of pluralism (Survey Magazine, February 7, 1914). The employment relationship is a bargaining relationship, as captured by the pendulum. But this isn’t a radical portrayal of a value system that prioritizes capital or labor. Negative outcomes are portrayed when either is too strong. And the best outcomes result when the pendulum is close to the middle, and both sides benefit. 

Source: Survey (February 7, 1914)

Balancing the power and interests of employers and employees is central in pluralist thought. That is, the system should try to strike a BALANCE (Budd 2025). Because both sides have legitimacy. So labor law, for example, tries to balance property rights and labor rights, even if both sides are often unhappy with where the lines are drawn. More generally some might even say we’re trying to balance efficiency, equity, and voice. Or maybe just one person says that (Budd 2004). 

So now we’re going to skip over my entire career and jump to “The End of Pluralism” today. I see at least two dimensions to this: 1) Destruction of pluralist institutions, and 2) Confronting deeply-embedded inequalities.

Let’s start with the first one. Of course, there has always been resistance to recognizing unions and bargaining with them. The original Radisson hotel that Curt Carlson purchased was right where we are today, and though torn down and rebuilt in 1982, this property was a Radisson hotel until just five years ago. Until 2013 it was owned by Curt Carlson’s company, not franchised.

In 1989, Local 17 of the Hotel Employees union—the union still representing workers here today—filed charges accusing this Radisson of surface bargaining. An  Administrative Law Judge ruled against Radisson (Radisson Plaza Minneapolis, George F. McInerny, Administrative Law Judge, 1990). The NLRB ruled against Radisson (Radisson Plaza Minneapolis, 307 NLRB No. 10, 1992). Rather than bargaining with Local 17,  Radisson challenged the previous rulings but lost in Federal Appeals court (Radisson Plaza Minneapolis v. NLRB, 987 F.2d 1376, 1993). That’s still not the end. After more refusals to comply, the NLRB General Counsel filed a petition for contempt penalties against Radisson, more than five years after the initial charges were filed by Local 17. 

There were a number of union rallies, including a sit down demonstration in the driveway of Curt Carlson’s home. I appeared in a 1994 video supporting the workers (Labor Education Service 1994, starting at 18:48), and given that I’m giving this presidential address in the very same hotel, I can’t resist showing 20 seconds of it. 

I heard later on that Curt Carlson wasn’t pleased that a professor—actually, an untenured assistant professor, contrary to what it says in the video—in the business school with his name on it, appeared in this video. 

Clearly there’s a long history of employer resistance to the pluralist bargaining system. But I think today is different. Extreme lawbreaking used to be refusing to bargain like Curt Carlson, or prompting a strike to hire replacements. Now employers are challenging the constitutionality and legitimacy of the NLRB just like it was 1935 (Meyerson 2025). President Reagan fired 11,000 air traffic controllers who were illegally striking. The Trump administration has tried to strip bargaining rights from a million federal workers (Glass, 2025). The hollowing out of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) is another attack on pluralist values and a dismantling of a core pluralist institution.       

Let’s turn to the second dimension of my “End of Pluralism” claim: Confronting deeply-embedded inequalities. Again, pluralism isn’t radical, even if it’s attacked as such by some. A pluralist approach to industrial relations largely tries to fix bargaining power imbalances by giving workers the opportunity to choose collective voice…in their workplaces. Inequality is seen as labor market inequality, so a better wage and just cause protections through collective bargaining will solve workers’ problems. This is different from more radical, critical, and heterodox schools of thought that see inequalities as deeply embedded in interlocking societal systems – not just the labor market, but the political arena, the legal system, housing, education, voting, and more (Lee and Tapia 2021; Rubery and Hebson 2018). 

After the murder of George Floyd just 3 miles from here, I spent several years developing and launching a new required core course for all undergraduates in my business school – 1,000 a year. It’s called “Race, Power, and Justice in Business.” I’m embarrassed to admit that I had never really thought about race very deeply in my work before then. A pluralist approach to understanding racial inequality focuses on labor market imbalances, and thus looks to anti-discrimination laws and collective power to redress this. That might, emphasis on “might”, be sufficient if racial inequality was purely a labor market phenomenon. But of course it’s not.

The more I read about systemic inequality and its roots in ideas as well as practices, and its reproduction through interlinkages involving housing, education, health care, voting, work, and more (Darity. and Mullen 2020; McGhee 2021; Trotter 2019)…well, it was hard for me to remain a pluralist. Yes, me, the author of multiple books grounded in pluralism, if not making the case for it (Budd 2004), questioning my own belief system. 

And many unions aren’t remaining pluralist either. It’s well known that labor unions have a complicated history when it comes to racial and gender equality (Zieger 2007; Milkman 2026).  But I think it’s safe to say that the U.S. labor movement has made great strides becoming more inclusive and becoming stronger champions of social justice, including beyond the boundaries of the workplace. 

For example, the labor movement was active in Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd. The “bargaining for the common good” initiative is a movement away from pluralism as it seeks to integrate collective bargaining with community alliances to push for structural changes beyond the workplace, such as affordable housing, community-owned banks, and criminal justice reform. “Whole worker organizing” is another trend away from pluralism’s workplace focus (McAlevey 2016). 

And now we get to the winter of 2026 here in Minnesota. As highlighted at yesterday's labor breakfast, the labor movement was a key participant in the anti-ICE actions. The Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation and many local unions endorsed and provided extensive support for the January 23rd Day of Truth and Freedom protests. The national presidents of SEIU, AFT, and the CWA all spoke at the Target Center rally that day. Local unions and federations supported their members and the community throughout this occupation. The hotel employees union that represents workers here at the Royal Sonesta created an emergency food distribution network, which included delivering food to members who were afraid to leave their homes. 

And these weren’t “labor actions” narrowly defined—they were community actions, done with faith organizations, community organizations, and neighbors. In fact, while Minnesota’s largest corporations could only muster a weak PR statement, many small businesses in affected neighborhoods also participated in community and worker support actions during Operation Metro Surge. 

So at the risk of oversimplifying complicated stories, perhaps we could see the era of pluralism in U.S. labor relations as ushered in by the Teamsters Strike in 1934, and ushered out by anti-ICE actions 92 years later. 

But what happens next? Predictions are hard. The only previous LERA president from the University of Minnesota, Dale Yoder, in 1959 predicted that “By 1990, the 35-hour week should be well established, and many employees may enjoy a 4-day, 32-hour week” (Yoder 1959, p. 4) Even if we give Professor Yoder an additional 36 years for this to emerge, his predictions have obviously not come true. But I think Professor Yoder got the most important prediction correct:

“What actually happens in wages, hours, productivity, union membership and public regulation will depend largely on what happens to our ideas about employment and working relationships. Changes in our ideas and ideals are the real determinants of our future in industrial relations” (Yoder 1959, p. 5).

Unfortunately, the two trends I’ve identified push ideas and ideals in opposite directions. The destruction of pluralist institutions is animated by the ideals of unfettered capitalism and individualism, or things even less principled. In sharp contrast, the confronting of deeply-embedded inequalities pushes in a sharply contrasting direction towards ideals associated with social democracy. 

I’m not sure where things will go, but given these clashing forces, it’s likely to be tumultuous. And it might bring on difficult times for LERA if it’s harder to bring different stakeholder groups together. But I’m grateful for everyone working hard to push things in directions that are consistent with the fundamental values of our field, and to develop new ideas and new understandings. My granddaughter, and a few billion other young people, are counting on it. 

References

Bernstein, Irving (1970) Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933–1941 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin).

Budd, John W. (1991). Pattern Bargaining, Wage Uniformity, and the United Auto Workers: An Empirical Analysis. PhD dissertation, Princeton University.

Budd, John W. (2004) Employment with a Human Face: Balancing Efficiency, Equity, and Voice (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).

Budd, John W. (2011) The Thought of Work (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).

Budd, John W. (2025) Labor Relations: Striking a Balance, 2025 release (New York: McGraw Hill).

Budd, John W., John Kammeyer-Mueller, and Dionne Pohler (2026) “Competing Frames of Reference on the Employment Relationship and Their Importance for the Study of Work,” in Jonathan Lavelle, Tony Dobbins, Tony Dundon, and Dionne Pohler, eds., New Frontiers and Trajectories in Labor-Management Relations (SIOP Organizational Frontiers Book Series) (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Carlson, Curtis L. (1994) Good as Gold: The Story of the Carlson Companies (Minneapolis, MN: Carlson Companies, Inc.).

Commons, John R. (1934) Myself (New York, NY: Macmillian).

Darity Jr., William A. and A. Kirsten Mullen (2020) From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century (Chapel Hill: UNC Press).

Glass, Aurelia (2025) “The Trump Administration Ended Collective Bargaining for 1 Million Federal Workers,” Center for American Progress (May 22).

Kaufman, Bruce E. (2023) “John R. Commons and the Wisconsin School on Industrial Relations Strategy and Policy.” ILR Review 57, no. 1: 3-30.

Labor Education Service (1994) “Turning Up the Heat: The Struggle at the Radisson Hotel,” video produced and directed by Howard Kling and Randy Croce (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Industrial Relations Center). Available at https://youtu.be/bi_rKJKhe9w?si=ehpNtvpYPODjD5rX 

Lee, Tamara L., and Maite Tapia (2021) “Confronting Race and Other Social Identity Erasures: The Case for Critical Industrial Relations Theory.” ILR Review 74, no. 3: 637-662. 

McAlevey, Jane (2016) No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age (New York: Oxford University Press).

McGhee, Heather (2021) The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (New York: One World).

Meyerson, Harold (2025) “A Federal Appellate Court Finds the NLRB to Be Unconstitutional,” The American Prospect (August 25).

Milkman, Ruth (2016) On Gender, Labor, and Inequality (Urbana: University of Illinois Press).

Millikan, William (2001) A Union against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight against Organized Labor, 1903–1947 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society).

Rubery, Jill, and Gail Hebson (2018) “Applying a Gender Lens to Employment Relations: Revitalisation, Resistance and Risks.” Journal of Industrial Relations 60, no. 3: 414-436.

Schmid, Calvin F. (1937) Social Saga of Two Cities: An Ecological and Statistical Study of Social Trends in Minneapolis and St. Paul (Minneapolis: MN: Minneapolis Council of Social Agencies).

Trotter, Jr., Joe William (2019) Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America (Oakland: University of California Press).

Yoder, Dale (1959) The Outlook in Industrial Relations (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Industrial Relations Center).

Zieger, Robert H. (2007) For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky).

Organizational Governance and Trade-Offs Between Pay and Subjective Employee Well-Being

Suppose you were offered a job or a promotion that gave you higher intrinsic rewards, but required accepting less pay than you could get elsewhere. Might you have concerns that the employer would, at some point, renege on its promise of higher intrinsic rewards—which are harder to observe than pay—leaving you with just lower pay? Even if the manager is being sincere at the time, later on there could be new pressures, perhaps because of profitability concerns, new executives, or a change in ownership. 

One thing that might shape your willingness to accept this deal is whether you think the organization’s reputation is important to it, such that it will live up to its promises in order to maintain a good reputation in the labor market. However, David Marsden, a longtime professor of employment relations at the London School of Economics, argued that a stronger signal of an organization’s likely commitment to implicit contracts is its governance structure, which is stable, easy to observe, and difficult to change, unlike perceptions about a desire to maintain some amorphous sense of reputation.

For example, in an investor-owned company with a strong shareholder value ethos, the managers are the agents of investor-owners and are tasked with acting on their behalf to generate financial returns. Because of financial concerns and the ability to buy and sell ownership and assets, employees should be wary of implicit contracts in which the promise of intrinsic rewards offsets lower pay because of managerial incentives and the prospect that new corporate owners or executives will ignore these non-transferable agreements. To the extent that family-owned firms may face weaker shareholder pressures while also embodying stronger social connections, visible ownership identities, and enduring inter-generational transfers of ownership, workers may be more willing to trust implicit contracts at family-owned corporations. 

In nonprofit and charitable organizations, conventional owners do not exist as there are not profits to distribute, but donors can be seen as key stakeholders to whom managers are accountable. Moreover, assets are largely non-tradeable and a social mission is explicitly part of the organization’s mandate. So discretionary actions allowed by this model of organizational governance are expected to serve the public good. In an earlier article, my colleague Avner Ben-Ner argued that “an organization’s nonprofit status may serve as a signal of trustworthiness to customers that their well-being will not be compromised by the organization’s pursuit of profit,” and the Marsden theorizing is that this applies to employees, too. Public sector organizations with socially-oriented missions, as in public education, health care, and social services, are theorized to be similar to nonprofit and charitable organizations such that the pursuit of the organization’s mission is likely to remain consistent with respecting commitments made to employees. But public sector agencies with more of a bureaucratic or regulatory function are more likely to have new governments change their orientation, similar to new owners or executives in a private-sector corporation.

Marsden’s theorizing, then, is that organizational features that are easy to observe contain information about the likelihood that the organization will fulfill its promises, and thus we should observe different combinations of extrinsic and intrinsic rewards across different types of organizations. In other words, employees will be less likely to expect breaches of implicit contracts promising higher levels of intrinsic rewards in lieu of pay when certain organizational features are present. Ryan Lamare and I explore this in a new article “Organizational Governance and Trade-Offs Between Pay and Subjective Employee Well-Being: A Comparative Analysis” which will appear in an issue of the British Journal of Industrial Relations honoring Professor Marsden. I’ve created a short animation that provides an overview of our article. 

In short, we find supportive evidence across 35 European countries. Moreover, the trade-offs across organizational types appear larger in liberal market economies, like the UK, where there is a stronger shareholder orientation and capital is impatient, compared to coordinated market economies, like Germany, where governance arrangements are somewhat more insulated and capital is more patient. At the same time, employee well-being across all organizational types appears greater in coordinated market economies, which isn’t surprising given the relatively greater strength of labor unions and other pro-worker institutions in that type of country.

Advocates for improving work often focus on work-related laws and institutions such as unions. But we shouldn’t overlook how organizational governance, such as a strong shareholder ethos, also affects human resources and worker well-being.

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Source: John W. Budd and J. Ryan Lamare (2025) "Organizational Governance and Trade-Offs Between Pay and Subjective Employee Well-Being: A Comparative Analysis," British Journal of Industrial Relations. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12860. 

The article is open access, or you can watch our animated video overview.

Homo Economicus Sings the Blues, And We All Suffer For It

 In last month’s post, I contrasted the positive, intrinsic view of work that underlies high-road HR strategies with the negative, instrumental view of work frequently seen in songs about work. Continuing with the theme of how we think about work, varying perspectives on work often correspond with assumptions about work embedded in different academic disciplines. In general terms, economics treats work as a commodity and as a lousy activity endured because of a need for money, whereas psychology focuses on personal fulfillment, and sociology on social norms.

Most songs on work are consistent with how most economists think about work. And thus, work songs are a revealing way to illustrate the dominant assumptions about work inherent in economic analyses—work as a commodity, as a pain cost, and as an opportunity cost.

In a commodity conceptualization of work, labor is an abstract quantity of productive value governed by the impersonal forces of supply and demand. We can see this reflected in songs that lament factory closings due to cheaper labor elsewhere, such as Billy Joel’s Allentown or Harry Chapin’s The Day They Closed the Factory Down:

      So they're moving somewhere else now
      With their cloths and fabric press
      They found themselves another town
      Where they'll make shirts for less

In terms of the actual work experience, the mainstream economics view of work is that it’s the opposite of something that brings you positive utility. That is, the direct experience of work makes you worse off. Traditionally this was seen as a pain cost. We can see this reflected in songs about long hours, hot and dangerous working conditions, or, as in Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, bad bosses and disrespect:

      Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin'
      Barely gettin' by, it's all takin' and no givin'
      They just use your mind and they never give you credit
      It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it
 
      9 to 5, for service and devotion
      You would think that I would deserve a fair promotion
      Want to move ahead but the boss won't seem to let me
      I swear sometimes that man is out to get me
 
      They let your dream, just watch 'em shatter
      You're just a step on the boss man's ladder
      But you got dreams he'll never take away

In modern economic theorizing, work doesn’t have to be inherently bad (a pain cost), but working can still make you worse off it reduces the amount of time you can spend doing things that you find more enjoyable (an opportunity cost):

      It's always better on holiday, so much better on holiday
      That's why we only work when we need the money
      It's always better on holiday, so much better on holiday
      That's why we only work when we need the money
      (from Jacqueline by Franz Ferdinand)

So why work? To earn money to live. That is, Workin’ for a Livin’ in the words of Huey Lewis & The News. But don’t oversimplify and take this to mean that economics predicts that people won’t work hard. Rather, economics predicts that people will work hard when the pay is worth it, as captured by Gretchen Wilson’s Work Hard, Play Harder.

While songs can usefully illustrate these perspectives on work that underlie economic approaches to work, perhaps they run the risk of normalizing these approaches. If the nature of work is seen as beyond our control, then instead we might just focus on Working for the Weekend. But there ought to be better ways. Partly this entails increasing our demands for better work. But we also need to dig deeper. In particular, making work into a commodity in our collective imaginations dehumanizes it, reducing workers to productive inputs tracked in headcount analyses and income statements. This sterile conceptualization is not innocuous—in contrast, it’s a key conceptual step towards exploitation. That is, it’s harder for leaders to exploit workers who they see as human rather than as numbers in spreadsheet.

      I work my back till it's racked with pain
      The boss can't even recall my name
      I show up late and I'm docked, it never fails
      I feel like just another, spoke in a great big wheel
      Like a tiny blade of grass in a great big field
 
      To workers I'm just another drone
      To Ma Bell I'm just another phone
      I'm just another statistic on a sheet
      To teachers I'm just another child
      To IRS I'm another file
      I'm just another consensus on the street
      (from Feel Like a Number by Bob Seger)

Also, economics perspectives on work implicitly or explicitly emphasize individual free choice. If you don’t like your job, tell your boss to Take this Job and Shove It, and then find something better. But we need to recognize that labor markets don’t always work as nicely as mainstream economics wants to assume. There can be power differential in societal institutions and discrimination. Not everyone has the same options. Not everyone is rewarded fairly. Economic theorizing on work (e.g., personnel economics), and mainstream economics more generally, often sanitizes this by ascribing different outcomes to different personal choices or productive characteristics rather the systemic inequalities.

Unsurprisingly given their roots in real life experiences, there are songs that can remind us of the imbalances that workers must navigate. Class-based inequalities are evident in Worker's Song by Dropkick Murphys:

      We're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die
      The first ones in line for that pie in the sky
      And we're always the last when the cream is shared out
      For the worker is working when the fat cat's about

Margo Price’s Pay Gap and Cher’s Working Girl address gender inequality. And Nina Simone’s Backlash Blues starkly reminds us of race-based inequalities and discrimination which must not be overlooked:

      You give me second class houses
      And second class schools
      I know you think that all colored people
      Are just second class fools
      Mr. Backlash, I’m gonna leave you
      With the blues, yes I am
 
      When I try to find a job
      To earn a little cash
      All you got to offer
      Is your mean old white backlash
      But the world is big
      Big and bright and round
      And it’s full of other folks like me
      Who are black, yellow, beige, and brown
      Mr. Backlash, I’m gonna leave you
      With the blues, yes I am

In conclusion, then, the economics assumption about work being lousy is richly illustrated in a wide range of songs about work. But as a society, we should challenge why work is so lousy while also questioning the implications of other longstanding hallmarks of traditional economic thought—seeing work as a commodity, defaulting to assumptions of competitive markets, and embracing self-interest as the fabric of societal interactions. Homo economicus has many reasons to be singing the blues, and we all pay the price.