Tom Juravich - Research Focus

Research Focus

Juravich's research interests focus on union organizing, comprehensive campaigns (also known as corporate campaigns or comprehensive campaigns), the nature of work, and labor history and culture.

Juravich is a highly regarded expert on labor union organizing and collective bargaining strategies. Along with co-author Kate Bronfenbrenner, Juravich introduced rigorous statistical methodology and survey techniques to a field which had been dominated by case studies. His most notable contribution in this regard were two papers. The first was the 1994 work 'The Promise of Union Organizing in the Public and Private Sectors,' co-authored with Bronfenbrenner. In 1995, Bronfenbrenner and Juravich co-wrote a second work, 'Union Tactics Matter: The Impact of Union Tactics on Certification Elections, First Contracts, and Membership Rates.' Based in part on Bronfenbrenner's doctoral dissertation, the two papers were widely distributed throughout the labor movement and had a significant impact in promoting union organizing as a key issue in the 1995 AFL-CIO presidential race. Both papers have been combined, updated and published, in various journals and books, a number of times since then.

Juravich is also well known for a study of anti-union tactics utilized by employers in NLRB-sponsored union organizing elections. In 1995, Bronfenbrenner and Juravich co-wrote 'The Impact of Employer Opposition on Union Certification Win Rates: A Private/Public Sector Comparison.' Previously, individual labor unions—and, to a lesser extent, the AFL-CIO—had collected anecdotal evidence on employer anti-union tactics and strategies. Much of this work was kept secret, for fear that anti-union employers would realize that unions were learning how to respond and modify and improve their anti-union tactics accordingly. This 1995 paper, however, brought this research agenda into the open and made it a topic for academic discussion. The paper grouped and categorized anti-union tactics and strategies, and used surveys and statistical analysis to judge their effectiveness. This paper also had a galvanizing effect on the American labor movement, creating a behind-the-scenes cottage industry in analyzing anti-union consultants and anti-union organizing campaign tactics. The work of the AFL-CIO-affiliated organization, American Rights at Work, and its opposite number, the employer-financed Center for Union Facts, both stem from the emphasis on opposition research engendered by Bronfenbrenner's paper.

Outside the academic setting, Juravich has shown a significant interest in labor culture, such as folk songs, music, poems, photography, folk art and stories. For several years, he has been collecting the folk songs and picket line music from the American labor movement.

Dovetailing his interest in labor culture and his academic interest in the nature of work, Juravich has been working with photographer Paul Shoul on a collection of oral history and workers' stories to be accompanied by photographs of workers and their workplaces. The project is called "Bread WithOUT Roses." The project is a play on the phrase "bread and roses," a call for dignity and workplace respect commonly associated with a 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The text and photography project is designed to showcase worsening conditions on in the American workplace.

Juravich's best-known work, however, is most likely Ravenswood: The Steelworkers' Victory and the Revival of American Labor, a book he co-authored with Kate Bronfenbrenner.