"My grandfather recognized that unions did have two faces. They did bargain for higher wages, yet also provided a vehicle with which management and workers could collaborate," Medoff recalls.
As a teenager, Medoff worked during a summer in one of the textile plants, sorting out cashmere in what he describes as a hot room filled with dirty air. "They gave me the worst job, so I got first hand experience about what bad working conditions were like," he says.
After a successful career as a lacrosse player at Brown, where he was known as "the Woonsocket Rocket," Medoff came to Harvard and received his Ph.D in 1975, and has been on the Faculty ever since. He has published a number of articles on internal labor markets, and also on topics such as salaries, promotions and seniority within firms. Medoff teaches Economics 1660. "Operation of Labor Markets" as well as a graduate seminar. His only hobby, he says, is playing basketball with his three-year-old son, Justin.
At the same time Medoff was doing work on internal labor markets, Freeman was publishing reports for the Department of Labor and the American Economics Association on the positive effects unions have on productivity because of reduced turnover. After meeting at Harvard, the two decided in 1976 that by pooling their combined knowledge of internal and external labor markets, they could write a comprehensive study of unions.
Freeman says that the two already sensed there was ample evidence in favor of unions even before the formal research began. "We knew that there was something sitting there and things came out more or less consistent with our earlier data," he says.
That the book, which was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation to NBER and published by Basic Books, took eight years to produce colleagues call a testimony to the duo's thoroughness as researchers. "The book was four years overdue but we wanted to be careful and cautious," says Freeman, adding. "Research isn't a bunch of quickies."
"We take being right very seriously," Medoff adds.
The critical response to What Do Unions Do has been overwhelmingly favorable "What they say isn't controversial, because they're so thorough," says Bell Freeman adds, however that the Journal of Labor Research recently published" an incredible attack on us by someone who hasn't read the book Nobody who's attacked us has had any data or evidence. They just scream.
But both Freeman and Medoff say they realize that it will take more than one book to halt the decay of unions taking place nationwide. Including decline in membership, management's hostility, and non-enforcement of labor laws by the government. In 1954, a peak year, 34 percent of the non-agricultural work force belonged to unions while today that number stands at 18 percent From automobiles to airlines, management is demanding wage concessions from unions and in some sectors even seeking their demise. In their book Freeman and Medoff urge government to enforce right-to-organize laws and halt the illegal anti-union campaigns that management has been conducting. While in the 1970s unions bargained to keep wages in step with inflation, such attempts today, in the face of management offensives, are likely to fail.
"Unions will be sobered in the coming years," says Medoff. "The average union will not be trying to get big wage increases as they did in the 1970s." Instead, the authors say, unions will be devoting most of their energy to simply making up lost ground.
Members' top concern is how democratic their union is, argues Associate Professor of Economics James L. Medoff, and while there's a "lack of [leadership] turnover at the national level, ...there's a lot of turnover at the local level."
Professor of Economics Richard B. Freeman discredits the idea of infamous corruption associated with unions, saying, "There are more crooked businessmen than union members."