11/10/22: Suresh Naidu

[GabeNicholson]

Comment below with a well-developed question or comment about the reading for this week's workshop!

If you would really like to ask your question in person, please place two exclamation points before your question to signal that you really want to ask it.

Please post your question by Tuesday 11:59 PM, We will also ask you all to upvote questions that you think were particularly good. There may be prizes for top question askers.

[sdbaier]

Dear Professor Naidu,

Thank you for sharing your work on workplace networks and organizational outcomes. I am particularly curious about how you constructed different worker networks and formulated the two modes of organizing.

(1) I am not sure if the United For Respect field note data covers (or allows to measure) this, but is there any way of assessing the degree to which persuasion is naturally occurring through existing networks versus spreading through newly formed ties because of formal mobilizing efforts? Put differently, given the a priori existence of personal and professional networks among coworkers, is co-worker persuasion wholly an effect of the preexisting network structure? For example, in the Pico Rivera (CA) location, Dora could be bringing other workers to meetings because they have been her long-time connections, or because her goal is to achieve a critical mass of signed cards.

(2) With regards to the two modes of organizing, how do organizers map a workplace network prior to expending their effort? Is this done through observing without intervening? For example, how do we know that Dora is “is clearly central” whereas Juan is not for the Pico Rivera (CA) location.

(3) For the mobilization-driven mode of organizing, how are the most easily persuaded workers who are not already persuaded identified (for organizers) and how is the worker proclivity towards unionizing measured (for researchers)?

Thank you, I am looking forward to your talk this Thursday!

[Dededon]

Dear Professor Naidu,
Thank you for sharing about your findings about the U.S. unionization movements! The topic researched has been very inspiring for me so far. So here are my questions:

1. Can you illustrate some more about the data collection process? I wonder whether this methodology could be migrated into researches about social movements.

2. How could future works implement the factor of anti-unionization efforts by the employers? Can they be modeled as coefficients in the De Groot model? Like, two sets of actors competing against each other?

Thank you for noticing!

[mingxuan-he]

Hello Professor Naidu! In the qualitative evidence section of the paper, it appears that some employees are hesitant to join OUR Walmart because they did not "want to be the first person in the store to do so". Did you observe this as a common belief? If so what impact did it have on the structure of membership network? Has it led to high store-level clustering, or even two extreme equilibria following the campaign, where for some stores there is no OUR members and for other stores there are many?

[nswxin]

Hi Professor Naidu！Thank you so much for coming with your meaningful findings. Your study is based on the research and examination of Walmart and I assume that the working population is unique with some particular features. Therefore, my question is will your result vary much if its for different populations and labor groups, for example, teachers at school?

[shaangao]

Hi Professor Naidu, thank you for sharing your research! I'm interested in knowing more about how you think the effect would potentially be similar & different in workplaces with different hierarchical structures, different ideologies, different levels of initial solidarity, etc. For example, in organizing a graduate student union vs a Walmart worker union.

[KekunH]

Hello Professor Naidu, that is very interesting research. Your finding that using networks in the organizing process is positively associated with organizing outcomes seems very robust, but you also claim that even the best possible networking strategy could not single-handily lead to the success of a campaign. So I would like to hear your personal opinion on why the networking strategy could not have a "game-changer" effect on organizing success.

[zihua-uc]

Dear Prof. Naidu, you brought up the point that technological and organizational changes to facilitate interactions among workers can promote organizing effort and collective action. However, many workers are opting for remote work (work from home) since the pandemic, reducing opportunities for interactions between coworkers. What are your views on this and how it affects the future of labor movements?

[taizeyu]

Dear Prof. Naidu, Thank you for your presentation. I am curious that how can we use the conclusion of this research in the real world. Could we evaluate the cost nd benefit of the workplace? Since always better workplaces are expensive.

[bowen-w-zheng]

Hi Prof. Naidu,
Thank you so much for sharing your work. You mentioned that the network structure is intimatedly related to performance outcome - is it possible to construct a even more detailed mechanistic model to explain this process such that one can maximize over the space of network structures given certain constraints?

[JoeHelbing]

Good Morning Professor Naidu,

There was some talk during the Trump administration from the conservative side about the potential for sectoral bargaining as a method both for increasing pre-tax incomes for low wage workers with the secondary benefit (from the perspective of the think tanks discussing the idea) of dismantling Union political power. I'm curious how and whether your research on organizing mixes with the sectoral bargaining system we see in Scandinavian countries and being discussed in the US. Also more generally how you see that sectoral bargaining system's different organizing paradigm potentially effect political and legal structures in the US.

[borlasekn]

Thank you for sharing your work Professor Naidu. One of my interests is looking at education research. As I do this, one of the discussions is the importance of teacher unions, not only in advocating for teacher resources but advocating for student resources as well. I was wondering how you viewed your research fitting in with unions for people who are, technically, state or federal employees versus unions for say, private companies. Is there inherent differences in the network structures of these types of unions, especially given the connection to performance outcomes that might differ by type of union?

[erweinstein]

Hi Professor Naidu,

My question is about the organizer notes and the use of similar types of unstructured qualitative data like them for quantitative social science research. First, I want to say I think it's a great idea to look at these notes to learn about the relationships between employees and how organizers interact with the existing employee networks, so I don't intend to suggest that your approach is unsound. That said, A) How sensitive is this to issues of valence and context, for example, what if in a certain note Employee 1 is telling the organizer that Employee 2 has been actively obstructing their attempts to get a promotion, while Employee 3 has been supportive of them? In your work, it seems like it would be relatively easy to flag possible cases of this issue and verify them with a small amount of researcher or research assistant time, but that too is because we have substantial preexisting knowledge about "relationships among coworkers in a given workplace" as a type of social network and what types of social facts those linkages correspond to. B) Relatedly, You extract two types of information from the notes, "organizer attention to a worker" as measured by number of notes, and "other workers' names in the text of the notes as indicators of relationships between workers..." as measured dichotomously (1 or 0 for whether or not an employee's name is mentioned). This seems like it works well, although other researchers might be tempted to try to extract additional information from the notes or their project's equivalent qualitative data (for example, via sentiment analysis) in ways that are more subjective, and introduce far more "researcher degrees of freedom". So is (part of) the reason you didn't correct for the type of issue I mention in (A) to avoid introducing this extra level of subjectivity? How would you recommend someone facing a similar situation with a similar type of unstructured, note-like qualitative data approach this tradeoff, and the overall researcher decision process about what variables to (attempt to) generate and study from those qualitative data?

[xinyi030]

Dear Prof. Naidu,

Thanks for sharing your great work! This paper constructs a novel measure of network-driven organizing (NDO) based on the relationship between an organizer's attention to a worker and that worker's network centrality. And it is validated that this measure has a positive correlation with workplace campaign success. 

I strong agree with the NDO measure in workplace context. And below is my question:
I wonder whether we may use this "positive correlation" to gauge circumstances outside of the workplace. Will children be more effective, for instance, if parents pay more attention to children who cooperate to create a mud castle on a beach? Thanks for your answer!

[LynetteDang]

Thank you so much Professor Naidu for sharing your work with us, I am wondering how do you think a hiring freeze/recession will affect the social networks among workers and network-driven organizing, especially after the COVID-19 pandemics? Thanks!

[edelahayeUChicago]

Hi Professor,

Thank you so much for your paper, it's been my favourite one so far this year! My question relates to how the dynamics of unionisation relates to the degree of monopoly power by the employing firm in their product market (rather than in their labour market) and how the current change of antitrust stance by the Biden Administration might consequently change unionisation. On the one hand, labour organising offers the potential for employees to capture some of the monopoly profit present in a high-market power industry and so more active antitrust action might harm labour's bargaining power (i.e. if the firm faces a real constraint due to competition, it has more credible opposition to wage rises/other demands). But on the other hand if the competition faced by a firm is higher, they might need to keep employees happier to ensure efficiency in an efficiency wage manner (depending on the type of work) and hence increase labour's power.

To what extent do you feel these two policies interact and how do you think the impact of technology on market concentration (rather than on labour productivity) will shape the future of unionisation?

[GuangjieXu]

Hi Professor Naidu, thank you for sharing your findings. I've recently learned about research ethics and I'm curious how you can meet the four ethical principles of research in your research process?

[awaidyasin]

Hi Prof., thanks for sharing your work. JEP is one of my favorite econ journals to read.

Your article does talk about the effects of unionization and the processes through which that institution could be strengthened in an organization. But I was wondering if unions at the same time could also be a way for certain groups to accumulate power within the employee hierarchy (i.e., it could lead to a power struggle among the employees) and, hence, the utility of a union may be significantly overstated and overemphasized. For instance, an immigrant worker would be way less convinced to form (or even join) a union due to their non-permanent work status (so as not to antagonize the management). But, at the same time, others with a more solid legal foundation might find it beneficial to form a union, therefore, getting themselves represented a lot more in the issues concerning the whole workforce. This might, in turn, create incentives for employees to segregate further and for the firms to hire a higher proportion of international employees, who will be "easier" to work with.

Would be great to hear your thoughts on this!

[JunoWuu]

Hi Prof. Naidu,
Thank you for sharing your work. I really like the section where you mentioned the low-wages younger workers. This is closely related to our generations as we are right now the younger workers who are more likely to get minimum wage. While some of the low wages lead to a fast contagion, others are not. I wonder how important this group is in the union and how the contagion moves on really fast.

[ChongyuFang]

Hi Prof. Naidu, thanks a lot for sharing your work with us! Really excited to see an Econ professor here. Could you please give a brief intro on how your research is going to reshape the labor economics literature?

[Peihan12]

Hello Prof.Naidu, thanks for sharing your work! It gives me a brand-new insight into workplace networks and organizational outcomes. Would you have any policy suggestions in terms of organizing different kinds of companies/organizations? Thanks!

[Hongkai040]

Hi Professor Naidu, Thank you so much for sharing your work. If possible, could you elaborate more on the causality design in the lecture? I feel like I can understand the correlation analysis, but I wonder what kinds of assumptions are made to conclude that focus on workplace leaders is a successful determinant?

[sushanz]

Dear Professor Naidu, thank you for sharing and taking time with us! Labor union in economic perspectives is always a hot topic to discuss as under general conditions such a union has a well-behaved objective function. I wish we could hear more how you think of why it is important to have the union existing in the long term and protect our workers benefits in terms of economic and social significant values, as it matters to our day to day life.

[jinyz1220]

Hi Professor Naidu, thank you for sharing your enlightening work! In the paper, the organizer's attention to a worker was operationalized as " the number of notes indicating a conversation with that worker." I'm wondering if it's possible to include the emotional elements during the conversations or workers' self-reported perceived attention from the workers in the operational definition. In addition, would you expect to find similar associations between NDO and organizing success in other contexts that involves organizing activities and power hierarchy? Thank you!

[BaotongZh]

Hi Professor Naidu, thank you for bringing us such a great work. After reading your paper, I was just wondering how the unions remain reasonable bargaining power in the market ?

[fiofiofiona]

Hi Professor Naidu, thank you for sharing your research. I am curious if you would expect the same pattern of workplace networks and organizing outcomes across different industries or all types of workplace? For example, in a hybrid workplace that has both in person and remote workers, which has been very common since the pandemic began, do you expect finding the same result?

[secorey]

Dear Dr. Naidu,
Thank you for your presentation. This question is more about the application side of things, but I wonder if by focusing on workers central to a network, there is the implication that social pressure is what is driving workers to sign campaign cards. If people who have well-established social status within a workplace are driving the movement, then others are more likely to conform for the sake of being in a good standing with that person. If this is the case, then do you think that is an ethical method of collecting new members?

[ValAlvernUChic]

Hi Professor Naidu,

Thank you so much for your paper! What really struck me in the paper was the importance of social capital and worker solidarity for unions and how the increasing worker decentralization via hybrid/remote work might complicate that. Besides the immediate shift in labour specialization, I can imagine that a generally increased satisfaction with work might correlate to increased worker inequality. I'm also interested in how unionization in these hybrid workplace environments might look like in the future specifically in what capacities might collective bargaining look like?

Thank you!

[bningdling]

Hi Prof. Naidu,

Thank you for sharing your research with us! According to the paper, even the best possible networking strategy could not single-handily lead to the success of a campaign. I was wondering if you think an ultimate "perfect" strategy is possible to achieve and I'm curious about the practical implications of this argument.

[yjhuang99]

Dear Prof.Naidu,

Thanks for sharing with us! The research findings are quite interesting, especially that workplaces in which organizers who use network-driven organizing have more organizing success. I wonder whether your empirical results can be applied to other similar settings, and the practical suggestions to implement such strategies.

[yhchou0904]

Hi Professor Naidu,
Thank you for sharing your idea with us! We do understand the importance of a union and workplace organization, and also that these could indicate different aspects of a company or labor environment. I am just curious about the measurement created in the paper about network-directed organizing. I can understand the potential inference of centrality and organizer effects, but I am not sure how to explain the correlation between these two factors intuitively. Why choose correlation as the way to combine these two?

[Sirius2713]

Hi Professor Naidu,

Thanks for sharing your work. I'm whether how accidents such as Covid and layoffs impact the workplace networks. Especially for recent large-scale layoffs, do you envision that they would reinforce workplace networks or they would destroy networks?

[HongzhangXie]

Dear Professor Naidu, thank you so much for bringing up this interesting topic about labour economics, Union, and social network for us! The paper shows that the Union density in the United States is significantly decreased. One way to solve this problem is to show the union can "add value", which means, both improving the welfare level of workers and improving the profits of employers. The paper discusses some of the relevant research on working conditions and service economics. Beyond that, can we consider unions as part of employee welfare to attract competitive employees?

[sudhamshow]

Hi Professor Naidu,
Reading your research got me thinking of the merits and demerits of organised social capital. Several southern states which championed labour unions in the early twentieth century have introduced the 'Right to work' legislation, which allows people to hire workers irrespective of their membership in workers' unions. Earlier, access to several professions like teaching and mining was exclusive to members of these unions. This bill was supposedly introduced to help newcomers into the workforce who felt alienated or underrepresented. In a way, organised social capital turned out to be the problem it was supposed to abolish. Do you think there is a right way of institutionalising social capital today?

[XTang685]

Hello Professor Naidu,

Thank you for sharing you work with us! I am wondering if your conclusion can be applied in other situations. Looking forward to watching your presentation tomorrow.

[YLHan97]

Hi Professor Naidu,

Thanks for sharing your research with us. I have a question as follows:
In the article “Workplace Networks and the Dynamics of Labor Organizing”, you have mentioned that results rationalize a belief widely held by labor scholars and activists that organizing strategies that focus on workplace leaders are more likely to be successful, and suggest a statistic for organizing efficacy that could be operationalized by labor unions. Since I’m really interested in the network-driven organizing applied in real world, but not so much familiar with labor organzing area, would you please provide more real world examples in your relevant area?

[Ry-Wu]

Hi Professor Naidu,
Thank you for sharing your work! I'm wondering if there is any way to maximize the benefits of unions to employers and workers while minimizing the negative influences of them?

[iefis]

Hi Professor Naidu,
Thank you for sharing your work!
I am curious about how the strategic use of workplace networks might be applied to the unions organizing in a work environment not characterized by low-wage and high-turnover? Would it be more effective or less effective to organize following this network-based strategy?

[jiayan-li]

Hi Professor Naidu,

I love your idea that social scientists could cooperate with labor unions to generate new insights. You also mentioned the influence of online social networking sites on how labor unions operate. In that regard, my question is: to what degree do you think SNSs nowadays facilitate collective actions of labor unions or hinder them? What kind of research would you conduct to test the hypothesis?

[YutaoHeOVO]

Hi Professor Naidu,
I love the idea and have two questions. First one is about the Figure on the network structure. I guess this one focuses on the rubustness issue because it just says that the signed and unsigned workers’ network structure are the same and thus selection bias should be ruled out. Is this exactly the case? Moreover, I am thinking of the compliance issue (kinda similar to the LATE framework on compliance). Indeed we observe that signed workers’ perform differently, but I think the treatment might not effectively affect all the participants. So could you introduce how to guarantee the issues like the compliance of participants of the treatment?

[pranathiiyer]

Hi prof Naidu,
Thanks so much for your work! I was wondering how you might think some of your design and results could extend to more informal labour markets? I believe these too have structures and networks but are probably very different from a formal labour market.

[mintaow]

Hi Professor Naidu,

This is really interesting work! I am particularly curious about your perspective on the "tenacity" or "sustainability" of the organizing success revealed. Would it be possible that the workplace network only imposes a short-term effect on the organizing success and the positive influence dies out over time? Thanks!

[yunshu3112]

Hi Professor Naidu,

This is a very rich review of the existing literature on unionization. Thank you for bringing the problems and potential solutions to unions to the table. I have learned a lot from reading this paper.

I am especially interested in the idea of attaching union neutrality provisions to other government protections. This sounds like a feasible way of creating incentives for employers accepting unions. I wonder what are the potential cost or distortionary effect to the market? Why there are not a lot of existing policies that encourage firms' union neutrality using this method?

[WonjeYun]

Hello professor Naidu.
Thank you for introducing your interesting work. I do think that labor unions, not only in the US, is becoming different from the ones in the past. Regarding the differing attitude towards unions, I have two questions. First, in my home country (South Korea), there are evident trends of younger generations inclining more towards conservative political views, which consider some of the labor unions as a harm to the economy. How would you see this shift in political ideology as a factor that hinders union formation? Second, in contrast to traditional companies, emerging giant companies tend to have their CEOs / owners strongly influence their companies (If you are thinking about Elon Musk, yes I did think of him instantly, but I am talking about in a more general sense). Do you think your incentives or methods to facilitate union formation could work under influential CEOs / owners who strongly oppose labor union? How would you see the ownership factor as a risk or advantage towards union formation?

[jiehanL]

Hi professor Naidu, thank you for presenting your work! Looking from a game theory / formal theory perspective, I'm wondering how the introduction of networks would affect the equilibrium of the coordination problem in labor organizing.

[zbchen0129]

Hi Professor Naidu,
Thank you so much for sharing your work with us, which is really interesting and inspiring. I am wondering what is the logic of using membership cards signed and monthly dues as measures of collective actions. Thanks!

[shenyc16]

Dear Prof Naidu, thank you for sharing this insightful research with us. I find the work meaningful especially after COVID-19, which transforms the socioeconomic status of the society in many aspects. My question is that, since classic economists always connect employment with inflation rate, will you include the latter in a certain form as a factor in your empirical model? Thanks.

[j2401]

Hi Professor Naidu,

You mentioned in “Is There Any Future for a US Labor Movement?” that the weaker association between coworkers and the decline of human capital in the workplace might be a reason of the drop in union density. It sounds very plausible, and it immediately comes to my mind that it seems people now have access to a more extensive social network and are not limited to the physical places due to the technologies. Will this actually contribute to the possible emerge of a larger scale, and cross-sector union? I’m very curious about this logic.

[Anmin-Yang]

Hello Professor Naidu,
Thank you for sharing your work. Do you think whether web 3.0 would play a different role in the establishment of unions?

[hsinkengling]

Hi Prof. Naidu.

I think the generational difference in unionizing is a very interesting point. If we assume that ordinary workers would not have the knowledge about running a union campaign, then it makes sense that these new unionizing efforts must have some kind of "veteran union" groups that advise junior union groups. Do you see patterns of this in your data? If so, how do these strategy frameworks match on to the objective patterns you observe?

[franciszz992]

Hi Prof. Naidu,
It is indeed an interesting and innovative approach you took to measure organiser attention and centrality of the network by field notes. Would you mind illustrating further on how this should be a valid measurement and what are the concerns when drawing its casual relation to the collective action you study? Additionally, how are these findings relate to the matter of unionization ? Do we perceive them as similar economic problem?

[koichionogi]

Dear Prof. Naidu, Thank you so much for presenting your research. Your research on organizing power and the organization's success is unique and exciting. I wondered if this NDO correction would differ among industries or occupations. Would organizing have any industry-specific or occupation-specific impact on the outcomes in the workplace?

[C-y22]

Hello Professor Naidu, thank you for sharing this research. I am wondering since Covid-19 has largely changed people's lifestyle and thus the workplace, how do you think it will change the unionization?

[essicaJ]

Hello, Professor Naidu. Thank you so much for sharing your work with us. I wonder how the relationship between network organizing and campaign success would be generated in the real world beyond the Walmart sample in your study. Are these characteristics generalizable to other labor unions or are there some differences? Thanks so much!

[bairr1208]

Dear Professor Naidu,

Thank you for your kind sharing about the paper constructs a measure of network-driven organizing. And about the process through which the institution could be strengthened, I am deeply attracted. And for the low-wages younger workers, the market power on bargaining wages is under great debate, just, I am wondering, after COVID-19, the hybrid workplace is becoming more and more popular, what do you think is a possible solution to rearrange the bargaining?

[kunkunz111]

Dear Professor Naidu,

Thank you for your sharing! I am interested in how quantifying some abstract variables. So, could you share your experience with that?

[yiang-li]

Hi Prof Naidu,
Thanks so much for sharing your work! I wondered how might you think your findings could be generalized to other labor markets?

[hantaoxiao]

Hi Professor Naidu, thank for sharing the effect working on labor organizing and I have a question about How different ideology, represented by various parties, affect Union operation?

[Anmin-Yang]

Hi Professor Naidu, thank you for sharing this exciting work. I wonder if this methodology could apply to any mental dimensions beyond facial expressions. For example, can we use GAN to probe natural language impressions or human impressions of aesthetics?

[UjjwalSehrawat]

Dear Professor Naidu,

Thank you for the wonderful presentation of your paper. The discussion about a trend of drain/exodus of talented potential leaders from the unions and into other occupations is one that caught my attention. I am curious to think how one can deal with this paradox - this paradox is also observable in so many other areas such as transnational migration of workers and so on. Would be interested to hear your thoughts about that. Thank you, again.

Warm regards

[Toushirow1]

Dear Prof. Naidu, Thank you so much for sharing your research. What are the most effective strategies for organizations to repair their reputation and audience satisfaction following a transgression, and how do these strategies differ from traditional interpersonal amends-making approaches?