Friday, October 2, 2015

#6 - Evaluation of authority and currency of book in post #3


Unions in crisis? : the future of organized labor in America (published 2008), by Michael Schiavone.

Michael Schiavone’s LinkedIn page describes him as an Independent Researcher who is currently teaching labor studies as a visiting lecturer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  (I checked the University of Illinois’s web site, and it confirms him as teaching there, in the School of Labor and Employment Relations.)  Schiavone previously taught at the University of South Australia and Flinders University (in Australia).  He has a PhD from Australian National University.  Besides Unions in Crisis, he has published a book titled Sports and Labor in the United States (described on the SUNY Press website as an "overview and analysis of labor relations in the big four American sports"), and he is apparently under contract for another book, Austerity and the Labor Movement.  LinkedIn also lists 10 other publications by Schiavone (book chapters and journal articles), mainly focused on the topic area of labor.  Given Schiavone’s education, employment, and other publications, he appears to be well qualified for writing on the topic of labor and unions.

Unions in Crisis was published in 2008.  The fortunes of unions don't seem to have changed much since 2008 (it appears that they are in as much of a crisis now as they were then), so much of what Schiavone published in 2008 should still be useful and accurate information about unions.  But a lot can happen in seven years that could affect the state of unions, so a research project on the current state of unions should be informed by some sources that have been published more recently than Unions in Crisis. 

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