Craft Unions and Minorities: Determinants of Change in Admission Practices

Abstract

Race-based exclusionary practices of craft unions were the focus of intense political protest and legal action in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Previous research suggests that these pressures were followed by higher rates of minority entry into both apprentice programs and the trades themselves, but these analyses have not controlled for applicants' human capital characteristics nor for changing labor market conditions. In this paper, I analyze the success of minority and white applicants to a large craft union apprentice program before, during, and after a period of intense political conflict over discriminatory admission practices. I evaluate the predictions of the monopoly (bargaining power) model of discrimination, while controlling for variables relevant to human capital and split labor market (institutional) explanations. The results generally support the monopoly model explanation of the bases of change in discriminatory practices, while also indicating the importance of business cycle, human capital, and institutional processes in unionized construction labor markets.

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