Samir Sonti interviews Sandy Jacoby, author of Labor in the Age of Finance: Pensions, Politics, and Corporations from Deindustrialization to Dodd-Frank. Jacoby’s book and this conversation offer insights into some of the strategic choices organized labor has made since the 1990s in the face of burgeoning corporate power and its own diminished membership rates. With union density in the private sector hovering around 6 percent and a labor law regime that enables employers to resist unionization, many unions have sought other forms of leverage. Those strategies have focused on both legislative reform, Dodd Frank for example, and union pension shareholder activism. In both realms, Jacoby argues, organized labor’s tactics have elevated shareholder influence within corporate governance and exacerbated the financialization of the economy.
