Do Labor Laws Matter? The Density Decline and Convergence Thesis Revisited
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Under the density decline and convergence thesis, market forces are gradually eroding union density levels, leading to convergence with the U.S. level throughout the developed world. A key implication is that the U.S. decline has been unavoidable and that little, including labor law reforms, can be done to reverse it. Canada appears to refute this thesis, for it has stronger laws, and density is double that of the United States. Yet (1) Canada's higher public‐sector density may mask private‐sector declines, (2) any private‐sector differences simply may reflect a tendency for Canada to lag the United States, and (3) labor law may not explain U.S.–Canada differences. This article explores these possibilities, finding little support for them. It concludes that a strong case can be made for Canadian‐style labor law reforms but that such reforms may not be sufficient by themselves to revitalize the U.S. labor movement.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.030 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.022 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.012 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".