Roland Zullo

University of Michigan | U-M · School of Social Work

In the United States, right‐to‐work (RTW) laws impose the open shop on labour unions. I test whether RTW affects the frequency and outcomes of union representation petitions. Quasi‐experimental tests reveal no association between RTW law and the volume of certification petitions filed and that fewer certification petitions are withdrawn under RTW....

Karl Polanyi’s The great transformation emphasized the importance of non-market institutions for social equity and stability. In that same era, Friedrich Hayek postulated in The road to serfdom that superior economies were market-based and featured minimal government. I compare these worldviews in relation to property and violent crime. Using US co...

Burden shifting is an increase in risk or responsibility for coworkers or clients caused by inadequate agent performance. In this study, focus group testimony from corrections officers is used to elucidate burden shifting in the prison context. In 2013, Michigan privatized prison food service management statewide, which set in motion a series of ne...

Why does contracting underperform in the production of publicly financed goods? Producers for private markets survive through marketism, defined as the strategic exclusion of segments of a community, whereas producers of publicly financed goods are pressured to be inclusive. Inclusivity is achieved through universalism, an operational mode with thr...

The authors review research on the destabilizing effects of defense department reallocations at the firm and community levels, with the intent to inform current intervention policy for assisting firms and regions dependent on defense spending and to lay the groundwork for evaluative research. The existing literature provides at least 10 firm-level...

I investigate the feasibility of completely privatizing prison physical and mental health service. The study is based on bid documents from Michigan’s 2012 exploration of privatized health care, along with historical documents. Five lessons are reported: (1) Price differences are largely attributable to staffing strategies, with private agents usin...

While considerable efforts have been made by legislators, business associations, and political organizations to pass right-to-work (RTW) laws in states across the country, the empirical evidence on the effect of adopting an RTW law on labor market outcomes and state budgets is both varied and mixed. This article provides a forecast on the effect of...

Alcohol-related income generation is compared across monopoly and license off-premise alcohol regulatory models in U.S. states, 1977-2010. An optimum organizational-ownership mix is found when states directly own alcohol wholesale and employ a network of state-owned retailers serving urban regions and private agents serving less-populated regions....

This document is one of the seven technical reports completed for the Hydraulic Fracturing in Michigan Integrated Assessment conducted by the University of Michigan. During the initial phase of the project, seven faculty-led and student-staffed teams focused on the following topics: Technology, Geology/Hydrogeology, Environment/Ecology, Human Healt...

One consequence of the 2007-2008 financial crisis was an abrupt shift from bank-based to direct federal student loans. This momentous change required the Department of Education to rapidly establish the capacity to service loans, which was achieved by outsourcing this responsibility to four large for-profit firms and a group of smaller regional ent...

I compare the effects of labor union member density and religious adherent density on apolitical and political types of civic engagement. Results indicate that religious and union activists are involved in civic affairs, but only unions elevate prosocial behavior among persons that are not in a church or union. For political forms of civic engageme...

Trend analyses indicate that the union movement is becoming less white and more female. In this research, the author examines the transitions of persons in and out of the union movement in order to understand whether diversification is due to behavior or structure. Results indicate that African Americans transitioned comparatively faster than other...

Using state-level data, 2001 through 2009, I test whether union density and right-to-work (RTW) laws predict worker fatalities in either the construction industry or in construction occupations. For both indices, higher levels of unionization equate with lower fatality rates. Right-to-work laws show no direct association with fatality rates. Howeve...

Using a county-level population analysis, the author examines whether the interaction between religious groups and class and inequality predict voter turnout and voter preference for George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election. Results indicate that for counties with high densities of mainline Protestants, lower income, and lower education mea...

Drawing on two independent datasets, the author examines organized labor’s role as a benefactor for community-based charity. A population-level analysis of Michigan data indicates that union member density and union local density are positively associated with per capita donations to regional United Ways. An individual-level analysis of CPS data co...

Using Census of Governments data, preferences for private and intermunicipal contracting by U.S. counties during the 1992–2002 period are modeled as a function of established economic and political factors. After distinguishing between private and intermunicipal contracting, there is no evidence that fiscal stress induces privatization. High debt l...

Conditions are ripe for a reunion between organized labor and progressive social activists. Nonetheless, experiments in labor-community coalitions offer few examples of lasting collaborations. We report on a pilot project that uses critical pedagogy to create ongoing, region-based labor-community coalitions. We discuss context, theory, process, and...

Using an assisted survey approach, we compare health care service employees' perceptions of work between public and privatized health care settings. Results indicate that laundry, maintenance, food service, and housekeeping staff employed by privately managed medical institutions have more negative perceptions of job rewards than their public secto...

Presentation of a Longitudinal Study of EAP, Work Life and Wellness Programs over a 20 year span

Using county-level data, the author evaluates how labor affected the general pop¬ulation’s political behavior during the 2000 U.S. presidential election. Voter turnout increased with unionization, but at declining rates with higher levels of unionization. The unionization/voter turnout link was stronger in counties with lower median incomes, higher...

National Transit Data from 1993 through 2004 is analyzed to examine the effects of contracting out on the cost efficiency and resource allocation of motor bus and demand response services. For motor bus service, results indicate no difference in cost between in-house and fully contracted operations. Contracting has a weak curvilinear association to...

Notably absent from the discourse on labor union revitalization is a reevaluation of the strategic role of labor education. Using ethnographic methods, the authors elucidate four dimensions of a Freireian-based labor education program, characterized as (1) where rank-and-file unionists teach, (2) where shared experience is the basis for knowledge,...

This essay examines the strategy of political voluntarism, defined as a neutral political affiliation, by testing whether or not union political action committee (PAC) donations to congresspersons in the 2000 election cycle affected their roll call votes in subsequent years. Results indicate that overall, the Republicans became more antilabor in th...

The author places the departure by the Change to Win Coalition from the AFL–CIO in contextual and theoretical terms. For context, it is argued that associational rights for U.S. wage-earners have historically and generally been subordinate to the rights of capital owners. As such, the rules regulating industrial relations tend to punish broad acts...

A historic concern over child welfare privatization is whether the unidirectional incentives arising from contract relations is consistent with the multi-dimensional role of protecting children. To explore how public agencies resolve this tension, I examine the distribution of casework between a department of human services and five private foster...

Prior research linking public-private contracts with political donations has not examined the dynamics of exchange. Evaluating data from Wisconsin, I test for a temporal association between the awarding of public-private construction contracts and political donations by construction firm owners and executives. My findings indicate that donation act...

Four cases are analyzed to explore the strategic behavior of public unions when they confront privatization. Four sets of hypotheses emerge from the case evidence. First, the private sector demonstrates no inherent advantage in the delivery of public goods, particularly when economic and social costs are taken into account. Second, economically fea...

A resource-mobilization theoretical framework is used to model voter turnout as a function of contacts performed by a politically active labor council. Results indicate that the probability of voting in the 2000 national election was 27 to 17 percentage points higher for grocery workers that received a get-out-the-vote telephone contact just before...

Drawing on examples from the automobile and medical products industries, this paper outlines an approach for confronting outsourcing. Two dimensions define the approach. The first in volves a direct challenge to the costing method used by manage ment in make-or-buy decisions; for various reasons, management often employs a flawed comparison method...

For the AFL-CIO, the 2000 presidential election was a test of a revised political action program that concentrated resources on “issue based” political education and intensive member contact. Using quasi-experimental methods, I evaluate the effect of direct mailings, telephone calls, and workplace mobilization on the presidential preferences and vo...

Michigan's home and community-based Medicaid Waiver program (MIChoice) has been criticized for enrolling people who are relatively high functioning. This study examined the physical and cognitive function of a 2000-2001 cohort of MIChoice enrollees and found that about 10% can be considered high functioning, 32% medium functioning, and 58% low func...

Labor Studies Journal 27.4 (2003) 122-123 In American Labor Unions in the Electoral Arena, Asher, et al., combine ethnographic accounts, primary survey data from Ohio, and secondary data from the American National Election Studies to describe the context, outcomes, and limitations of labor's strategic shift toward member-based political mobilizatio...

Using an experimental design, the author examines the impact of AFL-CIO political education outreach on union members' perception of, and preferences for, political candidates in three 1996 Wisconsin congressional races. Contrary to the rational voter model, results show that a direct informational campaign has little effect on union member vote be...

Data from Milwaukee County is used to model child transitions from out-of-home care to a permanent setting as a function of child, parent, and placement factors. Placement factors emerge as robust predictors of transitions to permanency. The rate of a transition to permanency is lower for children that experience private foster care, particularly f...

Research techniques show that Wisconsin AFL-CIO political mailings had limited impact in elections. Results imply outreach should be broadly distributed to all members regardless of political leanings and be combined with personal contacts.

H ow have employee assistance (EAP), work-life and wellness programs changed in the businesses that were recognized as "family friendly" 15 years earlier? Harsh economic conditions have threatened discretionary benefits that positively affect talent recruitment, retention, employee produc-tivity and corporate image over this very same time period (...