David Lewin on employee voice in a capitalist economy and the re-emergence of unionization

David Lewin, the Neil Jacoby Emeritus Professor of Management and Human Resources at UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management. joins the podcast to discuss what sparked his interest in unions and grievance procedures, the Federal Trade Commission's new plan to ban noncompete agreements, and why unionization will re-emerge in the U.S. south and elsewhere.

In this episode, Lewin and Ashenfelter discuss: 

• Lewin’s experience growing up in Los Angeles as the son of Polish and Czechoslovakian immigrants, his education at California State University at Northridge (undergraduate) and UCLA (graduate), and his first faculty position at Columbia University in New York.
• Lewin’s early interest in grievance systems and arbitration/dispute resolution systems. “I think it comes down to the role of employee voice in a capitalist economy. And to me, that is the singular focus of most industrial relations studies beginning in 1947…”
• Lewin’s perspective on noncompete contracts and their forthcoming ban by the Federal Trade Commission. “And if it were just executives, that would be one thing, but you know that the franchisors, the franchisors and franchisees, the restaurants and so forth, they have noncompete agreements for their cooks. I mean, come on, it's just outrageous.”
• Lewin’s experience testifying in the famous High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation class action lawsuit brought against Apple, Adobe, Google, and Intel, and others in 2010.
• Lewin’s perspective on the potential for unionization at companies like Starbucks and Amazon. “I think we might be at a tipping point because even though it's hardly ever referred to as employee voice, all of the things that I see these days are people who want to have more voice, whether it's protests at Columbia or a positive union vote at VW…I think we may be on the tip of a re-emerging unionization, even though there are alternatives to unionization.”

David Lewin earned his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1971. "The Work Goes On"—a podcast produced as Princeton's Industrial Relations Section (IR Section) celebrates its 100th anniversary—is an oral history of industrial relations and labor economics hosted by Princeton's Orley Ashenfelter.