The essential argument of this book is that the current crisis of organized labor ought to be considered in terms of the local context of labor-management relations; that is, the communities in which men and women live and work. This argument, and the overall logic of the book, are premised upon two suppositions. First, whether by design or necessity, the structure of New Deal national labor legislation has sustained and maintained distinctive local labor-management practices. Second, as the economies of American communities (and the world) have become highly interdependent, reflecting the evolution of corporate structure and trade between economies, unions have found it difficult achieving a similar scale of integration. Indeed, the crisis of the union movement can be traced, in part, to unions' dependence upon inter-community solidarity, a fragile democratic ideal which is often overwhelmed by economic imperatives operating at higher scales in other places.

In evaluating others' analytical frameworks which have been used to study the recent performance of American labor unions, I have been surprised at the neglect or disinterest shown by scholars of the intersection between unions and communities. Too often, the diversity of local experience is rationalized in terms of a supposedly all-embracing national labor-management relations system, despite bitter disputes between labor and management which seem to have the community as an essential ingredient. And, too often, it is imagined that unions are just like corporations; national and international institutions, structured as hierarchical top-down command organizations reflecting the imperatives of the market.