Can a seemingly robust labor union simply collapse? The news is full of stories about growing union power – but just because a union is strong now doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way. Important unions have put themselves out of business before. The International Typographical Union, or ITU, is one such example. Once it was among the nation’s most significant unions, but it disappeared in just a few decades.
I am a business school professor who is fascinated by the lessons of the ITU – first, because I teach courses about unions, and second, because I inadvertently participated in the ITU’s demise. But more on that later.
