What do unions do?—Evaluation and commentary

Most books in the social sciences quietly slip into oblivion soon after publication. Very few remain frequently cited 20 years later and only a handful merit a retrospective symposium. One of these books is Freeman and Medoff’s What Do Unions Do? When it was published, a reviewer (Mitchell, 1985: 253) labeled the book “a landmark in social science research.“ Two decades later this verdict still rings true. The authors of WDUD should be justifiably proud.