Paul Clark

Professional Bio

Paul F. Clark is a Professor of Labor and Employment Relations. He served as founding Director of the School of Labor and Employment Relations at Penn State from 2001-2021.

His research interests include employment relations in the U.S. healthcare industry; union structure, government, and administration; union member commitment and participation; new union member orientation and socialization; and police misconduct and discipline. He is the author or editor of six books, including Building More Effective Unions, first published by Cornell ILR Press in 2001, second edition 2009, and most recently Organizing and Collective Bargaining at the Crossroad: Renewal or Continued Decline? 2024, edited with Howard Stanger and John Delaney.

His research has appeared in the leading scholarly journals in industrial and labor relations and applied psychology. Clark regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on employment relations.  He has served as a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University and a Visiting Professor at Oxford University, the University of St. Andrews (Scotland, U.K.), the University of Strathclyde (Scotland, U.K.), the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Australia), Monash University (Australia), the University of Melbourne (Australia), Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), and the University of Arizona (U.S.).

Clark has also worked with unions in Pennsylvania and around the country on labor education programs and research projects for more than 40 years.  He regularly serves as a speaker/workshop instructor on topics such as building a stronger union culture, increasing union commitment through effective new member orientation programs for numerous unions, including the United Steelworkers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the American Federation of Teachers, the Allied Pilots Association, AFSCME, SEIU, and various nurses’ unions.  And he has worked on research projects with the United Mine Workers, United Steelworkers, he AFT, the NEA, the National Association of Letter Carriers, AFSCME, and the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.

Partial List of:

--Books

Stanger, Howard, Paul Clark, and John Delaney. 2024. Organizing and Collective Bargaining at the Crossroad: Renewal or Continued Decline? Ithaca, NY: Cornell ILR Press, 2013. Available from Amazon.com or Cornell Press.

Clark, Paul F., Howard Stanger, and Ann Frost (eds.). 2013. Collective Bargaining Under Duress: Case Studies of Major North American Industries. Ithaca, NY: Cornell ILR Press, 2013. Available from Amazon.com or Cornell Press.

Clark, Paul F. Building More Effective Unions, 2009, 2nd Edition. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell ILR Press. Available from Amazon.com or Cornell Press. For information on using the new 2nd edition in training programs or workshops and for multiple-copies discounts, click here.

--Articles

Clark, Paul F.  In Press.  “Pennsylvania’s Role in the 2024 Presidential Election.”  Labor Studies Journal.

Clark, Paul F.  In Press.  “Holding Police Officers Accountable for Misconduct:

Arbitrators’ Assessment of Police Discipline and Arbitration Processes.”  Labor Studies Journal.

Bamber, Greg, Jerrard, Marjorie, and Clark, Paul F. 2022. “How Do Trade Unions Manage Themselves?  A Study of Australian Unions’ Administrative Practices.”  Journal of Industrial Relations, May.  https://doi.org/10.1177/00221856221083715

Clark, Paul F., Whitehead, P. S., Bamber, G., Gray, L. S., Cockfield, S., & Gilbert, K.  2022. “Does Modernising Trade Union Administrative Practices Promote or Hinder Union Revitalization.“ British Journal of Industrial Relations, Volume 59, Issue 2, June, pp. 370-397. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12526

Morin, Alexandre J.S., Daniel G. Gallagher, John P. Meyer, David Litalien, and Paul F. Clark. 2019.  "Investigating the Dimensionality and Stability of Union Commitment Profiles Over a 10-Year Period: A Latent Transition Analysis," ILR Review, October, https://doi.org/10.1177/0019793919883815

Whitehead, Paul, Paul F. Clark, Lois S. Gray.  2017. “Adapting Union Administrative Practices to New Realities: Results of a Twenty-Year Longitudinal Study,” Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Vol. 24.

Clark, Paul F. “Nurses Union Strategies for Improving the Quality of Patient Care.”  2016. Chapter in Ariel Avgar and Timothy Vogus, (eds.), The Evolving Healthcare Landscape: How Employees, Organizations, and Institutions Are Adapting and Innovating.  Ithaca, NY:  Cornell ILR Press.

Clark, Paul F., Lois S. Gray, and Paul Whitehead. 2016. “The Evolution of Administrative Practices in American Unions:  Results from a Twenty-Year Study.” Monthly Labor Review, April, https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/evolution-of-administrative-practices-in-american-unions.htm

Clark, Paul F., Ariel C. Avgar, Julie A. Sadler, and Wonjoon Chung.  2016. "Labor-Management Partnership and Employee Voice: Evidence from the Healthcare Setting," Industrial Relations, Vol. 55, No. 4, October, pp. 576–603.