Joseph van der Naald’s dissertation examines the conditions that fostered the rapid growth of public-sector employees’ unions in the United States beginning in the 1960s.

Using a historical comparative analysis of government workers’ movements in Michigan and Ohio, two Midwestern states that once maintained divergent collective bargaining laws for public employees, Joseph’s research traces how insurgent unions in both cases drew upon a diverse set of resources and adapted their forms of mobilization to successfully organize across disparate institutional contexts.

Joseph has published research in Social Service Review, Social Science Research, and the Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy, and he has taught at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. His dissertation research has received support from the Labor Research and Action Network and the Walter P. Reuther Library. Joseph received his B.A. at Portland State University and an M.A. from the Central European University.