Contributions in Labor Studies – serie

A major force in American society, the work ethic has played a pivotal role in U.S. history, affecting cultural, social, and economic institutions. But what is the American work ethic? Not only has it changed from one era to another, but it varies with race, gender, and occupation. Considering such diverse groups as Colonial craftsmen, slaves, 19th century women, and 20th century factory workers, this book provides a history of the American work ethic from Colonial times to the present. Tracing both continuities and differences, the book is divided into sections on the Colonial era, the 19th century and the 20th century and includes chapters on both major occupational groups, such as farmers, factory workers, laborers, and gender, racial, and ethnic minorities.This approach, which covers all major groups in U.S. history, enables the reader to discern how the work ethic applied to different occupational and ethnic groups over time. The book subjects the work ethic to an analysis based on historical, sociological, economic, and anthropological perspectives and provides an analysis of current thinking about how the work ethic applied to various groups and classes in different historical periods.

A lively, personalized account incorporating objective analysis and solid information accumulated over 42 years, this book presents a graphic picture of the construction industry from an insider's point of view. The volume focuses on the culture of construction workers, the management style of contractors, and the structural and organizational nature of the industry. It considers such unique features of construction as its craft-oriented technology, decentralized decision-making by workers on the job site, and non-bureaucratic methods of field supervision. Using the research of others, government publications, and his own intimate experience in the industry, the author provides an insightful view of a unique industry in modern America.The book opens with an overview of the industry, illustrating how construction is organized, the craft breakdown, and the cultural values of the crafts. It then considers such topics as workers' job satisfaction, craft organization of the work, and the dangerous nature of construction. Separate chapters are devoted to women construction workers, a recent phenomenon in the industry, and to minorities and the role of affirmative action. In conclusion, the book argues that construction is significant both as a major industry and as a model for organizing work to produce worker satisfaction.

With the introduction of new production methods and technological innovation, tradesmen and workers encountered new challenges. This study examines the development of trade unions as a manifestation of working class experience in late Gilded Age America. It underscores both the distinctive and the common features of trade unionism across four occupations: building tradesmen, cigar makers, garment workers, and printers. While reactions differed, the unions representing these workers displayed a convergence in their strategic orientation, programmatic emphasis and organizational modus operandi. As such, they were not disparate organizations, concerned only with sectional interests, but participants in an organizational-network in which cooperation and solidarity became benchmarks for the labor movement.Printers coped with the mechanization of typesetting by promoting greater cooperation among the different craft unions within the industry, with the aim of establishing effective job control. Building tradesmen exerted a pragmatic militancy, which combined strikes with overtures to the employers' business sense, to uphold the standards of craft labor. Cigar makers, especially handicraftsmen who found their position threatened by machinery and the growth of factory production, debated the merits of a craft-based union against the possible advantages of an industrial-oriented organization. Garment workers, caught in the snare of a sweating system of labor in which wages and work loads were inversely related, organized unions to mount strikes during the busy season in the hope of securing higher wages, only to see them whither in the midst of slack periods.

In this study of the life and work of Saint-Nazaire's shipbuilding workers in the 30 years before World War I, Schuster shows that the consequences of industrial production for workers differed sharply according to their resources and experiences. She details the competing identities and divergent values maintained by shipbuilding workers, demonstrating that they were fostered by the interaction between state programs, industrial production, and the traditions pursued in the local realm. Third Republic economic policies for shipbuilding promoted unemployment and worker dependence on state officials over union leaders, and the uneven application of capitalist methods of production meant multiple workplace experiences that further undercut association.A workforce composed of industrial workers and agricultural producers brought markedly different priorities to the workplace. Urban-dwelling industrial workers proved dependent on shipbuilding, while workers commuting from La Grande Bri^D`ere, a nearby marshland, were property-owning producers, mostly peat-cutters, with traditions of self-government and a commanding community identity. They turned to ship production precisely to maintain rural settlement and agricultural production. These divergent values and responses to industrial work, in conjunction with multiple barriers to association, generated separate and even contrary labor concerns and protests.

The wages of workers are a primary determinant of a worker's standard of living. There has been a long history of governmental action attempting to construct a fair and equitable method of ensuring a living wage to the worker. This book traces the historical developmental process, examining the theory behind minimum wage programs and the first 50 years of the operation of the American Fair Labor Standards Act. Here are gathered key data and information that explain the effects of the FLSA on the worker and the employer.

This volume breaks tradition with previous studies of the unemployed in Britain. It offers a history highlighting the active political nature of the unemployed, rather than a depiction of them as passive victims of the system whose existence signals economic decline and social injustice. Beginning with the first appearance of the jobless as a political group in 1884, Richard Flanagan reduces large amounts of available information on their activities-- outlining the major points that define the nature of the politics of the unemployed, discussing their troubled leadership, and documenting the government's response to their efforts through the end of the National Unemployment Workers' Movement in 1939.Curious as to why much of the information about Britain's unemployed has been overlooked, Flanagan lifts the literature on the subject out of what he considers to be a largely fictionalized view by presenting a factual, historically relevant account examining the unemployed in relation to their society, past and present, and how they were able to overcome their diversity at certain times of crisis to form a single political voice and gain some control over their lives. The study reaches beyond the immediate subject, as its conclusions reflect upon the connection between unemployment and any industrialized society, the viability of certain solutions to the conflicts between classes, and most importantly, the political influence that even the most disadvantaged can exert if encouraged to take an active role in their future.

Beginning in 1859, the world was engulfed by a new process of revolutionary change that was more extensive geographically, more prolonged in time, more powerful, and more varied in its consequences than the great European revolution of 1848-1849. The same working classes participated in both movements, but earlier visions were replaced by pragmatic ideas, new forms of organization, and new lines of action. This volume chronicles the emergence and evolution of one of the new groups, the International Working Men's Association, which went into history under the name of the First International.Unlike previous historians and writers who generally aligned themselves with either Marx or Bakunin, the great rivals in the movement, author Henryk Katz offers a history of the group and its scores of fascinating personalities. He surveys the First International in the context of the general history of the period from 1846 to 1874, as well as in the context of the worldwide movements of liberation that included the freeing of American slaves, the emancipation of Russian serfs, and the unification of Italy. Katz also fully describes the major role the First International played in the process of the revival and expansion of the West European labor movement. Working from primary and secondary sources, Katz presents a secularized history of the International that will be a valuable reference tool for both libraries and a wide variety of history, political science, and sociology courses.

This book examines the escalation of an organizational conflict to one of the most talked about industrial crises of the past decade: the demise of Eastern Airlines. Through an analysis of the messages exchanged by some of its key participants--the representatives of the pilots and management of Eastern--this study attempts to explain how and why some 4,000 men and women walked away from high-paying glamour jobs and toppled an institution. The book is not an evaluation of the economic climate or financial events that put Eastern into a critical bind; instead, it is an analysis of the human cost of an organizational tragedy that might possibly have been avoided.The results of the study support communication theory that predicts that when an agitative group bearing the characteristics of the pilots of Eastern Airlines conflicts with an establishment such as Eastern's management under Frank Lorenzo, the establishment can always successfully avoid or suppress agitative movements. This work will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in industrial relations, labor-management studies, corporate communication, and American industrial history.

Examining the premise that the process of economic liberalization has had a significant impact on the labor markets of many countries, this contributed volume studies that impact in different countries and regions from both theoretical and applied perspectives. While recognizing that liberalization entails many elements, the book focuses on how structural adjustment policies have contributed to the overall development effort. The first four chapters analyze the relationship between economic liberalization and labor markets, and then investigate this relationship within broader regions, such as North-South, transition economies, and Africa. The remaining chapters provide case studies of Greece, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turkey.All the country chapters treat political economy issues and related policy conclusions. Stressing the interrelationship between liberalization and labor markets, the chapters discuss the importance of institutional, political, and legal factors in considering the effects of liberalization policies on the structure of labor markets and its participants. The book is an important look at a previously unexplored area of economic analysis.

The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor was the most ambitious and significant labor organization of the Gilded Age. As the charismatic leader of this group, Terence Powderly was America's first nationally known labor leader, the first to achieve a high degree of recognition from working people, industrialists, and politicians across the continent. To most Americans, Powderly was the Knights of Labor. Based on an exhaustive examination of Powderly's voluminous correspondence, this book offers a critical analysis of Powderly's efforts to oversee the most spectacular experiment in class-wide solidarity ever undertaken.Phelan paints a sympathetic and probing portrait of a complex figure caught up in the whirlwind of local and national events. He details the challenges and pressures of labor leadership at a time when industrialization was convulsing the nation, and when the labor movement was struggling to build a viable national institution capable of creating a more egalitarian society. The national focus of this study helps to synthesize the numerous community studies written on the Knights in recent years and offers fresh perspectives on the ultimate meaning of the organization. It is the first detailed examination of the Knights' leadership since the Powderly and Hayes Papers have become available.

Current thinking considers the Women's Cooperative Guild within the English Cooperative Movement to have been an independent and democratically run organization whose leaders built sisterhood across class lines and achieved many benefits for married working-class women. This study of the dynamics of gender within the movement between 1883 and 1921 arrives at different conclusions. Blaszak examines what freedoms of speech and activity women were permitted within the movement, as well as what resources they were given to accomplish their tasks. Ultimately, the parameters set by the men would determine the type of female leadership that emerged and whether it was able to realize its feminist and utopian agendas.Setting the organization's activities within the context of gender relations in the Cooperative Movement, Blaszak finds that the Guild was much more dependent and much less democratically directed than has usually been supposed. Restrictions established by male cooperators and enhanced by the realities of working-class life turned the Guild into a clique dominated by a few. Even the Guild's most revered leader, Margaret Llewelyn Davies, found it impossible to escape the gendered socio-economic circumstances in which she labored at her ministry to improve the lives of working-class women. Consequently, her leadership inadvertently assisted male cooperators in their attempts to limit possibilities for women.

This book explores the ways in which gender informs the definition and organization of management work, with specific attention to marketing. Drawing on original case studies, Chalmers examines how marketing personnel in particular firms appeal to valued and emotionally charged masculine meanings and identifications in their efforts to define the boundaries of their work activity and to establish marketing's managerial credentials against the claims of competing management occupations. By focusing on this interpenetration of masculinity projects and managerial politics, the study breaks new ground, illustrating that gender is a particularly flexible and potent resource for use in the competitive struggles shaping what management is, who manages, and how.Through the use of detailed case studies, the author takes a thorough look at the way marketing departments have emerged within companies and how marketing personnel have tried to carve out a niche for themselves by using gendered discursive techniques. The use of such strategies is aimed at securing a more crucial management role within a company, structuring boundaries and internal divisions of marketing work, shaping how various tasks are consolidated into marketing jobs, and creating distinct realms of masculine and feminine activity. As more and more women enter the field of marketing, they must navigate their way through this gendered terrain where marketers are expected to be assertive and forceful and women are expected to be feminene and supportive. Chalmers carefully traces these management politics and gendering processes in an effort to explain how gender informs the definition and organization of managing work.