SUNY series in American Labor History - Böcker

This is the first study to fully explore Marcantonio's unique status as a radical politician who, despite massive opposition, held high public office for fourteen years. As congressional representative to Harlem, he became the leader of the most important third party in the United States, the American Labor Party, and achieved national stature as a spokesman for the left.The book demonstrates Marcantonio's transcendence of a number of American truisms. Meyer explores the efficiency of Marcantonio's political machine, the unusual alliance of his two major political bases (East Harlem and El Barrio), and his open relationship with the Communist Party.

This book tells the story of the daily lives of women industrial workers in World War II shipyards. It focuses on their struggle against the persistence of occupational segregation, the sexual and racial hierarchy of the shipyard work force, and the pervasive emphasis on female sexuality which served as a constant reminder that women were transient and marginal imposters.In addition, Fleeting Opportunities demonstrates that despite the myth that these women yearned to return to their kitchens, in fact many wanted to continue using their wartime skills in the postwar period. However, finding themselves excluded from jobs by union and management, those who continued to work ended up in low-paying, predominantly female occupations.

This book tells the story of the daily lives of women industrial workers in World War II shipyards. It focuses on their struggle against the persistence of occupational segregation, the sexual and racial hierarchy of the shipyard work force, and the pervasive emphasis on female sexuality which served as a constant reminder that women were transient and marginal imposters.In addition, Fleeting Opportunities demonstrates that despite the myth that these women yearned to return to their kitchens, in fact many wanted to continue using their wartime skills in the postwar period. However, finding themselves excluded from jobs by union and management, those who continued to work ended up in low-paying, predominantly female occupations.

This is the first major biography of Rose Pesotta, the organizer and vice president of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) from 1933 to 1944. After moving to the United States from the Ukraine in 1913, Pesotta became involved in the resurgence of the garment workers' industry, women's labor colleges, and labor activism. While working for the union, she confronted serious opposition as a woman and an anarchist within an all-male bureaucracy.This book chronicles Pesotta's life while exploring a number of personal political themes. The author examines Pesotta's relationships and friendships as they reflect the issues of gender, power, and sexuality, paying particular attention to her relationships with Sacco and Vanzetti and with Emma Goldman. In the course of this biography, Leeder portrays the inherent conflicts between anarchism and bureaucratic organization and between female consciousness and male-dominated institutions. The book explores the potential for pragmatic activism by social visionaries and offers clear contextual frameworks within which to compare and contrast Pesotta to others in similar historical roles.

Democratic Miners traces the history of work and labor relations in the anthracite coal industry, focusing on conditions that led up to, and followed, the famous strike of 1902. That strike, an epic five-and-a-half-month struggle, led the federal government to intervene in a labor dispute for the first time in American history. Focusing on the workplace, Blatz puts the 1902 strike in the context of a turbulent half-century of labor-management relations. Those years saw the unionization of the anthracite fields under the United Mine Workers of America, amidst an evolving democratic tradition of rank-and-file protest against corporate control, and ironically ended with a growing rift between miners and union leadership.Unlike many books on labor relations, this work concentrates especially on the workers themselves. Working-class as opposed to union history, it contributes greatly to our understanding of working-class formation in the Progressive years.

This book tells the story of the rise and decline of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) from 1933 to 1990. Once the third-largest industrial union in the United States, the UE was the most powerful left-wing institution in U.S. history and arguably the most significant victim of the anti-communist purges that marked post-World War II America. This is an institutional study of the formation of the UE and the struggle for its control by left-wing and right-wing factions. Unlike most books on unions during the Cold War, this study carries the story up to the present, showing the long-term effects of the ideological battles.

An anthology of original essays on the history of work experience in automobile factories, from 1913 to the present.Autowork focuses on the character of automobile work in the modern factory and the relationships between autoworkers, their union, and management from 1913 to the present. Two-thirds of the essays are devoted to the post-World War II period, which historians have not examined as extensively as the early years of the automobile industry.In these original essays, the experiences of assembly-line workers come alive as never before. Using transcripts of government hearings, minutes of negotiations, records of arbitration proceedings, and articles in union newspapers, the authors present autoworkers' and union officials' descriptions of working conditions and the effect these conditions had on their health and home life. The essays analyze the dynamics of collective bargaining on important shop-floor issues such as safety, work pace, overtime, job assignments, and managerial discipline. Autowork demonstrates that many historians have underestimated the militancy and effectiveness of the United Automobile Workers of America.

An anthology of original essays on the history of work experience in automobile factories, from 1913 to the present.Autowork focuses on the character of automobile work in the modern factory and the relationships between autoworkers, their union, and management from 1913 to the present. Two-thirds of the essays are devoted to the post-World War II period, which historians have not examined as extensively as the early years of the automobile industry.In these original essays, the experiences of assembly-line workers come alive as never before. Using transcripts of government hearings, minutes of negotiations, records of arbitration proceedings, and articles in union newspapers, the authors present autoworkers' and union officials' descriptions of working conditions and the effect these conditions had on their health and home life. The essays analyze the dynamics of collective bargaining on important shop-floor issues such as safety, work pace, overtime, job assignments, and managerial discipline. Autowork demonstrates that many historians have underestimated the militancy and effectiveness of the United Automobile Workers of America.

A transnational social history of immigrant-group involvement in radical activities in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America that provides missing links between the immigration experience, the neighborhood, the workplace, politics, and culture.This book investigates the role immigrant radicals have played in U.S. society from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. A valuable contribution to the history of the American Left, it makes use of a wealth of material from immigrants whose everyday speech and intellectual discourse were not in the English language.The social-history scholarship that informs the essays is innovative in method and purpose. Articles on Mexican-American, German, Jewish, Polish, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Italian, Ukrainian, Greek, Arab, and Haitian immigrants supply missing conceptual links between the immigration experience, the neighborhood and the workplace, and political, labor, and cultural institutions. Taken together, they offer a model study in transnational history, one of the most important new fields of historical inquiry. Included are essays by Douglas Monroy, Stan Nadel, Michael Topp, Mary E. Cygan, Maria Woroby, Michael W. Suleiman, Robert G. Lee, Carole Charles, Van Gosse, and the editors.

A transnational social history of immigrant-group involvement in radical activities in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America that provides missing links between the immigration experience, the neighborhood, the workplace, politics, and culture.This book investigates the role immigrant radicals have played in U.S. society from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. A valuable contribution to the history of the American Left, it makes use of a wealth of material from immigrants whose everyday speech and intellectual discourse were not in the English language.The social-history scholarship that informs the essays is innovative in method and purpose. Articles on Mexican-American, German, Jewish, Polish, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Italian, Ukrainian, Greek, Arab, and Haitian immigrants supply missing conceptual links between the immigration experience, the neighborhood and the workplace, and political, labor, and cultural institutions. Taken together, they offer a model study in transnational history, one of the most important new fields of historical inquiry. Included are essays by Douglas Monroy, Stan Nadel, Michael Topp, Mary E. Cygan, Maria Woroby, Michael W. Suleiman, Robert G. Lee, Carole Charles, Van Gosse, and the editors.

Examines the organization of the unemployed during the Great Depression and demonstrates the linkage between their mobilization and automobile-industry organization.Focusing on Michigan during the Great Depression, this book highlights the efforts of community organizers and activists in the United Automobile Workers (UAW) to mobilize the jobless for mass action. In doing so, it demonstrates the relationship between unemployed activism and the rise of industrial unionism. Moreover, by discussing Communist and Socialist initiatives on behalf of displaced workers, the book illuminates the impact of radicalism on social change and shows how political claims influenced the cultural discourse of the 1930s.The book not only helps fill a void in our knowledge of community activism, worker culture, and labor history in the 1930s but also sheds light on the New Deal's domestication of American labor and the channeling of mass protest toward politically and socially acceptable goals. The UAW acceptance of responsibility for the underclass of the 1930s raises pertinent questions for labor in the 1990s.

Traces the rise and fall of organized labor's political power over the course of the twentieth century.Organized Labor and American Politics, 1894-1994 traces the rise and fall of labor's power over the course of the twentieth century. It does so through provocative and engaging essays written by distinguished scholars of the modern labor movement. The essays focus on different times and places, from turn-of-the-century steel mills to the streets of 1930s Detroit to the halls of Congress in the 1990s. Drawing on a broad range of primary sources, the authors adopt a variety of approaches, from broad syntheses to careful case studies. Altogether, the essays tell a single story, of workers struggling to find a voice for themselves and their unions within the nation they helped to build. It is a story of victories won and of defeats endured.

Examines the career of the nation's most prominent liberal labor lawyer during a period of ascending labor power. Pressman was also one of the most prominent underground communists active in American political life from the early New Deal to the beginning of the Cold War.As the nation's most prominent labor lawyer during a period of ascending labor power, Lee Pressman served as General Counsel of the Congress of Industrial Organizations from 1933 to 1948. Working among the movers and shapers of American politics, he was also one of the most highly-placed, though covert, adherents of communism in public life during the New Deal–Fair Deal years. This book chronicles Pressman's fascinating public life and examines his contributions to the rebirth of the American labor movement, to the development of U.S. labor law, and to the history of the New Deal–Fair Deal era.Pressman served as John L. Lewis's legal strategist during the CIO's successful campaign to unionize the mass production industries in the United States in the 1930s. Performing a similar role for Philip Murray, Lewis's successor, Pressman guided the new labor federation through the perils of wartime labor policy and the turbulent post-war economic reconversion. After he left the CIO in 1948 to support the independent Progressive Party campaign of Henry Wallace, he found his public career dissipating as he became embroiled in the Alger Hiss case and the rising anticommunist tide of the early Cold War years.

Offers a fresh perspective on the origins of business unionism.Winner of the 2002 Annual Award in the Publications/Scholarly category presented by the Illinois State Historical Society and Association of Illinois Museums and Historical Societies Why did the American labor movement decline in the 1920s? This is a question historians have often answered by pointing at the adverse circumstances begetting the movement, such as chronic recessions in many industries, a conservative political climate, and divisiveness along racial, ethnic, and skill levels among American workers. But how did workers cope with the circumstances? What role did they play in the waning movement?Based on research into the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), an industrial union with a progressive posture, Labor in Retreat details workplace politics in a larger context and presents a fresh view on the origins of business unionism, with significant implications for a different perspective on American immigration history. Focusing on Chicago and using a wealth of primary sources, Youngsoo Bae analyzes residential patterns, social institutions, and social relationships and posits that the weakened sense of community among ethnic groups after World War I, rather than the unfavorable atmosphere of the day, had a major impact upon the ACWA turning toward business unionism. Proposing a fresh perspective on American immigration history, which embraces both the old and revisionist models, Labor in Retreat also suggests a different conception of class, community, and space as it explores these issues related to the American labor movement.

Breaks new ground in the study of an industry and region crucial to the history of American industrial capitalism.Steel and Steelworkers is a fascinating account of the forces that shaped Pittsburgh, big business, and labor through the city's rapid industrialization in the mid-nineteenth century, its lengthy era of industrial "maturity," its precipitous deindustrialization toward the end of the twentieth century, and its reinvention from "hell with the lid off" to America's most livable (post-industrial) city. Hinshaw examined a wide variety of company, union, and government documents, oral histories, and newspapers to reconstruct the steel industry and the efforts of labor, business, and government to refashion it. A compelling report of industrialization and deindustrialization, in which questions of organization, power, and politics prove as important as economics, Steel and Steelworkers shows the ways in which big business and labor helped determine the fate of steel and Pittsburgh.

Breaks new ground in the study of an industry and region crucial to the history of American industrial capitalism.Steel and Steelworkers is a fascinating account of the forces that shaped Pittsburgh, big business, and labor through the city's rapid industrialization in the mid-nineteenth century, its lengthy era of industrial "maturity," its precipitous deindustrialization toward the end of the twentieth century, and its reinvention from "hell with the lid off" to America's most livable (post-industrial) city. Hinshaw examined a wide variety of company, union, and government documents, oral histories, and newspapers to reconstruct the steel industry and the efforts of labor, business, and government to refashion it. A compelling report of industrialization and deindustrialization, in which questions of organization, power, and politics prove as important as economics, Steel and Steelworkers shows the ways in which big business and labor helped determine the fate of steel and Pittsburgh.

Life and Labor brings together the most stimulating scholarship in the field of labor history today. Its fifteen essays explore the impact of industrialization and technology on the lives of working people and their responses to the changes in society over the past one-hundred-fifty years. Focusing on the everyday life of working-class Americans, it discusses such topics as production technology, occupational mobility, industrial violence, working women, resistance to exploitation, fraternal organizations, and social and leisure-time activities.The essays are written in a lively manner accessible to an undergraduate audience and also provide insights and a solid background for graduate students and scholars in the field of American labor and social history. The book presents the work of members of the generation of labor and social historians who matured in the 1970s and who are now establishing themselves as leaders in their fields.

This book is a comprehensive history of automobile workers in the pre-union era. It covers changes in the kinds of workers who staffed the auto factories, developments in the labor process and in overall conditions of work, daily life outside the factories, informal responses of workers to routinized, monotonous, and highly structured work, and automobile worker unions before the creation of the United Automobile Workers. Although the 1920s were seen at the time as a period of peaceful and cooperative labor relations, author Joyce Peterson looks beneath the surface to discover the many ways in which auto workers expressed their displeasure with and attempted to fight against working conditions. The book also examines the Briggs strike of 1933, the first strike to significantly register the impact of the Great Depression upon the automobile industry and to mark the end of the pre-union era.The automobile industry was a model of twentieth century mass production techniques, of managerial organization, and of labor relations. Studying automobile workers in their historical and social setting explains a great deal about the nature of modern industry-how it affects the daily life and work of employees and how workers see themselves as individuals and members of a working class.

This is the first book-length study of the triumph of the Reuther caucus over the Thomas-Addes-Leonard coalition in the United Auto Workers union. The dramatic defeat of the left-center coalition had far reaching significance. It helped to determine the shape of postwar labor relations, the direction of postwar liberalism, and the fate of the left.Based on manuscript sources, oral histories, and quantitative analyses of convention roll calls, UAW Politics in the Cold War Era places this union conflict in a national political context of postwar economic conflicts, the cold war, and the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act. Halpern offers a fresh point of view on the character of the two contending coalitions and the reasons for the Reuther triumph. His work is a valuable contribution to the current reassessment of the domestic politics of the early cold war years.

This book profiles an American community in the nineteenth century to show the larger process by which the nation was transformed from a life close to the frontier to that characteristic of industrial capitalism. Michael Cassity considers this economic change from the broader perspective of an historian of the American people, offering insights into its social implications and consequences.With graceful and moving prose, Cassity focuses on the process of social change, the pains that change generated, and the resistance to it. In the course of this transformation, the author examines the ways in which workers, farmers, businessmen, and women experienced and responded to the rise of a new industrial order.

This book profiles an American community in the nineteenth century to show the larger process by which the nation was transformed from a life close to the frontier to that characteristic of industrial capitalism. Michael Cassity considers this economic change from the broader perspective of an historian of the American people, offering insights into its social implications and consequences.With graceful and moving prose, Cassity focuses on the process of social change, the pains that change generated, and the resistance to it. In the course of this transformation, the author examines the ways in which workers, farmers, businessmen, and women experienced and responded to the rise of a new industrial order.