SUNY series in Labor Studies – serie

Multifaceted study of Pennsylvania's coal miners during the post-World War One era.Bituminous coal miners in Central Pennsylvania were among the most militant and class-conscious workers in the United States in the post-World War I era. Class-Conscious Coal Miners examines the development of working-class consciousness as they fought to sustain their union, jobs, communities, and work pejoratives, what they described as the Miner's Freedom, against mechanization and operator open shop drives in the 1920s. Their struggles brought them into conflict with coal companies, a pro-business federal government, and the business-unionist leadership of the United Mine Workers of America. After the collapse of the bituminous coal industry in Central Pennsylvania starting in the 1950s, working-class consciousness gradually diminished until, in the present century, there has been a marked shift toward political conservatism.

Multifaceted study of Pennsylvania's coal miners during the post-World War One era.Bituminous coal miners in Central Pennsylvania were among the most militant and class-conscious workers in the United States in the post-World War I era. Class-Conscious Coal Miners examines the development of working-class consciousness as they fought to sustain their union, jobs, communities, and work pejoratives, what they described as the Miner's Freedom, against mechanization and operator open shop drives in the 1920s. Their struggles brought them into conflict with coal companies, a pro-business federal government, and the business-unionist leadership of the United Mine Workers of America. After the collapse of the bituminous coal industry in Central Pennsylvania starting in the 1950s, working-class consciousness gradually diminished until, in the present century, there has been a marked shift toward political conservatism.

A comprehensive exploration of how labor unions, broadly conceived, shape party loyalties in the American mass public.How and why do labor unions matter for American mass party loyalties, specifically party identification and vote choice? Labor Unions and American Mass Politics marshals a wide range of survey data to test two different ways through which labor unions can shape mass party loyalties. The first is via people's personal affiliation with organized labor, such as a current/former member or household resident, while the second is via people's attitudes toward organized labor, such as whether they favor vs. disfavor unions in general. Overall, author David Macdonald shows that both are capable of shaping mass support for the Democratic Party and its various political candidates and that such relationships are also conditioned by whether people perceive labor unions and Democrats to be political allies, a connection that is lacking among a sizeable minority of Americans. Overall, Macdonald provides not only a timely analysis of mass labor politics in the early twenty-first-century United States but also shows that labor unions are politically consequential, even after decades of decline.