‘‘Too Hard On The Women, Especially’’: Striking Together For Women Workers’ Issues,
2012
Cornell University
‘‘Too Hard On The Women, Especially’’: Striking Together For Women Workers’ Issues, Ileen A. Devault
Ileen A DeVault
This essay draws upon a larger study of over forty strikes which involved both male and female strikers in the United States between the years 1887 and 1903. Here the focus of analysis is on those strikes which began with demands raised by women workers. The essay examines the nature of women workers’ demands, the ways in which cooperation with male co-workers altered those demands, and the affect that formal union involvement had on women strikers and their strike demands. Because the original set of case studies examines strikes across the United States, the strikes explored here also highlight a …
"Give The Boys A Trade": Gender And Job Choice In The 1890s,
2012
Cornell University
"Give The Boys A Trade": Gender And Job Choice In The 1890s, Ileen A. Devault
Ileen A DeVault
[Excerpt] It seems redundant (but is unfortunately not unnecessary) to say that this response emphasizes the gendered nature of the famed "manliness" of turn-of-the-century skilled workers. Davis Montgomery has described how "the workers' code celebrated individual self-assertion, but for the collective good, rather than for self-advancement." The process by which these skilled workers chose their jobs suggests an intermediate step: between the "collective good" of the union and the "self-advancement' of the individual stood the smaller collective unit of the male-headed household. The sense of what it meant to "be a man" thus not only holds the potential of explicating …
The East In Open Conflict: The Great Strike Of 1993,
2012
Cornell University
The East In Open Conflict: The Great Strike Of 1993, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
[Excerpt] Because it is impossible in one book to examine all German institutions of negotiation, this book focuses on one important set of relations at the heart of social market regulation: the "social partnership" between labor and management. "Social partnership," a term widely used throughout the European Union but little known in the United States, refers to the nexus—and central political and economic importance—of bargaining relationships between strongly organized employers (in employer associations) and employees (in unions and works councils) that range from comprehensive collective bargaining and plant-level codetermination to vocational training and federal, state, and local economic policy discussions. …
2012-10-01 Meeting Minutes,
2012
Morehead State University
2012-10-01 Meeting Minutes, Morehead State University. Staff Congress.
Staff Congress Records
Staff Congress meeting minutes for October 1, 2012.
2012-10-01 Newsletter,
2012
Morehead State University
2012-10-01 Newsletter, Morehead State University. Staff Congress.
Staff Congress Records
Staff Congress newsletter for October 1, 2012.
2012-09-10 Newsletter,
2012
Morehead State University
2012-09-10 Newsletter, Morehead State University. Staff Congress.
Staff Congress Records
Staff Congress newsletter for September 10, 2012.
2012-08-06 Meeting Minutes,
2012
Morehead State University
2012-08-06 Meeting Minutes, Morehead State University. Staff Congress.
Staff Congress Records
Staff Congress meeting minutes for August 6, 2012.
The Decline Of Labor: A Grim Picture, A Few Proposals,
2012
Cornell University
The Decline Of Labor: A Grim Picture, A Few Proposals, Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] The social context of this four-decade decline challenges a central assumption of the cyclical theory. More than a third of the decline occurred during the 1950s and 1960s, decades of broad economic growth and, for the 1960s, of liberal Democratic ascendancy. Labor lost another 15 percent during the stagflation of the 1970s, despite the Democratic return to power in the wake of a discredited Republican administration. By the 1980s, when a structurally weakened labor movement faced Ronald Reagan, plant closings and demands for concessions accelerated the decline. Organized labor's absolute and proportional decline over decades in which the labor …
Workers, Racism And History: A Response,
2012
Cornell University
Workers, Racism And History: A Response, Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] This intimate dependence of white egalitarianism upon black exclusion forms the central theme of Herbert Hill's essay. Arguing that this condition is neither episodic nor solely of historical interest, Hill asserts that these racist attitudes (and the action that flowed from them) were systemic across two centuries of working class development and actually provide the central continuous rational for understanding institutional trade union activity from the early nineteenth century into the present. America's labor unions. Hill writes, are "the institutional expression of white working class racism, and of policies and practices that resulted in unequal access, dependent on race, …
[Review Of The Book Values And Assumptions In American Labor Law],
2012
Cornell University
[Review Of The Book Values And Assumptions In American Labor Law], Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] Reading this book it is difficult not to think that the intent of the author was less to understand the origins and developments of the values and assumptions that gild the practice of labor law than it was to 'prove' that labor law in America is really capitalist law and thus it invalidates itself. This is not only circular reasoning, but it is unfortunate as well. For there is another book to be written that would analyze these questions through a serious and sustained reading in the history of industrial relations and then apply that knowledge to specific case …
Teamster Democracy: A Moment Of Possibility,
2012
Cornell University
Teamster Democracy: A Moment Of Possibility, Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] The association between the union and the underworld, a relationship that young Walter Lippmann simply could not envision, did not stem from an insidious criminal power that somehow proved impervious to FBI surveillance. Rather, criminal involvement in the trucking industry may actually be the most lasting contribution to modern America made by those who, in the name of fundamentalism, prohibition and creationism, fought that modernity so insistently. During prohibition, organized crime's interest in the trucking industry grew exponentially as urban criminal groups developed enormous fleets of trucks to transport illegal liquor. Following repeal in 1933, the industry remained attractive …
[Review Of The Book For Democracy, Workers, And God: Labor Song-Poems And Labor Protest, 1865-95],
2012
Cornell University
[Review Of The Book For Democracy, Workers, And God: Labor Song-Poems And Labor Protest, 1865-95], Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] In this slim book, Clark D. Halker raises a series of complex and interrelated issues. Focusing on some 4,000 song-poems that appeared in the labour press in the late 19th century, Halker states that his purpose is to "expand knowledge of the musical and poetic history of the American working class;" to use these song-poems and their poets as "a lens into the larger world of Gilded-Age workers and labor protest;" and more specifically to examine the contours of a "movement culture" that, he acknowledges (14), was never coterminous with the whole of the working-class cultural experience. The result …
[Review Of The Book Icons Of Democracy: American Leaders As Heroes, Aristocrats, Dissenters And Democrats],
2012
Cornell University
[Review Of The Book Icons Of Democracy: American Leaders As Heroes, Aristocrats, Dissenters And Democrats], Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] Icons of Democracy is a welcome change from the rather arid, often quantified analyses of political leadership so prevalent in academic writing. Well read in both primary and secondary sources, Miroff has deeply grounded his ideas in the rich historical context. In addition, he carefully chose his subjects and drew from their experiences central themes which, in divergent fashion, they also held in common. The resulting collective biography engages and challenges the reader. While partial to leaders in the dissenting tradition (they are "our true subversives and at times our truest democrats"), Miroff consistently points to the complexity of …
[Review Of The Book Perspectives On American Labor History: The Problems Of Synthesis],
2012
Cornell University
[Review Of The Book Perspectives On American Labor History: The Problems Of Synthesis], Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] Over the past two decades many claims have been made for what was once called the "new" labor history. Deeply influenced by European scholarship (especially by the British historian, E. P. Thompson) and by writings in cultural anthropology and sociology, this new history seemed to sweep all before it. In a tumble of discrete community studies and precise examinations of individual strikes lay the foundation of the new history's critique of the work of John K Commons and his associates, who had stressed an institutional analysis of labor's growth and development within a liberal, democratic capitalist society. In studying …
[Review Of The Book The Cio, 1935-1955],
2012
Cornell University
[Review Of The Book The Cio, 1935-1955], Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] Labor's upsurge in the 1930s remains for many even in our own time a source of inspiration and uplift. Those who are romantically inclined have long cherished the image of union militancy that attaches to that decade, a militancy that many have longed to see revived in recent years. Some contemporary union activists and their supporters, with more than a touch of a similar romanticism, frequently promote the claim that as the anti-union 1920s preceded the 1930s militancy, so too would the anti-union Reagan years give way to rekindled worker activism. Scholars as well have been influenced by this …
[Review Of The Book Meatpackers: An Oral History Of Black Packinghouse Workers And Their Struggle For Racial And Economic Equality],
2012
Cornell University ILR School
[Review Of The Book Meatpackers: An Oral History Of Black Packinghouse Workers And Their Struggle For Racial And Economic Equality], Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] The Halpern and Horowitz volume, Meatpackers, follows creditably in this oral history tradition, even if it does not approach the power and complexity of Rosengarten's work. Instead of focusing on one individual, the book presents selections culled from a massive collection of oral interviews conducted by the authors with more than 125 former members of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA). The interviewees are black, white, and Hispanic, male and female, with records of activism in the union as far back as the 1930s and as recent as the 1980s. The events they recount occurred in five cities, …
[Review Of The Book Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers In Chicago, 1919-1939],
2012
Cornell University
[Review Of The Book Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers In Chicago, 1919-1939], Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] This is a superb book. Lizabeth Cohen has attempted nothing less than a major reinterpretation of how industrial workers became deeply involved with the union organizing drives of the 1930s. Rather than focusing on external stimuli such as governmental actions, Cohen explores in great detail the ways in which changes in working people's own attitudes allowed them to be participants in, indeed makers of, their New Deal. Her themes are critically important, broadly conceived, and explored with imagination and verve. Her extensive research matches her intellectual vision, and she sensitively uses such diverse sources as advertising agency memoranda, early …
[Review Of The Book Frederick W. Taylor And The Rise Of Scientific Management],
2012
Cornell University
[Review Of The Book Frederick W. Taylor And The Rise Of Scientific Management], Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] Daniel Nelson has written an informative book that helps to explain important aspects of Taylor's life. But the analysis of the man, his influence, and the opposition both engendered is too narrowly cast to serve as a final rebuttal to Taylor's critics. By 1923, Nelson writes toward the end of his book, Taylor's reputation was secure and worker opposition to his approach was low: "The unionists had mellowed," Nelson comments. Yet the reader is never informed that this "mellowing" occurred in the midst of the most severe and pervasive anti-union campaign to that date in American history. This omission …
[Review Of The Book ”Big Bill” Haywood],
2012
Cornell University ILR School
[Review Of The Book ”Big Bill” Haywood], Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] This brief biography of William D. "Big Bill" Haywood, the charismatic leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) between 1905 and 1918, is an engaging introduction to Haywood's life. Although the volume was not intended to supplant Peter Carlson's Roughneck: The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood (1983) or Melvyn Dubofsky's own impressive We Shall Be All: A History of the IWW (1969), this biography effectively sketches a number of the central juxtapositions that framed Haywood's life.
The Long Exception: Rethinking The Place Of The New Deal In American History,
2012
Cornell University
The Long Exception: Rethinking The Place Of The New Deal In American History, Jefferson Cowie, Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
"The Long Exception" examines the period from Franklin Roosevelt to the end of the twentieth century and argues that the New Deal was more of an historical aberration—a byproduct of the massive crisis of the Great Depression—than the linear triumph of the welfare state. The depth of the Depression undoubtedly forced the realignment of American politics and class relations for decades, but, it is argued, there is more continuity in American politics between the periods before the New Deal order and those after its decline than there is between the postwar era and the rest of American history. Indeed, by …
