Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The State Of The Unions 2023: A Profile Of Organized Labor In New York City, New York State, And The United States, Ruth Milkman, Joseph Van Der Naald

Publications and Research

This report released by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, State of the Unions 2023: A Profile of Organized Labor in New York City, New York State, and the United States, is a part of an annual publication series, documents recent trends in unionization patterns. The overall level of unionization in both the City and State has been roughly double the national rate over the past two decades. But recently, union density has fallen more in New York City and New York State than in the United States as a whole. In the mid-2010s, both the City and …

The Language Of Legal Violence: The State’S Role In Silencing Capitalist Dissent, 1877-1915, Jaclene Paolucci

Theses and Dissertations

From the 1870s to the eve of World War I, the United States government enacted a violent and repressive campaign against labor activists and political radicals to protect capitalist interests. The growing alliance between employers and the government threatened American democratic traditions and turned those who challenged the capitalist system into potential enemies of the state.

Examining Past, Present, And Future Of Agricultural Labor: From The Bracero Program To The Coalition Of Immokalee Workers, Francesca Paradiso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is a comparative study that examines the Bracero Program and the work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). The Bracero Program brought Mexican workers into the United States on temporary work visas from 1942-1964. The CIW is an organization of Mexican workers that was founded in 1992 as a response to the horrible working conditions that Mexican tomato pickers faced in Immokalee, Florida. In this thesis, I show that by putting these programs side by side, we can see the exploitation of Mexican farmworkers has relied on changing government tools—different forms of visas, different immigration regimes, different …

A Parar Para Avanzar: To Stop/To Stand/To Strike To Advance, Christina N. Barrera

Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents the first fragments of a political framework outlining how I situate my work, which lives between “craft” and “art” models of making and between colonized and colonizing traditions. My writing proposes ways of making and being informed by practices, strategies, and organizing that work towards greater autonomy and liberation under these conditions.

The Unknown Terror: Credit Card Debt Among The American Middle Class, Eamonn Maher

Theses

This Capstone focuses on a true crisis that affects many middle class Americans. Credit card debt has become a norm for American society and quietly has terrorized and dismantled the lives of many middle class Americans. From the rolling back of usury laws protecting predatorial interest rates, to many Americans losing jobs and income. This paper discusses the relationship between the reliance on credit cards and crippling debt for many Americans in the middle class.

Positioning The 1913 Paterson Silk Workers’ Strike Within A Dialectical Framework, Raymond Adam Ciafarone Jr.

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis places the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike within a dialectical framework by historically surveying the constant motion of industry in Paterson, New Jersey. It follows the dialectical method by examining the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike not as a singular event but as one part of a continuous historical process. In the late 18th century, a group of investors introduced capitalism to Paterson and completely transformed the social relations of production from a mostly self-sufficient agrarian existence to a center of capitalist manufacturing. From that moment forward, production in Paterson was in a constant state of flux as mills, shops, …

Smashing Solidarity: Two New York Strikes At The Start Of The Postwar Wave, Joseph D. Parziale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Two strikes in New York at the beginning of the massive 1945-46 strike wave—one by elevator operators in commercial buildings and another by dock workers throughout the Port of New York—can help us better understand a moment when workers exhibited a profound sense of themselves as a class, while their rivals in the shop, the corporate boardroom, and the halls of power fought vigorously to dispel the notion that workers divided by geography, industry, race, nationality, and gender were right to see their fates as intertwined. Historians’ focus on the economic issues at stake in the major strikes of the …

More Austerity Coming? Lessons From New York City's 1970s Fiscal Crisis, Marc Kagan

Publications and Research

Crises can be moments of opportunity, but it is not foreordained who will seize the ring. The Great Depression ultimately led to the New Deal/Great Society state and increasing equality. 1975 New York City fiscal crisis, on the other hand, laid the groundwork for decades of neoliberal austerity. Despite political vulnerabilities, bankers and their Washington allies acted boldly to protect imperiled assets and remake a city in which the working class wielded some power as a bastion of finance capital. Seemingly powerful unions abandoned the public they served, and followed a risk-averse strategy of concessions in exchange for junior-partner corporatism, …

For Tony Feliciano, A Friend And A Union Man, Marc Kagan

Publications and Research

My friend Tony Feliciano, transit worker 1984-2020, and a union man all his life, died a few weeks ago; he had just turned 61. While transit workers were dying this spring, he actually made it out of the 207th St. Overhaul Shop, where he worked virtually his whole career, in May; he put in his papers and retired to his house in Rockland County.

But he died of a heart attack, before he could even collect his first pension check.

Red Sea, White Tides, And Blue Horizons, John P. Devine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Eric Hobsbawm, in his effort to explain the fundamental divide which produced the Second World War, convincingly argues that “the crucial lines in this civil war were not drawn between capitalism as such and communist social revolution, but between ideological families: on the one hand the descendants of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the great revolutions including, obviously the Russian revolution’, on the other hand, its opponents.” This thesis argues that the American Civil War was a “great revolution” that represented a crucial transformative point in the formation of these two waring factions. The struggle was especially influential on the theory …

Promoting The Consumer Citizen: Seals, Spectacles, And The Gendered Consumer In Depression-Era America, Danielle B. Wetmore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis will argue that New Deal legislation accounted for increased importance placed on consumers and the articulation of consumer citizenship as female during the Great Depression. Once New Deal programs and legislation determined and legitimized the consumer citizen, the consumer citizen exercised influence though purchasing power. Analyzing the ways the federal government defined women as consumer citizens through programs like the National Recovery Administration’s Blue Eagle Campaign offers important insight into who was considered to have a voice. Notions of citizenship define groups by who has the necessary attributes and qualifications—in this case the means to purchase goods—to be …

In Her Own Hands: How Girls And Women Used The Piano To Chart Their Futures, Expand Women's Roles, And Shape Music In America, 1880–1920, Sarah F. Litvin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

American girls and women used the parlor piano to reshape their lives between 1880 and 1920, the years when the instrument reached the height of its commercial and cultural popularity. Newspapers, memoirs, biographies, women’s magazines, personal papers, and trade publications show that female pianists engaged in public-facing piano play and work in pursuit of artistic expression, economic gain, self-actualization, social mobility, and social change. These motivations drove many to use their piano skills to play beyond the parlor, by studying in conservatory, working as classical and popular music performers and composers, founding and teaching at schools, working as department store …

Runaway: A History Of Postwar New York In Four Factories, Andy Battle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At midcentury, New York City was among the preeminent manufacturing centers in the United States. Within a generation, this manufacturing economy suffered an extraordinary collapse. Beginning in the 1950s, workers and their unions began to use the term “runaway” to describe factories that pulled up stakes in New York and set them back down in other climes. This dissertation explores the deindustrialization of New York City through case studies of “runaway” plants, or factories that left New York for the American South or abroad between the years 1945 and 1975.

In general, the manufacturers that remained in New York at …

“Don’T Buy Where You Can’T Work:” Protest And Riot In Harlem, 1932 -1935, Christie Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

In the 1930’s, Harlem joined together to participate in a “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign, to gain agency in their community. Store owners and legal decisions would block these efforts. This work explores the failure of this movement’s impact on the Riot of 1935.

The Narrative Of Revolution: Socialism And The Masses 1911-1917, Stephen K. Walkiewicz

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to situate The Masses magazine (1911-1917) within a specific discursive tradition of revolution, revealing a narrative pattern that is linked with discourse that began to emerge during and after the French Revolution. As the term “socialism” begins to resonate again within popular American political discourse (and as a potentially viable course of action rather than a curse for damnable offense), it is worthwhile to trace its significance within American history to better understand its aesthetic dimensions, its radical difference, and its way of devising problems and answers. In short, this thesis poses the question: what ideological structures …

The Forgotten Comrades: Leftist Women, Palestinians, And The Jordanian Communist Party, 1936–1957, Fadi H. Kafeety

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Middle East in the 1950s was the site of major contestation for popular support and power. In Jordan, a militant anti-imperialist movement emerged with a platform centered around expelling British forces and abrogating the Anglo-Jordanian treaty. In the struggle between monarchism and republicanism, the Jordanian Communist Party and Ba’ath Party were the catalyzing anti-imperial forces in the first decade of Jordan’s nominal independence. Despite having a militant core of feminists within their ranks, women of the Jordanian Communist Party—who were instrumental in politicizing and radicalizing the first phase of the Jordanian Women’s Movement—have been systematically erased from this critical …

What Do Unions Want? When New York State’S Public Employee Unions Turned Down The Right To Strike, Marc Kagan

Publications and Research

In a 1977 package of proposed revisions of New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which governs public employee labor-management relations and prohibits work stoppages, unions were offered the right to strike, while managers would have gained the right to unilaterally change contract terms at expiration. In effect, this deal would have made state labor relations more similar to bargaining in private industry. Offered an expanded ability to strike, the municipal unions instead opted for defensive stability.

Public Workers, William A. Herbert

Publications and Research

This chapter on New York City public sector labor history appeared in a book edited by Joshua B. Freeman that was a companion to the exhibition City of Workers, City of Struggle: How Labor Movements Changed New York. The exhibition was organized by and presented at the Museum of the City of New York.

Merchant Seamen, Sailortowns, And The Shaping Of U.S. Citizenship, 1843-1945, Johnathan Thayer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that merchant seamen, because of their inherent transience, diversity, and the unique nature of their work, occupied a marginal position in U.S. society, and that that marginalization produced a series of confrontations with shoreside people, communities, institutions, and the state, most specifically over the nature and definition of citizenship. This argument is developed through examination of a series of encounters and negotiations that merchant seamen provoked from the piers, back alleys, and boardinghouses of the nation’s “sailortowns” from the 1830s through World War II, including: 1) nineteenth century maritime ministry projects in the Port of New York …

Universal Alienation And The Real Subsumption Of Daily Life Under Capital: A Response To Hardt And Negri, David Harvey

Publications and Research

This contribution is part of a debate between Michael Hardt/Toni Negri and David Harvey on the occasion of Marx’s bicentenary (May 5, 2018). The discussion focuses on the question of what capitalism looks like today and how it can best be challenged. In this article, David Harvey responds to Hardt and Negri’s previous debate-contributions.

Final Call: Rank-And-File Rebellion In New York City, 1965-1975, Glenn D. Dyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between 1965 and 1975, New York City’s workers fomented a powerful yet inchoate movement that challenged the entrenched power of employers, union officials, and politicians. In the words of Central Labor Council head Harry Van Arsdale Jr., “strike fever” gripped the city; workers refused to follow their leaders, rejecting contracts, wildcatting, and organizing insurgent electoral campaigns. While historians have explored the rebellion as a national phenomenon, New York City’s wave of upheaval was a locally bound movement with its own unique dynamics, culture, and timeline, both powerfully shaping and shaped by the local political and social environment. Significantly, workers’ rebellious …

Women And Work: African American Women In Depression Era America, Sarah Ward

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project explores whether African American women met similar public sentiments as Caucasian women during the Depression Era and how gender dynamics changed within African American households in urban America as well as the effect of the crisis on a populace that was not new to the work force. Historical statistical analysis and emphasis on labor policy are used to garner information. The Great Depression sparked an abrupt shift in not only the American economy but also American ideology regarding male and female gender dynamics. Despite discouragement from entering the workforce due to dominant masculinity, employment rates rose amongst Caucasian …

The Bronx Was Brewing: A Digital Resource Of A Lost Industry, Michelle Zimmer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Bronx: a bucolic oasis laden with history, a suburb within city-limits, an urban warzone, and thanks to the recent renaissance, a phoenix of progress rising from the proverbial ashes of the fires that burned through the borough in the 1970’s. But many people are unaware that the Bronx also brewed.
Uncovering the brewing industry of the Bronx tells not only the story of the lost industry, but it also communicates the narrative of the development of the Bronx. The brewers were German immigrants who developed a thriving industry by introducing lager beer to the United States by taking advantage …

The History Books Tell It? Collective Bargaining In Higher Education In The 1940s, William A. Herbert

Publications and Research

This article presents a history of collective bargaining in higher education during and just after World War II, decades before the establishment of applicable statutory frameworks for labor representation. It examines the collective bargaining program adopted by the University of Illinois in 1945, along with contracts negotiated at other institutions. The article also examines the role of United Public Workers of America (UPWA) and its predecessor unions in organizing and negotiating on behalf of faculty, teachers, and instructors. The first known collective agreements applicable to faculty, teachers and instructors, were negotiated by those unions before UPWA was destroyed during the …

The Politics Of Shorter Hours And Corporate-Centered Society: A History Of Work-Time Regulation In The United States And Japan, Keisuke Jinno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Shorter working hours drew much attention as a means of fighting unemployment and crisis in capitalism during the first half of the twentieth century. Nowadays, shorter work-time is rarely considered a policy option to fix economic or social issues in the United States and Japan. This dissertation presents a history of work-time regulation in the United States and Japan to examine how and why its developments and stalemate took place.

In the big picture, developments of work-time regulation during the first half of the twentieth century were a part of concessional modifications of class relations, a common phenomenon in many …

"Propaganda For Democracy": The Vexed History Of The Federal Theatre Project, Karen E. Gellen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My thesis explores and analyzes the Federal Theater Project’s cultural and political impact during the Depression, as well as the contested legacy of this unique experiment in government-sponsored, broadly accessible cultural expression. Part of the New Deal’s Works Projects Administration, the FTP aimed to provide jobs for playwrights, actors, designers, stagehands, and other theater professionals on relief in the stark period from 1935 to 1939. But the project became a nationwide political and artistic flashpoint, spurring fierce debate over the leadership, politics and impact of this “people’s theater.” The FTP gave professional theater an unprecedented reach into working-class and black …

Clara Lemlich Shavelson: An Activist Life, Sarah B. Cohn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Clara Lemlich Shavelson is primarily known for her impassioned speeches during the 1909 Uprising of 20,000. The majority of histories written about her address her involvement in organizing women garment workers in New York’s Lower East Side from her arrival in New York in 1903 up through the eleven-week general strike in 1909. After this, the literature would have you believe she fades into obscurity, for there is only one book that addresses her life post 1909. Shavelson did not give up organizing after 1909. She got married, moved to Brooklyn, and started a family. In Brooklyn, she organized women …

A Reformers' Union: Land Reform, Labor, And The Evolution Of Antislavery Politics, 1790–1860, Sean G. Griffin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“A Reformers’ Union: Land Reform, Labor, and the Evolution of Antislavery Politics, 1790–1860” offers a critical revision of the existing literature on both the early labor and antislavery movements by examining the ideologies and organizational approaches that labor reformers and abolitionists used to challenge both the expansion of slavery and the spread of market relationships. Extending the timeframe of the antislavery and labor movements backwards to the 1790s, this dissertation situates the origins of the pre-Civil War labor movement in republican ideology and currents of transatlantic radical thought, and traces the rise of agrarian and communitarian labor reform against the …

Capitalism And Unfreedom: Louis D. Brandeis And A Liberty Of The Left, Eric L. Apar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The American Right features a well-developed—and well-heeled—infrastructure for promoting a conception of freedom as inextricable from capitalism. The American Left, by contrast, has seemed content to cede the territory, abandoning the ground of freedom for the terrain of “equality,” “justice,” “fairness,” and “prosperity.” This paper is an effort to address this asymmetry in the public discourse over the meaning of freedom. Its principal objective is to capture the vision of freedom embodied in the political and economic thought of Louis D. Brandeis, one of the American Left’s ablest expositors of freedom.

In addition, the paper has three subsidiary objectives. The …

Libraries, Knowledge, And The Common Good: The Cultural Politics Of Labor Republicanism In Progressive-Era Wheeling, West Virginia, Jonathan Cope

Publications and Research

An analysis of the Ohio Valley Trades and Labor Assembly's campaign to defeat a proposed Carnegie library in Wheeling, West Virginia in 1904.