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Articles 1 - 30 of 43
Full-Text Articles in History
Introduction To United Apart: Gender And The Rise Of Craft Unionism, Ileen A. Devault
Introduction To United Apart: Gender And The Rise Of Craft Unionism, Ileen A. Devault
Ileen A DeVault
[Excerpt] The American Federation of Labor entered the twentieth century ensconced as the primary vehicle for the nation's organized workers. As such, the attitudes of the AFL toward women workers provided the basis for virtually all later attempts at organizing women. The cross-gender strikes that are the basis of this book illustrate both the ways in which men and women would move forward united and the ways in which they would remain apart. That both females and males could at times feel drawn together and at other times feel driven apart, and carry both those feelings into their actions and …
Narratives Serially Constructed And Lived: Ethnicity In Cross-Gender Strikes 1887-1903, Ileen A. Devault
Narratives Serially Constructed And Lived: Ethnicity In Cross-Gender Strikes 1887-1903, Ileen A. Devault
Ileen A DeVault
[Excerpt] The strikes narrated in this paper have illustrated different ways in which individuals' recognition of ethnic identity could interact with their recognition of gender and class identities. In each strike workers' identities developed along with the serial narrative of the particular strike situation. The use of Sartre's concept of the series helps us think about the many possible variations of class, ethnicity, and gender. Though Sartre planned to use his concept of series as a way to examine peoples' class identities, my employment of the concept broadens it to include other categories of identification as well. Using the concept …
Samuel Gompers, Ileen A. Devault
Samuel Gompers, Ileen A. Devault
Ileen A DeVault
[Excerpt] Samuel Gompers, founder and president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) for 37 years, was both extraordinary and exemplary of many skilled workers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
White Collar/Blue Collar, Ileen A. Devault
White Collar/Blue Collar, Ileen A. Devault
Ileen A DeVault
[Excerpt] Examining the determinants of class for women and the ways men experienced gender will help clarify some of the ambiguous status of the clerical sector, but it will still not answer all of our questions. To understand the place of clerical work in the class structure, we need to examine more than just clerical work itself. A major argument of this book is that understanding the impact of clerical work on overall social stratification requires understanding stratification within the manual working class as well. The status of clerical work would perhaps be much clearer in contrast to that of …
‘‘Too Hard On The Women, Especially’’: Striking Together For Women Workers’ Issues, Ileen A. Devault
‘‘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, Ileen A. Devault
"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, Lowell Turner
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. …
The Decline Of Labor: A Grim Picture, A Few Proposals, Nick Salvatore
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 …
[Review Of The Book Values And Assumptions In American Labor Law], Nick Salvatore
[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, Nick Salvatore
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], Nick Salvatore
[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 Perspectives On American Labor History: The Problems Of Synthesis], Nick Salvatore
[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], Nick Salvatore
[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], Nick Salvatore
[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 Frederick W. Taylor And The Rise Of Scientific Management], Nick Salvatore
[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], Nick Salvatore
[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, Jefferson Cowie, Nick Salvatore
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 …
American Labor History, Nick Salvatore
American Labor History, Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
To account for the persistent struggles of a working people that only episodically (and even then with hut a small minority) sought to transform democratic capitalism, and to do so without exaggerating the reality of employer or governmental opposition, will not produce an heroic synthesis of this country's history, to be sure. But it could abet an even more serious appreciation of the highly complex social and political lives Americas working men and women.
Biography And Social History: An Intimate Relationship, Nick Salvatore
Biography And Social History: An Intimate Relationship, Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
Biography has been considered as outside the discipline of history by many historians. Since the chronological framework of the study is pre-deter-mined, given the subject's life, it has been argued, it does not meet the fundamental historical test of analyzing historical change across time. Others, particularly literary critics, have suggested that the biographical emphasis on the personal is itself, at root, invalid. This comment instead suggests that the recent turn to biography in labor and social history is most welcome, for it creates the possibility of a broader understanding of the interplay between an individual and social forces beyond one's …
Response To Sean Wilentz, "Against Exceptionalism: Class Consciousness And The American Labor Movement, 1790-1920", Nick Salvatore
Response To Sean Wilentz, "Against Exceptionalism: Class Consciousness And The American Labor Movement, 1790-1920", Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] Wilentz's critique of the exceptionalist theme in American historiography is to the point. Whether one applauded the absence of feudalism, and therefore class conflict, in America with the historians of the 1950s or bemoaned that liberal democratic tradition as the "nail in the coffin of class consciousness" in the 1970s, either interpretative structure sacrifices empirical evidence for grand theory. In the former, the careers of Thomas Skidmore or Ira Stewart are all but incomprehensible; in the latter, men like Joseph R. Buchanan or Eugene V. Debs have little relevance. More importantly, the actual experience of the majority of American …
Faith, Politics, And American Culture [Review Of The Books Letter To A Christian Nation, Pity And Politics: The Right-Wing Assault On Religious Freedom, Faith And Politics: How The “Moral Values” Debate Divides America And How To Move Forward Together, The Compassionate Community: Ten Values To Unite America, Righteous: Dispatches From The Evangelical Youth Movement, And Believers: A Journey Into Evangelical America], Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] In January 2004, before a black church congregation in New Orleans, President George W. Bush commemorated Martin Luther King's birthday with a spirited promotion of his faith-based initiatives. Appropriating the slain Civil Rights leader's profession of faith, Bush proclaimed his ultimate purpose was to change "America one heart, one soul, one conscience at a time." He emphasized voluntary action by citizens (four times he extolled them as "the social entrepreneurs") and he consistency denigrated the role of government but for one critical function: providing "billions of dollars" to faith-based social-service groups. Proclaiming the values of the Christian Bible as …
Gerechtigkeit Ohne Gewerkschaft Und Betriebsrat? Konfliktschlichtung In Gewerkschaftsfreien Betrieben In Den Usa, Alexander Colvin
Gerechtigkeit Ohne Gewerkschaft Und Betriebsrat? Konfliktschlichtung In Gewerkschaftsfreien Betrieben In Den Usa, Alexander Colvin
Alexander Colvin
Zu den Faktoren, die in jüngster Zeit in mehreren Ländern – insbesondere in den USA – zu einem Rückgang der Mitgliederzahlen der Gewerkschaften geführt haben, zählen Strategien des Human Resource Managements wie „nonunion arbitration“ (gewerkschaftsfreies Schiedsverfahren“. Arbeitgeber in nicht tarif- und gewerkschaftsgebundenen Betrieben führen solche „neuen Verfahren der Konfliktschlichtung“ (NVK) mit dem Ziel ein, einen Teilersatz für die gewerkschaftliche Interessenvertretung zu gewähren. Sie stellen eine besondere Herausforderung für die Gewerkschaften dar und machen die Anpassung ihrer Interessenvertretungsstrategien erforderlich. Zwei alternative Handlungsmöglichkeiten bieten sich an. Eine Möglichkeit besteht darin , solche NVK einfach mit dem Argument abzulehnen, dass es sich um …
[Review Of The Book The Evolution Of The Modern Workplace], Alexander Colvin
[Review Of The Book The Evolution Of The Modern Workplace], Alexander Colvin
Alexander Colvin
[Excerpt] Taken as a whole, The Evolution of the Modern Workplace can be seen as fulfilling two different, but equally important roles. The first is as a compendium of information and data on key aspects of workplace employment relations. One could imagine it serving as an excellent assigned reading for a graduate seminar on British employment relations as well as a useful reference guide and handbook for researchers in this area. At the same time, the contributions to the volume also combine to provide a picture of employment relations system change that should shape thinking in this field and inspire …
Das Amerikanische Arbeitsrecht Aus Der Perspektive Historischer Und Zukünftiger Entwicklungen, Alexander Colvin, Katherine V. W. Stone
Das Amerikanische Arbeitsrecht Aus Der Perspektive Historischer Und Zukünftiger Entwicklungen, Alexander Colvin, Katherine V. W. Stone
Alexander Colvin
In den vergangenen 15 Jahren ließen sich im amerikanischen Kollektiv- und Individualarbeitsrecht sowohl eine Fortsetzung der früheren Trends als auch die Entstehung neuer Themenfelder beobachten.Das System des kollektiven Arbeitsrechts, das die gewerkschaftliche Interessenvertretung und die Beziehungen zwischen den Beschäftigten und dem Management regelt, hat sich in seiner grundlegenden, auf die Zeit der Great Depression und die Jahre unmittelbar nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg zurückgehenden Rechtsstruktur kaum verändert. Das amerikanische Individualarbeitsrecht hat dagegen mit der Einführung zusätzlicher individueller Arbeitnehmerrechte eine beträchtliche Dynamik entwickelt. Die Veränderungen in der Arbeitsorganisation und die Entwicklung neuer Formen von Arbeitsverträgen bedeuten eine zusätzliche Herausforderung für die traditionelle …
Rethinking Bargaining Unit Determination: Labor Law And The Structure Of Collective Representation In A Changing Workplace, Alexander Colvin
Rethinking Bargaining Unit Determination: Labor Law And The Structure Of Collective Representation In A Changing Workplace, Alexander Colvin
Alexander Colvin
[Excerpt] Arguably the leading issue for current labor law research is whether the existing system of law based on the Wagner Act model can continue to be relevant and appropriate for the contemporary workplace. Changes in the environment of work during the over half-century since this model was developed have brought pressures for re-evaluation and adaptation of key elements of its structure. Criticism of this system has focused on a number of areas, including: the reliance on the formal grievance procedure and arbitration; the separation of the realms of collective bargaining and business decision making; the limitations on employee participation …
Foreword To The Killing Of Karen Silkwood, Kate Bronfenbrenner
Foreword To The Killing Of Karen Silkwood, Kate Bronfenbrenner
Kate Bronfenbrenner
[Excerpt] The Killing of Karen Silkwood, therefore, is both a cautionary and inspirational tale. It reminds us of what we are up against and what it takes to win. But most of all it reminds us why each of us must stand with the whistle-blowers and the ordinary heroes that are among us, in the workplace, in government, and in our communities, and, if given the opportunity, become ordinary heroes ourselves. The risks are great, but the costs of not standing up and not speaking out are even greater.
Reversing The Tide Of Organizing Decline: Lessons From The Us Experience, Kate Bronfenbrenner
Reversing The Tide Of Organizing Decline: Lessons From The Us Experience, Kate Bronfenbrenner
Kate Bronfenbrenner
As increasing numbers of employers and governments in industrialized nations hasten to "Americanize" their economic policies, labor laws, and union-avoidance strategies, it has become critical for unions in other countries to learn what they can from the organizing experience of the US labor movement. Most research on factors contributing to US organizing decline has focused on the role played by factors external to the labor movement such as global competition, de-industrialization, changes in workforce demographics, new work systems, deregulation, aggressive employer opposition, and weak and poorly enforced labor laws. US unions, however, have greatly contributed to their own decline by …
California Farmworkers’ Strikes Of 1933, Kate Bronfenbrenner
California Farmworkers’ Strikes Of 1933, Kate Bronfenbrenner
Kate Bronfenbrenner
[Excerpt] The spring of 1933 ushered in a wave of labor unrest unparalleled in the history of California agriculture. Starting in April with the Santa Clara pea harvest, strikes erupted throughout the summer and fall as each crop ripened for harvest. The strike wave culminated with the San Joaquin Valley strike, the largest and most important strike in the history of American agriculture. All told, more than 47,500 farmworkers participated in the 1933 strikes. Twenty-four of these strikes, involving approximately 37,500 workers, were under the leadership of the Communist-led Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU). In a dramatic reversal …
Imperial Valley, California, Farmworkers’ Strike Of 1934, Kate Bronfenbrenner
Imperial Valley, California, Farmworkers’ Strike Of 1934, Kate Bronfenbrenner
Kate Bronfenbrenner
[Excerpt] In early November 1933, organizers from the Communist-led Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) returned to the Imperial Valley, where just four years before their first strike among California's agricultural workers had ended in a swift and inglorious defeat. Now they returned to the valley, fresh from their strike victories in the fall fruit harvest campaign, confident that the time was now ripe to bring unionization to the Imperial Valley lettuce fields. Conditions in the valley in November 1933 certainly appeared more conducive to the CAWIU's success. Wages for lettuce workers were as low as ten cents an …
Imperial Valley, California, Farmworkers’ Strike Of 1930, Kate Bronfenbrenner
Imperial Valley, California, Farmworkers’ Strike Of 1930, Kate Bronfenbrenner
Kate Bronfenbrenner
[Excerpt] On January 1, 1930, several hundred Mexican and Filipino lettuce workers in Brawley, California, walked off their jobs in a spontaneous protest against declining wages and intolerable working conditions. In less than a week they were joined by 5,000 other field workers, and the impromptu walkout of Imperial Valley lettuce workers turned into a serious strike, ushering in a decade of farmworker militancy that sent tremors throughout California's powerful agricultural establishment.