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Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950

Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950 PDF Author: Rosemary Feurer
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252073193
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Book Description
In Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950 Rosemary Feurer examines the fierce battles between Midwestern electrical workers and bitterly anti-union electrical and metal industry companies during the 1930s and 40s. Organized as District 8 of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) and led by open Communist William Sentner, workers developed a style of unionism designed to confront corporate power and to be a force for social transformation in their community and nation. Feurer studies District 8 through a long lens, establishing early twentieth century contexts for these conflicts. Exploring the role of radicals in local movement formation, Feurer argues for a "civic" unionism that could connect community and union concerns to build solidarity and contest the political economy. District 8's spirited unionism included plant occupations in St. Louis and Iowa, campaigns to democratize economic planning, and local strategies for national bargaining that were depicted as a Communist conspiracy by a corporate influenced Congressional committee in Evansville, Indiana. District 8 was destroyed through reactionary networks and the anti-Communist backlash of the mid-twentieth century, but Feurer argues that its history tells another side of the labor movement s formation in the 1930s and 40s, and can inform current struggles against corporate power in the modern global economy. A website with more photographs and documents is available at www.radicalunionism.niu.edu "

Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950

Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950 PDF Author: Rosemary Feurer
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252073193
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Book Description
In Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950 Rosemary Feurer examines the fierce battles between Midwestern electrical workers and bitterly anti-union electrical and metal industry companies during the 1930s and 40s. Organized as District 8 of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) and led by open Communist William Sentner, workers developed a style of unionism designed to confront corporate power and to be a force for social transformation in their community and nation. Feurer studies District 8 through a long lens, establishing early twentieth century contexts for these conflicts. Exploring the role of radicals in local movement formation, Feurer argues for a "civic" unionism that could connect community and union concerns to build solidarity and contest the political economy. District 8's spirited unionism included plant occupations in St. Louis and Iowa, campaigns to democratize economic planning, and local strategies for national bargaining that were depicted as a Communist conspiracy by a corporate influenced Congressional committee in Evansville, Indiana. District 8 was destroyed through reactionary networks and the anti-Communist backlash of the mid-twentieth century, but Feurer argues that its history tells another side of the labor movement s formation in the 1930s and 40s, and can inform current struggles against corporate power in the modern global economy. A website with more photographs and documents is available at www.radicalunionism.niu.edu "

State of the Union

State of the Union PDF Author: Nelson Lichtenstein
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691160279
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
In a fresh and timely reinterpretation, Nelson Lichtenstein examines how trade unionism has waxed and waned in the nation's political and moral imagination, among both devoted partisans and intransigent foes. From the steel foundry to the burger-grill, from Woodrow Wilson to John Sweeney, from Homestead to Pittston, Lichtenstein weaves together a compelling matrix of ideas, stories, strikes, laws, and people in a streamlined narrative of work and labor in the twentieth century. The "labor question" became a burning issue during the Progressive Era because its solution seemed essential to the survival of American democracy itself. Beginning there, Lichtenstein takes us all the way to the organizing fever of contemporary Los Angeles, where the labor movement stands at the center of the effort to transform millions of new immigrants into alert citizen unionists. He offers an expansive survey of labor's upsurge during the 1930s, when the New Deal put a white, male version of industrial democracy at the heart of U.S. political culture. He debunks the myth of a postwar "management-labor accord" by showing that there was (at most) a limited, unstable truce. Lichtenstein argues that the ideas that had once sustained solidarity and citizenship in the world of work underwent a radical transformation when the rights-centered social movements of the 1960s and 1970s captured the nation's moral imagination. The labor movement was therefore tragically unprepared for the years of Reagan and Clinton: although technological change and a new era of global economics battered the unions, their real failure was one of ideas and political will. Throughout, Lichtenstein argues that labor's most important function, in theory if not always in practice, has been the vitalization of a democratic ethos, at work and in the larger society. To the extent that the unions fuse their purpose with that impulse, they can once again become central to the fate of the republic. State of the Union is an incisive history that tells the story of one of America's defining aspirations. This edition includes a new preface in which Lichtenstein engages with many of those who have offered commentary on State of the Union and evaluates the historical literature that has emerged in the decade since the book's initial publication. He also brings his narrative into the current moment with a final chapter, "Obama's America: Liberalism without Unions.?

Embedded with Organized Labor

Embedded with Organized Labor PDF Author: Steve Early
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583671889
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
Describes how union members have organized successfully, on the job and in the community, in the face of employer opposition now and in the past in a series of essays—an unusual exercise in “participatory labor journalism.” From publisher description.

Labor in America

Labor in America PDF Author: Melvyn Dubofsky
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118817621
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 514

Book Description
Even since the last edition of this milestone text was released six years ago, unions have continued to shed members; union membership in the private sector of the economy has fallen to levels not seen since the nineteenth century; the forces of economic liberalization (neo-liberalism), capital mobility, and globalization have affected measurably the material standard of living enjoyed by workers in the United States; and mass immigration from the Southern Hemisphere and Asia has continued to restructure the domestic labor force. Yet even in the face of anti-union legislation, a continuing decline in the number of organized workers, and the fear of stateless, if not faceless terrorism—the shadow of “911” in which we still live, in preparing this new edition of his classic text Professor Dubofsky has hewn to the lines laid out in the previous seven in seeking to encourage today’s students of labor history to learn about those who built the United States and who will shape its future. In addition to taking the narrative right up to the present, a recent history that includes the election of 2008 as well as the tumultuous blow suffered by the U.S. and world economy in 2008-09, this eighth edition features an entirely new (fourth) bank of photographs and, in light of the avalanche of new scholarly work over the last decade, a complete overhauling of the book’s extensive and critical Further Readings section in order to note the very best works from the profuse recent scholarship that explores the history of working people in all its diversity.

Little 'Red Scares'

Little 'Red Scares' PDF Author: Robert Justin Goldstein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317104145
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Book Description
Anti-communism has long been a potent force in American politics, capable of gripping both government and popular attention. Nowhere is this more evident that the two great 'red scares' of 1919-20 and 1946-54; the latter generally - if somewhat inaccurately - termed McCarthyism. The interlude between these two major scares has tended to garner less attention, but as this volume makes clear, the lingering effects of 1919-20 and the gathering storm-clouds of 'McCarthyism' were clearly visible throughout the 20s and 30s, even if in a more low-key way. Indeed, the period between the two great red scares was marked by frequent instances of political repression, often justified on anti-communist grounds, at local, state and federal levels. Yet these events have been curiously neglected in the history of American political repression and anti-communism, perhaps because much of the material deals with events scattered in time and space which never reached the intensity of the two great scares. By focusing on this twenty-five year 'interim' period, the essays in this collection bridge the gap between the two high-profile 'red scares' thus offering a much more contextualised and fluid narrative for American anti-communism. In so doing the rationale and motivations for the 'red scares' can be seen as part of an evolving political landscape, rather than as isolated bouts of hysteria exploding onto - and then vanishing from - the political scene. Instead, a much more nuanced appreciation of the conflicting interests and fears of government, politicians, organised labour, free-speech advocates, employers, and the press is offered, which will be of interest to anyone wishing to better understand the political history of modern America.

Spirit of Rebellion

Spirit of Rebellion PDF Author: Jarod Roll
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252077032
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Treats the developments in tenant farming communities (black and white) in Missouri's "bootheel" in the 1930s.

A Freedom Budget for All Americans

A Freedom Budget for All Americans PDF Author: Paul Le Blanc
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583673601
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Book Description
While the Civil Rights Movement is remembered for efforts to end segregation and secure the rights of African Americans, the larger economic vision that animated much of the movement is often overlooked today. That vision sought economic justice for every person in the United States, regardless of race. It favored production for social use instead of profit; social ownership; and democratic control over major economic decisions. The document that best captured this vision was the Freedom Budget for All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-1975, To Achieve Freedom from Want published by the A. Philip Randolph Institute and endorsed by a virtual ‘who’s who’ of U.S. left liberalism and radicalism. Now, two of today’s leading socialist thinkers return to the Freedom Budget and its program for economic justice. Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates explain the origins of the Freedom Budget, how it sought to achieve “freedom from want” for all people, and how it might be reimagined for our current moment. Combining historical perspective with clear-sighted economic proposals, the authors make a concrete case for reviving the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement and building the society of economic security and democratic control envisioned by the movement’s leaders—a struggle that continues to this day.

Boom, Bust, Exodus

Boom, Bust, Exodus PDF Author: Chad Broughton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190608862
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 425

Book Description
Following the story of the displacement of a Maytag refrigerator plant from Galesburg, Illinois, to Reynosa, Mexico in 2004, Boom, Bust, Exodus puts a human face on globalization, exploring the social side of the fast-moving changes sweeping across the U.S. and Mexico.

Marching with Dr. King

Marching with Dr. King PDF Author: Cyril Robinson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313384193
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description
This book shows how a Jewish lawyer utilized his philosophy of prophetic Judaism (a belief in social justice) and his training as a lawyer to become the head of a trade union that formulated policies embodying these social beliefs, bringing many benefits to its members. In 1946, Ralph Helstein was the general counsel for the United Packinghouse Workers Union (UPWA), which had become a predominantly black worker organization. At the time there was a divisive left-right split in the union. As the only individual both sides trusted, Helstein was elected president of the union, thus beginning an era of positive change for the UPWA and its workers. Beyond Helstein's efforts for the UPWA, Marching with Dr. King: Ralph Helstein and the United Packinghouse Workers of America also examines the involvement of Helstein in the civil rights movement, his personal association with Martin Luther King, Jr., and how his actions as union president championed the rights of African Americans, women, and even an immigrant group outside the United States—the sugar workers in Puerto Rico. This text presents a unique perspective on the life of a labor leader, revealing the connection between Helstein's religious and philosophical ideas with his leadership of the UPWA union.

Immigrants against the State

Immigrants against the State PDF Author: Kenyon Zimmer
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252097432
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
From the 1880s through the 1940s, tens of thousands of first- and second-generation immigrants embraced the anarchist cause after arriving on American shores. Kenyon Zimmer explores why these migrants turned to anarchism, and how their adoption of its ideology shaped their identities, experiences, and actions. Zimmer focuses on Italians and Eastern European Jews in San Francisco, New York City, and Paterson, New Jersey. Tracing the movement's changing fortunes from the pre–World War I era through the Spanish Civil War, Zimmer argues that anarchists, opposed to both American and Old World nationalism, severed all attachments to their nations of origin but also resisted assimilation into their host society. Their radical cosmopolitan outlook and identity instead embraced diversity and extended solidarity across national, ethnic, and racial divides. Though ultimately unable to withstand the onslaught of Americanism and other nationalisms, the anarchist movement nonetheless provided a shining example of a transnational collective identity delinked from the nation-state and racial hierarchies.