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Author: Bruce Nelson Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 9780252061448 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
With working lives characterized by exploitation and rootlessness, merchant seamen were isolated from mainstream life. Yet their contacts with workers in port cities around the world imbued them with a sense of internationalism. These factors contributed to a subculture that encouraged militancy, spontaneous radicalism, and a syndicalist mood. Bruce Nelson's award-winning book examines the insurgent activity and consciousness of maritime workers during the 1930s. As he shows, merchant seamen and longshoremen on the Pacific Coast made major institutional gains, sustained a lengthy period of activity, and expanded their working-class consciousness. Nelson examines the two major strikes that convulsed the region and caused observers to state that day-to-day labor relations resembled guerilla warfare. He also looks at related activity, from increasing political activism to stoppages to defend laborers from penalties, refusals to load cargos for Mussolini's war in Ethiopia, and forced boardings of German vessels to tear down the swastika.
Author: Bruce Nelson Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 9780252061448 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
With working lives characterized by exploitation and rootlessness, merchant seamen were isolated from mainstream life. Yet their contacts with workers in port cities around the world imbued them with a sense of internationalism. These factors contributed to a subculture that encouraged militancy, spontaneous radicalism, and a syndicalist mood. Bruce Nelson's award-winning book examines the insurgent activity and consciousness of maritime workers during the 1930s. As he shows, merchant seamen and longshoremen on the Pacific Coast made major institutional gains, sustained a lengthy period of activity, and expanded their working-class consciousness. Nelson examines the two major strikes that convulsed the region and caused observers to state that day-to-day labor relations resembled guerilla warfare. He also looks at related activity, from increasing political activism to stoppages to defend laborers from penalties, refusals to load cargos for Mussolini's war in Ethiopia, and forced boardings of German vessels to tear down the swastika.
Author: Eric Arnesen Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 9780252063770 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
"During the nineteenth century, American and foreign travelers often found New Orleans a delightful, exotic stop on their journeys; few failed to marvel at the riverfront, the center of the city's economic activity. . . . But absent from the tourism industry's historical recollection is any reference to the immigrants or black migrants and their children who constituted the army of laborers along the riverfront and provided the essential human power to keep the cotton, sugar, and other goods flowing. . . . In examining one diverse group of workers--the 10,000 to 15,000 cotton screwmen, longshoremen, cotton and round freight teamsters, cotton yardmen, railroad freight handlers, and Mississippi River roustabouts--this book focuses primarily on the workplace and the labor movement that emerged along the waterfront."--From the preface
Author: Peter Cole Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 0252090853 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
The rise and fall of America's first truly interracial labor union For almost a decade during the 1910s and 1920s, the Philadelphia waterfront was home to the most durable interracial, multiethnic union seen in the United States prior to the CIO era. For much of its time, Local 8 was majority black, always with a cadre of black leaders. The union also claimed immigrants from Eastern Europe, as well as many Irish Americans, who had a notorious reputation for racism. This important study is the first book-length examination of how Local 8, affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World, accomplished what no other did at the time. Peter Cole outlines the factors that were instrumental in Local 8's success, both ideological (the IWW's commitment to working-class solidarity) and pragmatic (racial divisions helped solidify employer dominance). He also shows how race was central not only to the rise but also to the decline of Local 8, as increasing racial tensions were manipulated by employers and federal agents bent on the union's destruction.
Author: William Finlay Publisher: ISBN: 9780877225232 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 209
Book Description
In this ethnographic account of longshoremen in California, William Finlay examines how they have been affected by recent technological changes in this industry. Focusing on the workers in Local 13 (Los Angeles-Long Beach) of the ILWU, he finds that despite the profound impact of new technologies, in particular of containerization, these workers have retained much of their influence over production, their autonomy at work, and their skill on the job. Using data collected from interviews and participant observation, Finlay provides a first-hand view of a union, the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, about which there has been considerable speculation and discussion but which has been quite difficult for outsiders to penetrate. During his research, Finlay worked as a longshoreman, accompanied crane operators loading and unloading ships, observed union business agents on their waterfront rounds, and attended negotiation meetings. Contrary to many contemporary arguments concerning the negative impact of technological innovation at the workplace, Finlay finds that in longshoring the new technologies have resulted in the increased demand for skilled workers and in fresh opportunities for workers to assert their control of production.Work on the Waterfrontexamines local unionism in action and discusses the factors that produce on-the-job bargaining in longshoring and other lines of work. Author note: William Finlay is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Iowa.
Author: Calvin Winslow Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 9780252066917 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 220
Book Description
Few work settings can compete with the waterfront for a long, rich history of multi-ethnic and multiracial interaction. Here, five scholars focus on the complex relationships involved in this intersection of race, class, and ethnicity. "Opens up some of the most significant questions in American labor and social history, including the struggle for control at the workplace and, even more important, the relationship between black and white workers and among various ethnic groups on the docks." -- David Brundage, author of The Making of Western Labor Radicalism: Denver's Organized Workers, 1878-1905 A volume in the series The Working Class in American History, edited by David Brody, Alice Kessler-Harris, David Montgomery, and Sean Wilentz
Author: David F. Selvin Publisher: Wayne State University Press ISBN: 9780814326107 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
In A Terrible Anger, David F. Selvin presents a narrative history of the strikes. Unlike other labor historians who have stressed the importance of radical groups involved in the strikes, he addresses the impact on unions, owners, government, and the daily press. A witness to the strikes, Selvin has written a compelling story of the traumas and triumphs which acted as catalysts for the tumultuous labor battles of the mid-1930s.
Author: David Wellman Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521629683 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
American labour history is typically interpreted by scholars as a history of defeat. Hidden by this conventional wisdom are a handful of militant unions that did not follow the putative Congress of Industrial Organizations trajectory. Based on three years of ethnographic research, this book examines a union that organised itself to systematically challenge management's rule on the shopfloor: San Francisco's longshore union. American unionism looks quite different than conventional wisdom suggests when everyday union practices are observed. American labour's trajectory, this book argues, is neither inevitable nor determined; militant, democratic forms of unionism are possible in the United States; and collective bargaining does not automatically eliminate contests for workplace control. The contract is a bargain that reflects and reproduces fundamental disagreement; it states how production and conflict will proceed.
Author: Howard Kimeldorf Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 9780520912779 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
Why is the American working class different? For generations, scholars and activists alike have wrestled with this question, with an eye to explaining why workers in the United States are not more like their radicalized European counterparts. Approaching the question from a different angle, Reds or Rackets? provides a fascinating examination of the American labor movement from the inside out, as it were, by analyzing the divergent sources of radicalism and conservatism within it. Kimeldorf focuses on the political contrast between East and West Coast longshoremen from World War I through the early years of the Cold War, when the difference between the two unions was greatest. He explores the politics of the West Coast union that developed into a hot bed of working class insurgency and contrasts it with the conservative and racket-ridden East Coast longshoreman's union. Two unions, based in the same industry—as different as night and day. The question posed by Kimeldorf is, why? Why "reds" on one coast and racketeers on the other? To answer this question Kimeldorf provides a systematic comparison of the two unions, illuminating the political consequences of occupational recruitment, industry structure, mobilization strategies, and industrial conflict during this period. In doing so, Reds orRackets? sheds new light on the structural and historical bases of radical and conservative unionism. More than a comparative study of two unions, Reds or Rackets? is an exploration of the dynamics of trade unionism, sources of membership loyalty, and neglected aspects of working class consciousness. It is an incisive and valuable study that will appeal to historians, social scientists, and anyone interested in understanding the political trajectory of twentieth-century American labor.
Author: Russell Bourne Publisher: Turner Publishing Company ISBN: 0470323604 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 233
Book Description
They did the dirty work of the American Revolution Their spontaneous uprisings and violent actions steered America toward resistance to the Acts of Parliament and finally toward revolution. They tarred and feathered the backsides of British customs officials, gutted the mansion of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, armed themselves with marline spikes and cudgels to fight on the waterfront against soldiers of the British occupation, and hurled the contents of 350 chests of British East India Company tea into Boston Harbor under the very guns of the anchored British fleet. Cradle of Violence introduces the maritime workers who ignited the American Revolution: the fishermen desperate to escape impressment by Royal Navy press gangs, the frequently unemployed dockworkers, the wartime veterans and starving widows--all of whose mounting "tumults" led the way to rebellion. These were the hard-pressed but fiercely independent residents of Boston's North and South Ends who rallied around the Liberty Tree on Boston Common, who responded to Samuel Adams's cries against "Tyranny," and whose headstrong actions helped embolden John Hancock to sign the Declaration of Independence. Without the maritime mobs' violent demonstrations against authority, the politicians would not have spurred on to utter their impassioned words; Great Britain would not have been provoked to send forth troops to quell the mob-induced rebellion; the War of Independence would not have happened. One of the mobs' most telling demonstrations brought about the Boston Massacre. After it, John Adams attempted to calm the town by dismissing the waterfront characters who had been killed as "a rabble of saucy boys, negroes and mulattoes, Irish teagues, and outlandish jack tars." Cradle of Violence demonstrates that they were, more truly, America's first heroes.
Author: Bruce Nelson
Author: Bruce Nelson
Author: Eric Arnesen
Author: Peter Cole
Author: William Finlay
Author: Ronald Magden
Author: Calvin Winslow
Author: David F. Selvin
Author: David Wellman
Author: Howard Kimeldorf
Author: Russell Bourne