Sit-down: the General Motors Strike of 1936-1937

Sit-down: the General Motors Strike of 1936-1937 PDF Author: Sidney Fine
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472329489
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
Studies the most significant American labor conflict of the 20th century

Sit-down: the General Motors Strike of 1936-1937

Sit-down: the General Motors Strike of 1936-1937 PDF Author: Sidney Fine
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472329489
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
Studies the most significant American labor conflict of the 20th century

Midnight in Vehicle City

Midnight in Vehicle City PDF Author: Edward McClelland
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807039683
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Winner of the 2021 Midland Authors Book Award in History In a time of great inequality and a gutted middle class, the dramatic story of “the strike heard around the world” is a testament to what workers can gain when they stand up for their rights. The tumultuous Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937 was the birth of the United Auto Workers, which set the standard for wages in every industry. Midnight in Vehicle City tells the gripping story of how workers defeated General Motors, the largest industrial corporation in the world. Their victory ushered in the golden age of the American middle class and created a new kind of America, one in which every worker had a right to a share of the company’s wealth. The causes for which the strikers sat down—collective bargaining, secure retirement, better wages—enjoyed a half century of success. But now, the middle class is disappearing and economic inequality is at its highest since before the New Deal. Journalist and historian Edward McClelland brings the action-packed events of the strike back to life—through the voices of those who lived it. In vivid play-by-plays, McClelland narrates the dramatic scenes including of the takeovers of GM plants; violent showdowns between picketers and the police; Michigan governor Frank Murphy’s activation of the National Guard; the actions of the militaristic Women’s Emergency Brigade who carried billy clubs and vowed to protect strikers from police; and tense negotiations between labor leader John L. Lewis, GM chairman Alfred P. Sloan, and labor secretary Frances Perkins. The epic tale of the strike and its lasting legacy shows why the middle class is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century and will guide our understanding of what we will lose if we don’t revive it.

The Great Flint Sit-down Strike Against G.M. 1936-37

The Great Flint Sit-down Strike Against G.M. 1936-37 PDF Author: Walter Linder
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : General Motors Corporation Sit-Down Strike, 1936-1937
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description


Class Struggle Unionism

Class Struggle Unionism PDF Author: Joe Burns
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1642596817
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
For those who want to build a fighting labor movement, there are many questions to answer. How to relate to the union establishment which often does not want to fight? Whether to work in the rank and file of unions or staff jobs? How much to prioritize broader class demands versus shop floor struggle? How to relate to foundation-funded worker centers and alternative union efforts? And most critically, how can we revive militancy and union power in the face of corporate power and a legal system set up against us? Class struggle unionism is the belief that our union struggle exists within a larger struggle between an exploiting billionaire class and the working class which actually produces the goods and services in society. Class struggle unionism looks at the employment transaction as inherently exploitative. While workers create all wealth in society, the outcome of the wage employment transaction is to separate workers from that wealth and create the billionaire class. From that simple proposition flows a powerful and radical form of unionism. Historically, class struggle unionists placed their workplace fights squarely within this larger fight between workers and the owning class. Viewing unionism in this way produces a particular type of unionism which both fights for broader class issues but is also rooted in workplace-based militancy. Drawing on years of labor activism and study of labor tradition Joe Burns outlines the key set of ideas common to class struggle unionism and shows how these ideas can create a more militant, democtractic and fighting labor movement.

Chevy in the Hole

Chevy in the Hole PDF Author: Kelsey Ronan
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1250803918
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a Michigan Notable Book for 2023 Finalist for the 2022 Heartland Booksellers Award A gorgeous, unflinching love letter to Flint, Michigan, and the resilience of its people, Kelsey Ronan's Chevy in the Hole follows multiple generations of two families making their homes there, with a stunning contemporary love story at its center. In the opening pages of Chevy in the Hole, August “Gus” Molloy has just overdosed in a bathroom stall of the Detroit farm-to-table restaurant where he works. Shortly after, he packs it in and returns home to his family in Flint. This latest slip and recommitment to sobriety doesn’t feel too terribly different from the others, until Gus meets Monae, an urban farmer trying to coax a tenuous rebirth from the city’s damaged land. Through her eyes, he sees what might be possible in a city everyone else seems to have forgotten or, worse, given up on. But as they begin dreaming up an oasis together, even the most essential resources can’t be counted on. Woven throughout their story are the stories of their families—Gus’s white and Monae’s Black—members of which have had their own triumphs and devastating setbacks trying to survive and thrive in Flint. A novel about the things that change over time and the things that don’t, Chevy in the Hole reminds us again and again what people need from one another and from the city they call home.

Beaten Down, Worked Up

Beaten Down, Worked Up PDF Author: Steven Greenhouse
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 1101874430
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
“A page-turning book that spans a century of worker strikes.... Engrossing, character-driven, panoramic.” —The New York Times Book Review We live in an era of soaring corporate profits and anemic wage gains, one in which low-paid jobs and blighted blue-collar communities have become a common feature of our nation’s landscape. Behind these trends lies a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power. Award-winning journalist and author Steven Greenhouse guides us through the key episodes and trends in history that are essential to understanding some of our nation’s most pressing problems, including increased income inequality, declining social mobility, and the concentration of political power in the hands of the wealthy few. He exposes the modern labor landscape with the stories of dozens of American workers, from GM employees to Uber drivers to underpaid schoolteachers. Their fight to take power back is crucial for America’s future, and Greenhouse proposes concrete, feasible ways in which workers’ collective power can be—and is being—rekindled and reimagined in the twenty-first century. Beaten Down, Worked Up is a stirring and essential look at labor in America, poised as it is between the tumultuous struggles of the past and the vital, hopeful struggles ahead. A PBS NewsHour Now Read This Book Club Pick

The Struggle for Control of the Modern Corporation

The Struggle for Control of the Modern Corporation PDF Author: Robert F. Freeland
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521630344
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
This book examines the changes in General Motors' organization between 1924 and 1970.

Bread Upon the Waters

Bread Upon the Waters PDF Author: Rose Pesotta
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780875461274
Category : Labor
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description


Who Rules America Now?

Who Rules America Now? PDF Author: G. William Domhoff
Publisher: Touchstone
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The author is convinced that there is a ruling class in America today. He examines the American power structure as it has developed in the 1980s. He presents systematic, empirical evidence that a fixed group of privileged people dominates the American economy and government. The book demonstrates that an upper class comprising only one-half of one percent of the population occupies key positions within the corporate community. It shows how leaders within this "power elite" reach government and dominate it through processes of special-interest lobbying, policy planning and candidate selection. It is written not to promote any political ideology, but to analyze our society with accuracy.

Strike for the Common Good

Strike for the Common Good PDF Author: Rebecca Kolins Givan
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047212840X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
In February 2018, 35,000 public school educators and staff walked off the job in West Virginia. More than 100,000 teachers in other states—both right-to-work states, like West Virginia, and those with a unionized workforce—followed them over the next year. From Arizona, Kentucky, and Oklahoma to Colorado and California, teachers announced to state legislators that not only their abysmal wages but the deplorable conditions of their work and the increasingly straitened circumstances of public education were unacceptable. These recent teacher walkouts affirm public education as a crucial public benefit and understand the rampant disinvestment in public education not simply as a local issue affecting teacher paychecks but also as a danger to communities and to democracy. Strike for the Common Good gathers together original essays, written by teachers involved in strikes nationwide, by students and parents who have supported them, by journalists who have covered these strikes in depth, and by outside analysts (academic and otherwise). Together, the essays consider the place of these strikes in the broader landscape of recent labor organizing and battles over public education, and attend to the largely female workforce and, often, largely non-white student population of America’s schools.