Labor's Giant Step

Labor's Giant Step PDF Author: Art Preis
Publisher: Pathfinder
ISBN: 9780873482639
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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Book Description
The story of the explosive labor struggles and political battles in the 1930s that built the industrial unions. And how those unions became the vanguard of a mass social movement that began transforming U.S. society.

Labor's Giant Step

Labor's Giant Step PDF Author: Art Preis
Publisher: Pathfinder
ISBN: 9780873482639
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 538

Get Book Here

Book Description
The story of the explosive labor struggles and political battles in the 1930s that built the industrial unions. And how those unions became the vanguard of a mass social movement that began transforming U.S. society.

Labor's Giant Step

Labor's Giant Step PDF Author: Art Preis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Labor unions
Languages : en
Pages : 655

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Book Description


The CIO, 1935-1955

The CIO, 1935-1955 PDF Author: Robert H. Zieger
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 080786644X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) encompassed the largest sustained surge of worker organization in American history. Robert Zieger charts the rise of this industrial union movement, from the founding of the CIO by John L. Lewis in 1935 to its merger under Walter Reuther with the American Federation of Labor in 1955. Exploring themes of race and gender, Zieger combines the institutional history of the CIO with vivid depictions of working-class life in this critical period. Zieger details the ideological conflicts that racked the CIO even as its leaders strove to establish a labor presence at the heart of the U.S. economic system. Stressing the efforts of industrial unionists such as Sidney Hillman and Philip Murray to forge potent instruments of political action, he assesses the CIO's vital role in shaping the postwar political and international order. Zieger's analysis also contributes to current debates over labor law reform, the collective bargaining system, and the role of organized labor in a changing economy.

Tell the Bosses We're Coming

Tell the Bosses We're Coming PDF Author: Shaun Richman
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583678573
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
How labor union organizing can help leverage today's movements, and why workers need unions more than ever before Lengthening hours, lessening pay, no parental leave, scant job security... Never have so many workers needed so much support. Yet the very labor unions that could garner us protections and help us speak up for ourselves are growing weaker every day. In an age of rampant inequality, of increasing social protest and strikes – and when a majority of workers say they want to be union members – why does union density continue to decline? Shaun Richman offers some answers in his book, Tell the Bosses We're Coming. It’s time to bring unions back from the edge of institutional annihilation, says Richman. But that is no simple proposition. Richman explains how important it is that this book is published now, because the next few years offer a rare opportunity to undo the great damage wrought on labor by decades of corporate union-busting, if only union activists raise our ambitions. Based on deft historical research and legal analysis, as well as his own experience as a union organizing director, Richman lays out an action plan for U.S. workers in the twenty-first century by which we can internalize the concept that workers are equal human beings, entitled to health care, dignity, job security – and definitely, the right to strike. Unafraid to take on some of the labor movement’s sacred cows, this book describes what it would take – some changes that are within activists’ power and some that require meaningful legal reform – to put unions in workplaces across America. As Shaun Richman says, “I look forward to working with you.”

Labor Versus Empire

Labor Versus Empire PDF Author: Gilbert G. Gonzalez
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135935289
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
The essays in this collection address issues significant to labor within regional, national and international contexts. Themes of the chapters will focus on managed labor migration; organizing in multi-ethnic and multi-national contexts; global economics and labor; global economics and inequality; gender and labor; racism and globalization; regional trade agreements and labor.

Workers' Control in America

Workers' Control in America PDF Author: David Montgomery
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521280068
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
A collection of essays on workers' efforts in the 19th and 20th centuries to assert control over the processes of production in US. It describes the development of management techniques and includes discussions of various worker and union responses to unemployment.

Doing History from the Bottom Up

Doing History from the Bottom Up PDF Author: Staughton Lynd
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608464539
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Reflections on the crucial importance of including the perspectives of the marginalized and the non-elite in our historical accounts. In the 1960s, historians on both sides of the Atlantic began to challenge the assumptions of their colleagues and push for an understanding of history “from below.” In this collection of writings, Staughton Lynd, one of the pioneers of this approach, laments the passing of fellow luminaries David Montgomery, E.P. Thompson, Alfred Young, and Howard Zinn; offers an account of the decline of trade unionism based on the narratives of workers and his efforts as a lawyer to assist them; and makes the case that contemporary academics and activists alike should take more seriously the stories and perspectives of Native Americans, slaves, rank-and-file workers, and other still-too-frequently marginalized voices.

Labor Divided

Labor Divided PDF Author: Robert Asher
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780887069703
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
Labor Divided is the first anthology on race, ethnicity and the history of American working-class struggles to give substantial attention to the experiences of African-American, Asian, and Hispanic workers as well as to the experiences of workers from European backgrounds. The essays in Labor Divided cover a time period of more than a century. They focus on the experiences of service workers as well as factory workers, women as well as men. Because the American labor force presently is absorbing significant numbers of workers from abroad, and especially Asian and Hispanic workers, this volume will be of great interest to readers seeking historical perspectives on contemporary economic developments.

Agitprop: The Life of an American Working-Class Radical

Agitprop: The Life of an American Working-Class Radical PDF Author: Eugene V. Dennett
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791400784
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Agitprop is the memoir of a Washington State maritime and steel worker who was a longtime activist in the American Federation of Labor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and the Communist Party. Born to a Massachusetts working class socialist family, Dennett is an idealist who sought to unify theoretical principle, policy, and practice in his daily life. His life story embodies broader themes that make this book an allegorical depiction of one man's journey through 20th century working-class America.

Strike Songs of the Depression

Strike Songs of the Depression PDF Author: Timothy P. Lynch
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604736720
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
The Depression brought unprecedented changes for American workers and organized labor. As the economy plummeted, employers cut wages and laid off workers, while simultaneously attempting to wrest more work from those who remained employed. In mills, mines, and factories workers organized and resisted, striking for higher wages, improved working conditions, and the right to bargain collectively. As workers walked the picket line or sat down on the shop floor, they could be heard singing. This book examines the songs they sang at three different strikes- the Gastonia, North Carolina, textile mill strike (1929), Harlan County, Kentucky, coal mining strike (1931-32), and Flint, Michigan, automobile sit-down strike (1936-37). Whether in the Carolina Piedmont, the Kentucky hills, or the streets of Michigan, the workers' songs were decidedly class-conscious. All show the workers' understanding of the necessity of solidarity and collective action. In Flint the strikers sang: The trouble in our homestead Was brought about this way When a dashing corporation Had the audacity to say You must all renounce your union And forswear your liberties, And we'll offer you a chance To live and die in slavery. As a shared experience, the singing of songs not only sent the message of collective action but also provided the very means by which the message was communicated and promoted. Singing was a communal experience, whether on picket lines, at union rallies, or on shop floors. By providing the psychological space for striking workers to speak their minds, singing nurtured a sense of community and class consciousness. When strikers retold the events of their strike, as they did in songs, they spread and preserved their common history and further strengthened the bonds among themselves. In the strike songs the roles of gender were pronounced and vivid. Wives and mothers sang out of their concerns for home, family, and children. Men sang in the name of worker loyalty and brotherhood, championing male solidarity and comaraderie. Informed by the new social history, this critical examination of strike songs from three different industries in three different regions gives voice to a group too often deemed as inarticulate. This study, the only book-length examination of this subject, tells history "from the bottom up" and furthers an understanding of worker culture during the tumultuous Depression years.