Organized labor faces enormous challenges in the increasingly global economy. The effect of multinational corporations, the portability of technology and capital, and lowered trade barriers in international commerce have all sparked widespread prophecies of trade union demise. This book, however, presents compelling evidence that unions can survive and grow if labor is willing to cooperate across national borders. Transnational Cooperation among Labor Unions is a seminal study of such cooperation as an effective weapon against the exploitation of workers in today's world.After assessing the challenges confronting organized labor, the authors turn their attention to specifics. They describe and evaluate the most important transnational labor associations, campaigns, and transnational cooperatives in a variety of industries. Contributors include academics who have assessed the status of union-management relations and international labor organizations as well as participants in union campaigns organized across national boundaries.

Starting with the question "How have professors and educational institutions responded to pressures to be professional yet act bureaucratically," Philo Hutcheson uses federal and AAUP records and surveys and blends historical research and sociological analysis to develop a full understanding of the problem. With the dramatic expansion of the professoriate following World War II came increasing tensions between the professor's perceived traditional status as an autonomous professional on the one hand and new role as a bureaucrat subject to institutional authority and responsible for departmental and committee assignments on the other. In this increasingly conflicted realm, the AAUP functioned as a key intermediary, dealing with such issues as tenure, salary, contracts, and even faculty strikes.
Hutcheson examines how tensions between the requirements of institutional bureaucracies and the norms of the academic profession resulted in contentiousness and conflict within the national AAUP, between administrators and faculty members on individual campuses, within the ranks of faculties themselves, and even deep in the consciences of many concerned individuals. The book analyzes the association's ability to respond effectively and to balance the values of collegial representation with the powers of collective bargaining. It thus offers a detailed and authoritative examination of the AAUP's search for ways to sustain professionalism while dealing with the fundamental changes in the nature of the professoriate in the post-World War II era.

The struggles and victories of the UAW form an important episode in the story of American democracy and economics. ""American Vanguard"" is the first and only history of the union available for both general and academic audiences. In this thorough and engaging narrative, John Barnard not only records the controversial issues tackled by the UAW, but also lends them immediacy through details about the workers and their environments, the leaders and the challenges that they faced outside and inside the organization, and the vision that guided many of these activists. Throughout, Barnard traces the UAW's two-fold goal: to create an industrial democracy in the workplace and to pursue a social-democratic agenda in the interest of the public at large. Barnard presents balanced interpretations grounded in evidence, while setting the UAW within the context of the history of the U.S. auto industry and national politics.

Starting with the question "How have professors and educational institutions responded to pressures to be professional yet act bureaucratically," Philo Hutcheson uses federal and AAUP records and surveys and blends historical research and sociological analysis to develop a full understanding of the problem. With the dramatic expansion of the professoriate following World War II came increasing tensions between the professor's perceived traditional status as an autonomous professional on the one hand and new role as a bureaucrat subject to institutional authority and responsible for departmental and committee assignments on the other. In this increasingly conflicted realm, the AAUP functioned as a key intermediary, dealing with such issues as tenure, salary, contracts, and even faculty strikes.
Hutcheson examines how tensions between the requirements of institutional bureaucracies and the norms of the academic profession resulted in contentiousness and conflict within the national AAUP, between administrators and faculty members on individual campuses, within the ranks of faculties themselves, and even deep in the consciences of many concerned individuals. The book analyzes the association's ability to respond effectively and to balance the values of collegial representation with the powers of collective bargaining. It thus offers a detailed and authoritative examination of the AAUP's search for ways to sustain professionalism while dealing with the fundamental changes in the nature of the professoriate in the post-World War II era.

A contemporary classic in Peru, where it was first published in 1986, this book explores changes in the political identity and economic strategies of the Peruvian working class in the 1970s and 1980s. Jorge Parodi uses a case study of Metal Empresa, a large factory in Lima, to trace the surge and decline of the labor movement in Peru--and in Latin America more generally--through the successes and frustrations of the members of a once-powerful union as they coped with the nation's deteriorating economic situation. By the early 1970s, Metal Empresa was the site of one of the most radical and aggressive unions in Peruvian industry. But as the decade drew to a close, political and economic crises soured the environment for trade unionism and rendered unions less able to produce palpable benefits for their members. Through in-depth, often poignant interviews, including an extensive oral history of one of the workers, Jesus Zuniga, Parodi shows how workers desperate to support themselves and their families were increasingly forced to seek opportunities outside the industrial sector. In the process, he shows, they began to question their very identities as workers. |A contemporary classic in Peru, this 1986 book is now available in English. It explores changes in the political identity and economic strategies of the Peruvian working class in the 1970s and 1980s. Jorge Parodi uses a case study of Metal Empresa, a large Lima factory, to trace the surge and decline of the labor movement in Peru--and in Latin America.

Over the years many transnational labor alliances have succeeded in improving conditions for workers, but many more have not. In The New Politics of Transnational Labor, Marissa Brookes explains why this dichotomy has occurred. Using the coordination and context-appropriate (CCAP) theory, she assesses this divergence, arguing that the success of transnational alliances hinges not only on effective coordination across borders and within workers' local organizations but also on their ability to exploit vulnerabilities in global value chains, invoke national and international institutions, and mobilize networks of stakeholders in ways that threaten employers' core, material interests. Brookes uses six comparative case studies spanning four industries, five countries, and fifteen years. From dockside labor disputes in Britain and Australia to service sector campaigns in the supermarket and private security industries to campaigns aimed at luxury hotels in Southeast Asia, Brookes creates her new theoretical framework and speaks to debates in international and comparative political economy on the politics of economic globalization, the viability of private governance, and the impact of organized labor on economic inequality. From this assessment, Brookes provides a vital update to the international relations literature on non-state actors and transnational activism and shows how we can understand the unique capacities labor has as a transnational actor.

Ask people whether teachers unions are good or bad for education and you are likely to receive a wide variety of opinions. A 1998 Gallup Poll asked whether teachers unions helped, hurt, or made no difference in the quality of education in U.S. public schools. Twenty-seven percent responded that unions helped, 26 percent that they hurt, and 37 percent that they made no difference (10 percent of those surveyed said they did not know). Although teachers unions were first organized in the nineteenth century, and collective bargaining has been a fact of life in most communities since the 1960s, the body of literature evaluating the impact of teachers unions on American education is surprisingly small. Conflicting Missions? helps close the knowledge gap by providing a clear, balanced analysis of the role of teachers unions in education reform.The volume emerges from a 1998 conference organized by the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University. The contributors represent a broad array of disciplinary backgrounds and methodological approaches, including some of the unions' harshest critics and most loyal supporters. In examining the relationship of teachers unions and educational reform, the authors approach the subject from several directions. They ask whether unions affect educational productivity, most notably in terms of student achievement. They analyze how teachers unions function as professional organizations concerned with the occupation of teaching, as institutional actors defending interests within a bureaucratic system of education, and as political actors wielding influence on legislation and elections. Reflecting a variety of perspectives and opinions, Conflicting Missions? offers a balanced analysis of a controversial topic. It is a useful starting point for readers who want to discover the complexity of teachers unions and their influence --both positive and negative --on the national effort to improve America's schools.

"Sol Dollinger's remembrance of UAW's early days are juicy and provocative. His recall of those goofy internecine political battles within the union is tragic-comic. Yet they, united, even though hollering at each other, made GM, Ford, et al, recognize the union. The sequence involving Genora Johnson Dollinger, the heroine of the 1937 sit-down strike, is deeply moving and inspiring."
"--Studs Terkel"

"Should be read by every labor person who takes the principles of trade union history seriously. . . . Brings the history of the UAW up for a new survey of the events to include the men and women who would otherwise be unsung heroes or written out of history totally."

"--David Yettaw President, UAW Buick Local 599, 1987-1996"

This story of the birth and infancy of the United Auto Workers, told by two participants, shows how the gains workers made were not easy or inevitable-not automatic-but required strategic and tactical sophistication as well as concerted action.

Sol Dollinger recounts how workers, especially activists on the political left, created an auto union and struggled with one another over what shape the union should take. In an oral history conducted by Susan Rosenthal, Genora Johnson Dollinger tells the gripping tale of her role in various struggles, both political and personal.

Over the past two decades, Americans have seen their workplaces downsized and streamlined, their jobs out-sourced, sped up, and, all too often, eliminated. Unions have seemed powerless to defend their members, with big defeats in the strikes at PATCO, Eastern Airlines, International Paper, and Hormel. Ravenswood recounts how the United Steelworkers of America, in a battle waged over an aluminum plant in West Virginia, proved that organized labor can still win even against a company controlled by one of the world's richest and most powerful men. Fast paced and compellingly written, the book provides an insider's look at the new tactics that many hope will revitalize the struggle for workers' rights in America.On November 1, 1990, just as its contract with the United Steelworkers of America was about to expire, Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation locked out its seventeen hundred employees and hired permanent replacements. Despite deteriorating conditions that had led to five deaths in the previous year, the company had refused to discuss safety and health issues. The locked-out workers faced an industry in turmoil, a plant manager with a grudge against the union, and a business controlled by a billionaire fugitive from justice. Tom Juravich and Kate Bronfenbrenner describe how victory was achieved through the commitment of the workers and their families coupled with one of the most innovative contract campaigns ever waged by an American union."

Recruiting the growing numbers of immigrants into union ranks is imperative for the besieged U.S. labor movement. Nowhere is this task more pressing than in California, where immigrants make up a quarter of the population and hold many of the manual jobs that were once key strongholds of organized labor. The first book to offer in depth coverage of this timely topic, Organizing Immigrants analyzes the recent history of and prospects for union organizing among foreign-born workers in the nation's most populous state.

Are foreign-born workers more or less receptive to unionization than their native-born counterparts? Are undocumented immigrants as likely as legal residents and naturalized citizens to join unions? How much does the political, cultural, and ethnic background of immigrants matter? What are the social, political, and economic conditions that facilitate immigrant unionization?

Drawing on newly collected evidence, the contributors to this volume explore these and other questions, analyzing immigrant employment and unionization trends in California and examining recent strikes and organizing efforts involving foreign-born workers. The case studies include both successful and unsuccessful campaigns, innovative and traditional strategies, and a variety of industrial and service sector settings.

Recruiting the growing numbers of immigrants into union ranks is imperative for the besieged U.S. labor movement. Nowhere is this task more pressing than in California, where immigrants make up a quarter of the population and hold many of the manual jobs that were once key strongholds of organized labor. The first book to offer in depth coverage of this timely topic, Organizing Immigrants analyzes the recent history of and prospects for union organizing among foreign-born workers in the nation's most populous state.

Are foreign-born workers more or less receptive to unionization than their native-born counterparts? Are undocumented immigrants as likely as legal residents and naturalized citizens to join unions? How much does the political, cultural, and ethnic background of immigrants matter? What are the social, political, and economic conditions that facilitate immigrant unionization?

Drawing on newly collected evidence, the contributors to this volume explore these and other questions, analyzing immigrant employment and unionization trends in California and examining recent strikes and organizing efforts involving foreign-born workers. The case studies include both successful and unsuccessful campaigns, innovative and traditional strategies, and a variety of industrial and service sector settings.

Having come of age during a period of vibrant union-centered activism, Jack Metzgar begins this book wondering how his father, a U.S> Steel shop steward in the 1950s and '60s, and so many contemporary historians could forget what this country owes to the union movement. Combining personal memoir and historical narrative, Striking Steel argues for reassessment of unionism in American life during the second half of the twentieth century and a recasting of \u0022official memory.\u0022 As he traces the history of union steelworkers after World War II, Metzgar draws on his father's powerful stories about the publishing work in the mills, stories in which time is divided between \u0022before the union\u0022 and since. His father, Johnny Metzgar, fought ardently for workplace rules as a means of giving \u0022the men\u0022 some control over their working conditions and protection from venal foremen. He pursued grievances until he eroded management's authority, and he badgered foremen until he established shop-floor practices that would become part of the next negotiated contract. As a passionate advocate of solidarity, he urged coworkers to stick together so that the rules were upheld and everyone could earn a decent wage. Striking Steel's pivotal event is the four-month nationwide steel strike of 1959, a landmark union victory that has been all but erased from public memory. With remarkable tenacity, union members held out for the shop-floor rules that gave them dignity in the workplace and raised their standard of living. Their victory underscored the value of sticking together and reinforced their sense that they were contributing to a general improvement in American working and living conditions. The Metzgar family's story vividly illustrates the larger narrative of how unionism lifted the fortunes and prospects of working-class families. It also offers an account of how the broad social changes of the period helped to shift the balance of power in a conflict-ridden, patriarchal household. Even if the optimism of his generation faded in the upheavals of the 1960s, Johnny Metzgar's commitment to his union and the strike itself stands as an honorable example of what a collective action can and did achieve. Jack Metzgar's Striking Steel is a stirring call to remember and renew the struggle.

International Paper, the richest paper company and largest landowner in the United States, enjoyed record profits and gave large bonuses to executives in 1987, that same year the company demanded that employees take a substantial paycut, sacrifice hundreds of jobs, and forego their Christmas holiday. At the Adroscoggin Mill in Jay, Maine, twelve hundred workers responded by going on strike from June 1987 to October 1988. Local union members mobilized an army of volunteers but International Paper brought in permanent replacement workers and the strike was ultimately lost. Julius G. Getman tells the story of that strike and its implications a story of a community changing under pressure; of surprising leaders, strategists, and orators emerging; of lifelong friendships destroyed and new bonds forged. At a time when the role of organized labor is in transition, Getman suggests, this strike has particular significance. He documents the early negotiations, the battle for public opinion, the heroic efforts to maintain solidarity, and the local union's sense of betrayal by its national leadership. With exceptional richness in perspective, Getman includes the memories and informed speculations of union stalwarts, managers, and workers, including those who crossed the picket line, and shows the damage years later to the individuals, the community, and the mill. He demonstrates the law's bias, the company's undervaluing of employees, and the international union's excessive concern with internal politics."

Ravenswood recounts how the United Steelworkers of America, in a battle waged over an aluminum plant in West Virginia, proved that organized labor can still win - even against a company controlled by one of the world's richest and most powerful men. The book provides an insider's look at the new tactics that many in the labor movement hope will revitalize the struggle for workers' rights in America. On November 1, 1990, just as its contract with the United Steelworkers of America was about to expire, Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation locked out its seventeen hundred employees and hired permanent replacements. Despite deteriorating working conditions that had led to five deaths in the previous year, the company had refused to discuss safety and health issues at the bargaining table. Drawing on interviews with key participants, Tom Juravich and Kate Bronfenbrenner describe how victory was achieved through the tremendous commitment and solidarity of the workers and their families coupled with one of the most innovative and sophisticated contract campaigns ever waged by an American union.

When the American Railway Union went on strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1894, it set into motion a chain of events whose repercussions are still felt today. The strike pitted America's largest industrial union against twenty-four railroads, paralyzed rail traffic in half the country, and in the end was broken up by federal troops and suppressed by the courts, with union leader Eugene Debs incarcerated. But behind the Pullman case lay a conflict of ideologies at a watershed time in our nation's history.

David Ray Papke reexamines the events and personalities surrounding the 1894 strike, related proceedings in the Chicago trial courts, and the 1895 Supreme Court decision, In re Debs, which set important standards for labor injunctions. He shows how the Court, by upholding Debs's contempt citation, dealt fatal blows to broad-based unionism in the nation's most important industry and to any hope for a more evenhanded form of judicial involvement in labor disputes-thus setting the stage for labor law in decades to come.

The Pullman case was a defining moment in the often violent confrontation between capital and labor. It matched wealthy industrialist George Pullman against Debs and gave a stage to Debs's fledgling attorney Clarence Darrow. Throughout the trial, capital and labor tried to convince the public of the justice of their cause: Debs decrying the company's treatment of workers and Pullman raising fears of radical unionists. Papke provides an analytically concise and highly readable account of these proceedings, offering insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the law at the peak of industrial capitalism, showcasing Debs's passionate commitment to workers' rights, and providing a window on America during a period of rapid industrialization and social transformation.

Papke shows that the law was far from neutral in defending corporate interests and suggests what the Pullman case, by raising questions about both the legitimacy of giant corporations and the revolutionary style of industrial unions, can teach us about law and legal institutions in our own time. His book captures the passions of industrial America and tells an important story at the intersection of legal and cultural history.

Although labor unions have faced a decline in membership in recent decades, they have not necessarily lost their political clout. This timely book illuminates the inner dynamics of labor's relationship to the American political system over the past generation. It examines organized labor from the Johnson administration to the end of Clinton's first term, showing that labor's alliance with the Democratic Party has endured despite changes in the economy and the revival of conservatism.

Drawing on extensive interviews with union leaders and lobbyists, Taylor E. Dark provides a historical perspective often lacking in studies of union political involvement. He compares the relationship of presidents Johnson, Carter, and Clinton with labor and analyzes cases of union involvement in legislative lobbying, executive decision-making, and both congressional and presidential elections.

The book explores such topics as the effects of political reform on union power, the development of union legislative goals, and the impact of unions on economic policymaking, and also evaluates the controversy over union campaign spending in the 1996 elections. It demonstrates that labor's evolving alliance with the Democrats continues to shape America.

Big changes in the global economy and world politics have put new questions on the table for labour movements around the world. Can workers regain the initiative against the tidal wave of corporate downsizing and government cutbacks? Is labour rising from the ashes? Focusing upon recent developments in the United States, this volume sets these decisive questions about labour against a global backdrop, connecting and contrasting the new American scene to recent developments abroad - from Mexico to Asia, from Canada to Eastern Europe. It provides analysis of the key issues being debated by labour scholars and activists: the changing composition of the international working class; patterns of work under contemporary capitalism; the relationship of race and gender to class; the promise and limitations of recent eruptions of labour militancy; and the strategic options available to the labour movement in today's conditions.

The successful 1997 strike by the Teamsters against UPS, and the overwhelming support the American public gave the strikers highlighted the impact of contingent work an umbrella term for a variety of tenuous and insecure employment arrangements such as temping, independent contracting, employee leasing, and some self-employment and part-time or part-year work. This new book contends that contingent work represents a profound deviation from the employment relations model that dominated most of this century's labor relations. It delineates essential features of contingent work from both the worker's and the organization's point of view. Articulating a variety of perspectives from various disciplines, the contributors examine the business forces driving contingent work and assess the consequences of working contingently for the individual, family, and community, taking into account issues of race, class, and gender. They ask how current labor and employment laws need to be rewritten to provide contingent workers with the same comprehensive protections offered to permanent employees. In the final chapter, the editors comment on the status of research on contingent work and chart future research directions."

Current political observers castigate organized labor as more interested in winning generous contracts for workers than in fighting for social change. The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism offers a compelling reassessment of labor's place in American politics in the post-World War II era. The United Automobile Workers, Kevin Boyle demonstrates, was deeply involved in the pivotal political struggles of those years, from the fight for full employment to the battle for civil rights, from the anticommunist crusade to the war on poverty. The UAW engaged in these struggles in an attempt to build a cross-class, multiracial reform coalition that would push American politics beyond liberalism and toward social democracy. The effort was in vain; forced to work within political structures - particularly the postwar Democratic party - that militated against change, the union was unable to fashion the alliance it sought. The UAW's political activism nevertheless suggests a new understanding of labor's place in postwar American politics and of the complex forces that defined liberalism in that period. The book also supplies the first detailed discussion of the impact of the Vietnam War on a major American union and shatters the popular image of organized labor as being hawkish on the war. Engrossing and richly developed, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism draws on extensive research in the records of the UAW and in papers of leading liberals, including Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Adlai Stevenson.

This study explores a tradition of interracial unionism that persisted in the coal fields of Alabama from the dawn of the New South through the turbulent era of World War I. Daniel Letwin focuses on the forces that prompted black and white miners to collaborate in the labor movement even as racial segregation divided them in nearly every other aspect of their lives. Letwin examines a series of labor campaigns--conducted under the banners of the Greenback-Labor party, the Knights of Labor, and, most extensively, the United Mine Workers--whose interracial character came into growing conflict with the southern racial order. This tension gives rise to the book's central question: to what extent could the unifying potential of class withstand the divisive pressure of race? Arguing that interracial unionism in the New South was much more complex and ambiguous than is generally recognized, Letwin offers a story of both promise and failure, as a movement crossing the color line alternately transcended and succumbed to the gathering hegemony of Jim Crow. |This study explores a tradition of interracial unionism that persisted in the coal fields of Alabama from the dawn of the New South through the turbulent era of World War I. Daniel Letwin focuses on the forces that prompted black and white miners to collaborate in the labor movement even as racial segregation divided them in nearly every other aspect of their lives. Letwin offers a story of both promise and failure, as a movement crossing the color line alternately transcended and succumbed to the gathering hegemony of Jim Crow.

The successful 1997 strike by the Teamsters against UPS, and the overwhelming support the American public gave the strikers highlighted the impact of contingent work - an umbrella term for a variety of tenuous and insecure employment arrangements such as temping, independent contracting, employee leasing, and some self-employment and part-time or part-year work. This study contends that contingent work represents a profound deviation from the employment relations model that dominated most of the 20th century's labour relations. It delineates essential features of contingent work from both the workers' and the organization's point of view.

The Welfare and Retirement Fund of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) is widely acknowledged as the most innovative effort at group health care in the United States in the twentieth century. Ivana Krajcinovic describes the establishment, operation, and demise of the Fund that brought mining families from the backwater to the forefront of medical care in less than a decade.

The UMWA was one of the first unions to take advantage of conditions created by World War II to bargain for employer-financed health benefits. Spurning convention, the UMWA not only retained control of health benefits but also utilized then unorthodox managed care principles in arranging for the care of its members. Perhaps even more remarkable, the union designed the Fund to care for a beneficiary group with extremely high demands. Initially poor and neglected, miners were encumbered by the additional health burdens of a hazardous industry.

Krajcinovic analyzes the success of the Fund over nearly three decades in providing high-quality cost-effective care to miners and their families. She also explains the irony of its dismantlement at the very moment when its innovations gained currency among mainstream commercial plans.

In this comprehensive study of current labour relations worldwide, Kim Moody surveys both sides of the picket lines. He provides a measured assessment of multinational managements' strategies to downsize, introduce flexible production and compel workers to accept less pay for more work. He emphasizes the need, in the face of these changes, for renewal and international coordination among national unions and provides examples, from North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia, of how this has been achieved. A bracing riposte to the conventional wisdom concerning the irresistible power of globalization, Workers in a Lean World is a definitive account of contemporary labor relations on a global scale.

Japanese scholars have begun to challenge conventional wisdom about effective labor organizing, and Ikuo Kume has written the first book in English to advance their controversial theory. Since at least the early 1980s, the power of organized labor has weakened in most advanced industrial countries. The decline of organized labor has coincided with the decentralization of labor-management relations. As a result, most observers assume that decentralized labor is destined to lose power in a capitalist economy, and that enterprise unions will tend to be docile and powerless.

Kume documents the one notable exception. The Japanese trade union confederation has steadily grown in importance, expanding its scope beyond individual companies to national policy making. Kume traces the achievements of enterprise unionism in private firms. Labor, he argues, slowly gained legitimate corporate membership by establishing joint institutions with management. By the 1960s, labor-management councils, stimulated by foreign competition, had become a widespread feature of Japanese industry. Soon unions were regular participants in the government deliberation councils and in the information exchange that shaped policy when inflation hit the Japanese economy. The unions had become a full partner by the 1980s and were crucially involved in the 1993 defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party after thirty-eight years of rule.

Japanese scholars have begun to challenge conventional wisdom about effective labor organizing, and Ikuo Kume has written the first book in English to advance their controversial theory. Since at least the early 1980s, the power of organized labor has weakened in most advanced industrial countries. The decline of organized labor has coincided with the decentralization of labor-management relations. As a result, most observers assume that decentralized labor is destined to lose power in a capitalist economy, and that enterprise unions will tend to be docile and powerless.

Kume documents the one notable exception. The Japanese trade union confederation has steadily grown in importance, expanding its scope beyond individual companies to national policy making. Kume traces the achievements of enterprise unionism in private firms. Labor, he argues, slowly gained legitimate corporate membership by establishing joint institutions with management. By the 1960s, labor-management councils, stimulated by foreign competition, had become a widespread feature of Japanese industry. Soon unions were regular participants in the government deliberation councils and in the information exchange that shaped policy when inflation hit the Japanese economy. The unions had become a full partner by the 1980s and were crucially involved in the 1993 defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party after thirty-eight years of rule.