In 1975, after vigorous campaigning by the United Farm Workers union, the state of California passed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA), a pioneering self-help strategy granting farm workers the right to organize into unions. A quarter century later, only a tiny percentage of farm workers in the state belong to unions, and wages remain less than half of those of nonfarm employees. Why did the ALRA fail? One of the nation's foremost authorities on farm workers here explores the reasons behind its unfulfilled promise.Philip L. Martin examines the key features of the farm labor market in California, including the shifting ethnicity of the worker pool and the evolution of the major unions, beginning with the Wobblies. Finally, he reviews the impact of immigration on agriculture in the state.Today, many states look to the California experience to assess whether the ALRA can serve as a model for their own farm labor relations laws. In Martin's view, California's efforts to grant rights to farm workers so that they can help themselves have failed because of continued unauthorized migration and the changing structure of farm employment. Martin argues that alternative policies would make farming profitable, raise farm worker wages, and still keep groceries affordable.

In 1975, after vigorous campaigning by the United Farm Workers union, the state of California passed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA), a pioneering self-help strategy granting farm workers the right to organize into unions. A quarter century later, only a tiny percentage of farm workers in the state belong to unions, and wages remain less than half of those of nonfarm employees. Why did the ALRA fail? One of the nation's foremost authorities on farm workers here explores the reasons behind its unfulfilled promise.Philip L. Martin examines the key features of the farm labor market in California, including the shifting ethnicity of the worker pool and the evolution of the major unions, beginning with the Wobblies. Finally, he reviews the impact of immigration on agriculture in the state.Today, many states look to the California experience to assess whether the ALRA can serve as a model for their own farm labor relations laws. In Martin's view, California's efforts to grant rights to farm workers so that they can help themselves have failed because of continued unauthorized migration and the changing structure of farm employment. Martin argues that alternative policies would make farming profitable, raise farm worker wages, and still keep groceries affordable.

Drawing on scores of interviews with black and white tobacco workers in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Robert Korstad brings to life the forgotten heroes of Local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers of America-CIO. These workers confronted a system of racial capitalism that consigned African Americans to the basest jobs in the industry, perpetuated low wages for all southerners, and shored up white supremacy.

Galvanized by the emergence of the CIO, African Americans took the lead in a campaign that saw a strong labor movement and the reenfranchisement of the southern poor as keys to reforming the South--and a reformed South as central to the survival and expansion of the New Deal. In the window of opportunity opened by World War II, they blurred the boundaries between home and work as they linked civil rights and labor rights in a bid for justice at work and in the public sphere.

But civil rights unionism foundered in the maelstrom of the Cold War. Its defeat undermined later efforts by civil rights activists to raise issues of economic equality to the moral high ground occupied by the fight against legalized segregation and, Korstad contends, constrains the prospects for justice and democracy today.

The material for this book has been selected from the papers that John left to the author, plus from many hours of taped interviews with John. Other material is from the Plumbers' Union and the National Archives.
John Bruce entered the plumbing and pipe-fitting industry in its Genesis. First came running water, then came plagues of cholera and typhoid fever and then proper drainage systems and sanitation.
It is not possible in one book to record the ninety-three years of John Bruce's life in any detail. This book endeavours to show the development of the man, his philosophy, creed and some of his accomplishments. It also attempts to show who he was, his faith, the development of his talents and the use to which they were put.
This book begins with his birth and ends when he put down the tools of his trade to become the General Organizer for the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe-Fitting industry. An elected position that he held for more than a half-century.
John Bruce kept his family life separate and apart from John the unionist, socialist and activist.

How did the Chicago Teamsters Local 705, once notorious for corruption and despotism, become an organization that the Wall Street Journal hailed as "a model of reform"? In this compelling narrative, Bruno tells of the often violent, always contentious struggle to reform one of the nation's most powerful and independent union locals. During the worst years, Chicago Teamsters operated under thinly veiled threats and settled differences by fistfights. Workers who questioned the powerful leadership faced physical intimidation, verbal abuse, and trumped-up charges that threatened their jobs. With the expulsion of key leaders in the early 1990s, however, a decade-long struggle for control of the union began as Local 705 cast off the old days of coercion and payoffs. Reformers encouraged rank-and-file Teamsters to choose their own leaders, and after two successive open elections, an unprecedented number of Teamsters turned out to vote in a dramatic 2000 election featuring five political slates and a diverse range of issues. Clear and captivating, Reforming the Chicago Teamsters raises important national issues about the balance of power between large corporations and working-class Americans, the role of workplace democracy in civil society, and the ways unions can both hinder and promote worker interests.

Although no one disputes that employment relations worldwide have been greatly affected by globalisation, no clear consensus has emerged on the nature and significance of this impact. The seven contributions to this symposium pursue a comparative approach, suggesting that direct analysis of employment relations in distinct industries in two comparably-sized economies since the advent of globalisation leads to a more precise understanding of the interaction of globalisation and employment relations, and sets a pattern for other studies to follow. The economies studied in the symposium are Australia and Korea, and the industries are automobile (and auto parts) manufacturing and retail banking. In both countries, labour unions play a key role in the way in which employers and governments react to political and economic pressures.

Legitimacy is vital to unions. Without it, they lose political and ideological support, members, and access to funds. Gary Chaison and Barbara Bigelow use the concept of legitimacy as a lens through which to understand the steady decline in union size and influence and to suggest new strategies for union revitalization.Chaison and Bigelow relate legitimacy to five case studies: the UPS strike, the organization of clerical workers at Harvard, the AFL-CIO associate membership campaign, the fight against NAFTA, and the Massachusetts Nurses Association Campaign for Safe Care. The cases show the need for unions to move beyond pragmatic concerns and link their activities to the broader interests of their constituencies, demonstrating not only that they offer something tangible in return for support (pragmatic legitimacy) but also that they are doing the right thing (moral legitimacy).Chaison and Bigelow's work has practical implications for the management of unions' core activities organizing, collective bargaining, and political action."

Cesar Chavez's relentless campaign for social justice for farm workers and laborers in the United States marked a milestone in U.S. history. Through his powerful rhetoric and impassioned calls to action, Chavez transformed as well as persuaded and inspired his audiences.
In this first published anthology, Richard J. Jensen and John C. Hammerback present Chavez in his own terms. Through this collection and through his own words and analysis of his major speeches and writings, Jensen and Hammerback reveal the rhetorical qualities and underlying rhetorical dynamics of a master communicator and also offer a rich source of the history of the farm workers' movement Chavez led from the early 1960s to his death in 1993.
Each chapter features a clear introductory section that helps the reader focus on the highlights that won Chavez a reputation as an effective communicator. The editors explain the sources of Chavez's motivation to campaign for farm workers, his selection of characteristic and signature rhetorical elements, and the success of specific campaigns and his overall career.
"The Words of Cesar ""Chavez" offers an important new resource for scholars of public discourse, Chicano studies, and Cesar Chavez himself. It complements the editors' earlier study, "The Rhetorical Career of Cesar ""Chavez"," " by providing the primary materials for that rhetorical profile of Chavez. Through his own words, Jensen and Hammerback present Chavez doing what he did best: teaching and influencing audiences who would enact his agenda to create a new and better world.

Over the last 10 or 15 years there has been a revival of labor and trade union internationalism. This regeneration is attracting the attention of a new generation of committed thinkers who are deploying new types of scholarship. Labor internationalism is looked at not only in terms of political economy or industrial and international relations, but also in terms of social movement theory and in relationship to global civil society.

Notions of labor-community alliances, or the alliance of labor with radical-democratic social movements, are being projected onto the world stage. Radical social geographers have made a notable contribution to this debate by focusing on the scaled politics of labor organisation. This collection, co-edited by scholars from an older and younger generation, is a very original attempt to grapple with the challenges of globalization for labor. The collection includes contributions from academics and activists based in the North and South.

From gloomy times in the 1980s, the American labor movement has returned to apparent prominence through the efforts of a new generation of energetic and progressive leaders. A distinguished group of authors examines this resurgence and the potential of American unions with sympathetic yet critical eyes. Experts from a wide variety of disciplines industrial relations, political science, economics, and sociology identify the central developments, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the new initiatives, and assess the progress made and the prospects for the future. Though all agree on the importance of unions, their opinions of the success of current renewal efforts diverge greatly.

The interdisciplinary and comparative approach of Rekindling the Movement is both challenging and enlightening. Rather than merely trumpeting pet opinions, contributors provide hard evidence and causal analysis, grounded in realistic perspectives, to back up suggestions for the improvement of the new labor movement. Their straightforward observations about what is and is not possible, what does and does not work, will be of great practical value for policymakers and union leaders."

The ongoing decline in union membership is generally attributed to an increasingly hostile economic, legal, and managerial environment. Samuel B. Bacharach, Peter A. Bamberger, and William J. Sonnenstuhl argue that the decline may have more to do with a crisis of union legitimacy and member commitment. They further suggest that both problems could be addressed if the unions return to their nineteenth-century, mutual aid-based roots.

The authors contend that the labor movement is characterized by two models of union-member relations: the mutual aid logic and the servicing logic. The first predominated in the early days and encouraged a sense of community among members who worked to support one another. In the twentieth century, it was largely replaced by the servicing model, which asks little of members, who remain loyal only if their leaders deliver increasing wages and benefits.

Regaining legitimacy and strengthening member commitment can only happen, the authors claim, if mutual aid logic is allowed to return. They examine three unions in the transportation industry to judge the effectiveness of new programs created after the old model.

The ongoing decline in union membership is generally attributed to an increasingly hostile economic, legal, and managerial environment. Samuel B. Bacharach, Peter A. Bamberger, and William J. Sonnenstuhl argue that the decline may have more to do with a crisis of union legitimacy and member commitment. They further suggest that both problems could be addressed if the unions return to their nineteenth-century, mutual aid-based roots.

The authors contend that the labor movement is characterized by two models of union-member relations: the mutual aid logic and the servicing logic. The first predominated in the early days and encouraged a sense of community among members who worked to support one another. In the twentieth century, it was largely replaced by the servicing model, which asks little of members, who remain loyal only if their leaders deliver increasing wages and benefits.

Regaining legitimacy and strengthening member commitment can only happen, the authors claim, if mutual aid logic is allowed to return. They examine three unions in the transportation industry to judge the effectiveness of new programs created after the old model.

From gloomy times in the 1980s, the American labor movement has returned to apparent prominence through the efforts of a new generation of energetic and progressive leaders.

A distinguished group of authors examines this resurgence and the potential of American unions with sympathetic yet critical eyes. Experts from a wide variety of disciplines -- industrial relations, political science, economics, and sociology -- identify the central developments, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the new initiatives, and assess the progress made and the prospects for the future. Though all agree on the importance of unions, their opinions of the success of current renewal efforts diverge greatly.

In the year 2000 the AFL-CIO announced a historic change in its position on immigration. Reversing a decades-old stance by labor, the federation declared that it would no longer press to reduce high immigration levels or call for rigorous enforcement of immigration laws. Instead, it now supports the repeal of sanctions imposed against employers who hire illegal immigrants as well as a general amnesty for most such workers. In this timely book, Vernon M. Briggs, Jr., challenges labor's recent about-face, charting the disastrous effects that immigration has had on union membership over the course of U.S. history.Briggs explores the close relationship between immigration and employment trends beginning in the 1780s. Combining the history of labor and of immigration in a new and innovative way, he establishes that over time unionism has thrived when the numbers of newcomers have decreased, and faltered when those figures have risen.Briggs argues convincingly that the labor movement cannot be revived unless the following steps are taken: immigration levels are reduced, admission categories changed, labor law reformed, and the enforcement of labor protection standards at the worksite enhanced. The survival of American unionism, he asserts, does not rest with the movement's becoming a partner of the pro-immigration lobby. For to do so, organized labor would have to abandon its legacy as the champion of the American worker.

Although labor unions have faced a decline in membership in recent decades, they have not necessarily lost their political clout. The Unions and the Democrats 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 through the 2000 elections, 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.

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.

The failure of the Textile Workers Union of America to organize its jurisdiction has often been considered the CIO's most critical setback in establishing industrial unionism in the United States. The textile industry had more than 1,250,000 workers, and the massive organizing campaign the CIO launched in 1937 resulted in perhaps the longest, most bitter, and most significant labor-capital clash of the century.

In Culture of Misfortune, Clete Daniel integrates many primary sources, including extensive archival records and numerous oral interviews, into his examination of this conflict. He pays close attention to the internal political culture of the TWUA and how it was affected by the dislocation and transformation of the textile industry the postwar assault on workers' rights, and the risks of activism in the face of the rampant anti-unionism of the South.

Daniel explains the inability of the TWUA to match the achievements of CIO unions in other mass-production industries through an analysis of the internal dynamics of the organization and of the external political, social, and cultural impediments it confronted. He suggests that the multiplying difficulties that beset the TWUA pre-dicted the challenges faced by all industrial unions at the end of the twentieth century.

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.

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.

"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."

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.