Book Description
“In her new chic outfit, she looks like anything but a stewardess working. But work she does. Hard, too. And you hardly know it.” So read the text of a 1969 newspaper advertisement for Delta Airlines featuring a picture of a brightly smiling blond stewardess striding confidently down the aisle of an airplane cabin to deliver a meal.
From the moment the first stewardesses took flight in 1930, flight attendants became glamorous icons of femininity. For decades, airlines hired only young, attractive, unmarried white women. They marketed passenger service aloft as an essentially feminine exercise in exuding charm, looking fabulous, and providing comfort. The actual work that flight attendants did—ensuring passenger safety, assuaging fears, serving food and drinks, all while conforming to airlines’ strict rules about appearance—was supposed to appear effortless; the better that stewardesses performed by airline standards, the more hidden were their skills and labor. Yet today flight attendants are acknowledged safety experts; they have their own unions. Gone are the no-marriage rules, the mandates to retire by thirty-two. In Femininity in Flight, Kathleen M. Barry tells the history of flight attendants, tracing the evolution of their glamorized image as ideal women and their activism as trade unionists and feminists.
Barry argues that largely because their glamour obscured their labor, flight attendants unionized in the late 1940s and 1950s to demand recognition and respect as workers and self-styled professionals. In the 1960s and 1970s, flight attendants were one of the first groups to take advantage of new laws prohibiting sex discrimination. Their challenges to airlines’ restrictive employment policies and exploitive marketing practices (involving skimpy uniforms and provocative slogans such as “fly me”) made them high-profile critics of the cultural mystification and economic devaluing of “women’s work.” Barry combines attention to the political economy and technology of the airline industry with perceptive readings of popular culture, newspapers, industry publications, and first-person accounts. In so doing, she provides a potent mix of social and cultural history and a major contribution to the history of women’s work and working women’s activism.
Customer Reviews:
First-class analysis of an underappreciated position.......2007-03-31
This gen-x feminist has certainly flown on more than my share of flights thanks to airline deregulation (1978), but having grown up after sex discrimination laws were passed, I also did not previously have the full understanding of all the historical nuances which went into achieving legislative battles making the skies sexism free.
It was interesting to read how the stewardess position (as it was then called) became so tightly controlled, ironically having originally developed in an era when there were few other 'interesting' employment opportunities available to women. By the 1950's, the airlines had codes of stewardess conduct which look a million times stricter than anything handed down at my workplaces.
Expected to retire at age 35, a woman had to meet certain mandatory height and weight requirements, and could not be married or have any children in order to successfully perform her duties to her customers at all times. Barry's research methodologies expressly delineate though that the airlines, reflective of the larger society's biases, only hired white unmarried girls for these 'jobs' but tellingly did not treat them in the appropriate manner an employer would treat their employees.
A stewardess was expected to thanklessly fulfill many tasks simultaneously, mother, sex-pot/kitten, nurse---but in the cruel twist of irony, she also was not welcomed in the union ranks as an equal after undergoing all of these horrific working conditions, the women were expected to continue letting male union leaders represent them as had been the previous tradition.
Rather than be docile, that ongoing disparate treatment inadvertently galvanized the women into taking action for each other. Sisterhood wasn't a `trendy slogan' each other was all they had.
In the 1970's. a organization called Stewardesses for Women's Rights protested the airline industry's increasingly sexist treatment of women employees and that organization also joined the national campaign for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. I'm certain that airline officials were not intending to create a crop of highly creative and very ticked off feminist activists!
Amazon.com
Does anyone still look for the union label? Apparently not, to gauge historian Nelson Lichtenstein's history of the rise, heyday, and long decline of labor unions in America.
In the Progressive era, Lichtenstein writes, the "labor question" lay at the heart of a whole complex of political ideas governing the social betterment of working people and the development of a more equitable society. These ideas flourished through the course of the early twentieth century, as unions attained more and more influence and as Keynesian notions of organized labor being "essential to boost mass purchasing power and thereby sustain economic growth" became established. After World War II, however, unionism began a slow collapse, helped along by the rise of conservative, antilabor politics. Although ideas of workplace justice and the extension of civil rights into the private sector remain strong, organized labor has not--with the result, Lichtenstein argues, that many American workers are worse off today than they were a quarter of a century ago. Lichtenstein's narrative capably summarizes trends in modern labor history, and it provides much fuel for activists seeking renewed labor-based politics. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
In a fresh and timely reinterpretation, Nelson Lichtenstein examines how trade unionism has waxed and waned in the nation's political and moral imagination, among both devoted partisans and intransigent foes. From the steel foundry to the burger-grill, from Woodrow Wilson to John Sweeney, from Homestead to Pittston, Lichtenstein weaves together a compelling matrix of ideas, stories, strikes, laws, and people in a streamlined narrative of work and labor in the twentieth century.
The "labor question" became a burning issue during the Progressive Era because its solution seemed essential to the survival of American democracy itself. Beginning there, Lichtenstein takes us all the way to the organizing fever of contemporary Los Angeles, where the labor movement stands at the center of the effort to transform millions of new immigrants into alert citizen unionists. He offers an expansive survey of labor's upsurge during the 1930s, when the New Deal put a white, male version of industrial democracy at the heart of U.S. political culture. He debunks the myth of a postwar "management-labor accord" by showing that there was (at most) a limited, unstable truce.
Lichtenstein argues that the ideas that had once sustained solidarity and citizenship in the world of work underwent a radical transformation when the rights-centered social movements of the 1960s and 1970s captured the nation's moral imagination. The labor movement was therefore tragically unprepared for the years of Reagan and Clinton: although technological change and a new era of global economics battered the unions, their real failure was one of ideas and political will. Throughout, Lichtenstein argues that labor's most important function, in theory if not always in practice, has been the vitalization of a democratic ethos, at work and in the larger society. To the extent that the unions fuse their purpose with that impulse, they can once again become central to the fate of the republic. State of the Union is an incisive history that tells the story of one of America's defining aspirations.
Customer Reviews:
The Changing Face of Unions and Society.......2004-11-10
Nelson Lichtenstein's work titled, State of The Union: A Century of American Labor, provides an historical overview of the laws, people, and times in the American labour movement. In producing his research, Lichtenstein contextualizes (with a few glaring omissions) his discussion of the rise and decline of labor unions in the psyche of the American worker and companies alike. By starting his discussion with the period from the Great Depression through World War I, Lichtenstein provides a frame within which to place events, and accompanying mindsets, that developed from both a legal/legislative and social-change perspective. Additionally, in moving through the waxing and waning moments between the end of WWII and the Civil Rights Movement to the current living wage initiative, he presents a respectable work as to the elements that facilitated the decline in significance of unions in post-deindustrialization America; an institution which he strongly and convincingly argues is in need of a rebirth.
I found chapter five particularly engaging due to his treatment of "rights consciousness" and two legal events that were supported by African Americans and the AFL-CIO: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title VII. On rights consciousness, he asserts, "this chapter seeks to evaluate how and why a rights-conscious strategy became the most efficacious way to approach the labor question during the 1960's and 1970's. It tries to measure the success and failure of this approach, and suggests why the labor movement reaped so few dividends from what would otherwise have been a most nurturing social-cultural environment" (180). While such movements in other countries "strengthened social-democratic movements and increased trade-union numbers and power . . . in the United States, this was an area of relative union stagnation" (181). While this is a well-supported assertion and was a result, in part, of the period of deindustrialization (late 1970's and early 1980's) of America's cities/manufacturing centers, the legal maneuvering is nonetheless worth noting.
Upon reading of the legal positioning, I began wondering what happened to the levels of consciousness of the 1960's that led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Title VII? An energized movement that sought to address not only the rights of African Americans and their seemingly intractable marginalization due to their skin color and social stigmatization, but also the rights of poor Anglos/Whites as well, seems to not have served current drives for economic equality. Additionally, I began considering the implications for workers, both African American and American Anglo if the failed Poor People's Campaign scheduled for 19 April 1968 had actually taken place with Dr. King at the helm. I say failed, due to the assassination of Martin Luther King 4 April 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, and the lack of vigor displayed when the event took place.
The consciousness displayed during the sixties as detailed by Lichtenstein brought forth a new dynamic. He writes, "if a new set of work rights was to be won, the decisive battle would take place, not in the union hall or across the bargaining table, but in the courts and the legislative chambers." This observance is indeed revealing of strategies employed by not only Civil Rights attorneys, but Union officials as well. That notwithstanding, Lichtenstein reminds readers that "a legal/administrative template derived from WWII-era Fair Employment Practice Commission was rolled into the 1964 civil rights law as Title VII," which allowed EEOC to "champion demands for equitable hiring and promotion practices" (192). Later, as Lichtenstein details, Title VII, as backed by AFL-CIO officials, came with "unforeseen" consequences. One such development was the racialization, and later gendering of fair employment "idea." Note: on the question of gender, Lichtenstein says little to nothing as to the feminization of poverty and elects not to discuss current trends in this area, which leads me to a short iteration of the books shortcomings.
Surprisingly, his treatment of women's rights and gender discrimination was relegated to less than ten pages. While he does address the living wage initiative and mentions Wal-Mart, a greater degree of attention is needed, but lacking; given current levels of working poor as detailed in Ehrenreich's work Nickel and Dimed: On (Not, Getting By In America, a discussion of Wal-Mart's machinations for crushing unionization efforts would have been both timely and ideal.
Another irony is that Lichtenstein does not discuss the Vietnam War and its economic and social fallout for America in any significant detail. A few paragraphs regarding economic and life estimates would have further served to contextualize "postwar poverty" (195). On this point, he elected not to note that more than 2.12 million people died in the war with more than fifty-eight thousand Americans contributing to the number of the dead. Additionally, he makes no mention of the estimated $140 billion price tag for America's involvement (Source: April, 2002 BBC Series War and Protest). Such omissions as that of Wal-Mart caused me to wonder about Lichtenstein's lack of in-depth discussion on the need to sincerely discuss the plight of the working poor; as opposed to paying lip-service to their very real needs.
In reading Lichtenstein's work and thinking on themes that coincided with Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, which I recently read, I began wondering several things. First, how does one, in a climate less than friendly toward worker solidarity around a living wage, affordable childcare, quality medical care, and reasonable and safe housing, convince companies that the well-being of workers and their families is, and should be, tethered to their long-term economic viability as a socially responsible company and that these concerns are not mutually exclusive? Additionally, What are some methods that can be employed that allow for workers to be made aware of their rights, thus allowing them to press for reforms both in the workplace and society?
Admittedly, Lichtenstein's work is replete with legal and historical information on labor laws and practices. However, one concern this reviewer holds is the lack of discussion of these issues in an approachable form for general readers, not to mention the aforementioned omissions. While this work is excellent for gaining an understanding of labor laws and their affect both on people and companies, it too is realized that in some circles the discussion to be had will be not unlike verbal self-gratification: producing an outcome with no tangible manifestations.
Do unions have a future?.......2002-08-14
The backdrop for "State of the Union" is the "labor question" that the author finds Progressive Era reformers confronting. They regarded the disproportionate power that corporate capitalism wielded relative to citizens and workers as unjustifiable in a democratic society. Changes in workplaces were most troublesome. Skilled workers were bypassed by work-simplifying machinery, an autocratic foreman system enforced Taylorism, or speed-up, and wages hovered at subsistence levels. But American workers, drawing upon a republican legacy, seized upon the WWI rallying cry of making the world safe for democracy to insist that industrial democracy be established within workplaces. Even President Woodrow Wilson recognized "the right of those who work, in whatever rank, to participate in some organic way in every decision which directly affects their welfare." Interestingly, the author does not take note of the fact that Wilson's call for workers' participation did not mention unions. But it is the relationship of unions to this "labor question" and to the notion of industrial democracy that most concerns Lichtenstein.
The lack of a legal and institutional basis for industrial democracy virtually ensured that industrial democracy would fizzle in the post-WWI era. But the major slip-up of American capitalism in the 20th century, that is, the Great Depression, opened the door for a tremendous, pent-up surge of American worker activism. In the Wagner Act, the most significant piece of New Deal legislation, workers were given the right and even encouraged to self-organize or select a representative to bargain with employers. In unionized workplaces, vibrant shop-floor steward systems ensured that workers' concerns received an expeditious hearing. Many labor activists from the Progressive Era were in the forefront of this politicized offensive to push for legalized industrial democracy. In addition, some of the Progressive social-democratic platform such as unemployment insurance, social security, and fair labor standards were part of the New Deal package.
The backlash against this resurgence of worker empowerment began immediately. Conservative justices, hostile corporate managements, racist Southern oligarchs, and anti-statist AFL unions - all opposed state intervention in the private domain of workplaces. But with the onset of WWII, the labor movement was drawn even more tightly into the state web as a participant in peak-level bargaining with the War Labor Board and industry leaders for the purpose of stabilizing industrial relations. For example, to curtail the spontaneous and disruptive strikes that were a part of the self-help tradition on the shop floor, multi-level grievance arbitration systems became standard sections in most bargaining agreements. But that tripartite bargaining did not extend beyond WWII. Some of the agreed to provisions proved to be more debilitating than helpful to trade unions and workers in later years.
With the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, conservatives were finally able to accomplish the dilution of the Wagner Act. Unions suffered major setbacks in that legislation. Communists and radicals were purged from union rolls, "right to work" laws were enacted in some states; employers could now denounce unions in organizing drives; and secondary boycotts were mostly prohibited. The author refers to the exclusion of supervisors and the subsequent exclusion of tens of millions of professional and technical workers in today's workforce as the "ghettoization" of the union movement.
As the author indicates, Taft-Hartley guaranteed that collective bargaining would be both limited and firm-based. A variety of barriers and penalties now existed to derail broader, classwide mobilizations. Negotiated contracts did not venture outside "mandatory" subjects of wages, hours, and working conditions. The prerogative of management to make virtually all corporate decisions regardless of any impact on workforces was a privileged topic. Industrial democracy received scant consideration as the courts generally held that a grievance clause in a contract overrode the statutory right of workers to strike.
The author takes particular care to debunk the widely held notion that the post-Taft-Hartley industrial relations era through the 1970s was a time of labor-management accord. A companion idea was that collective bargaining represented "industrial pluralism" in action. But classes with opposed interests and distinct ideologies could no longer exist; society now was defined to consist of competing interest groups who engaged in "non-ideological conflict." It was a theory that eschewed the idea that "alert citizen-workers" were the basic political actors of society. Industrial pluralism required that "competing elites bargain, compromise, and govern." Labor unions were only fulfilling their legitimate role when led by unassailable officers of long tenure. In addition, capitalism was now a benign force; it had been transformed into a rational planner for industrial society.
Global economic forces beginning in the 1970s undermined this supposed labor-management accord. Increased global competition, OPEC, inflation, and reduced corporate profits triggered new assaults by businessmen, conservatives, and various pundits on unions, casting them as "self-aggrandizing interest groups." Meanwhile a new rights consciousness, fueled by the civil rights movement, coupled with a loss of credibility and trust for unions persuaded workers to look to state regulatory legislation for workplace protections. But it was a pursuit for protection of individual rights based on gender, race, age, etc and not collective rights to industrial democracy. It was a focus that left unchanged the basic power structures in workplaces. Worker solidarity and workplace democracy no longer resonated with workers.
The author clearly regards the collective bargaining regime of American industrial relations, as it has evolved, to be a "product of defeat, not victory." Obviously material gains were made by many through collective bargaining, but the trade union movement has mostly failed in facilitating the democratic voice for all of the American working class.
What does the author suggest? It is a simple list: militancy, internal union democracy, and politics. There really is no assessment of the feasibility of the labor movement solving the labor question and establishing industrial democracy. Unlike the 1930s, there is no pent-up demand for workplace democracy. Consumerism seems to be the operant ideology of the American working class. This is an important book that leaves little doubt as to the state of unions. One is left wondering about the future of trade unions in the U.S.
A fine study of the crisis of American labor.......2002-07-24
Nelson Lichtenstein's Sate of the Union is a superb study of the current crisis of American labor. If it is not as finely researched or as densely rewarding as his biography of Walter Reuther or Steve Fraser's biography of Sidney Hillman, it is an excellent introduction to the problem and to possible solutions. Lichtenstein demonstrates the vital necessity of trade unions. The average wage of American young families stands at only two-thirds of the their counterparts in 1973, "even though their total working hours were longer and the educational level of the head of th ehousehold higher than a generation before. In the first years of the new century median wages and family incomes were still below their 1989 level." In the decline of civic committment and political life, the untramelled sway of corporate hegemony, the failure to confront health insurance, public transportation, and childcare in the United States and basic civil liberties in much of our brave new globalized world, the decline of American trade unionism truly is an injury to all.
Lichtenstein, notwithstanding his title, starts with the thirties. He tells the story of how mass industrial unionism boomed during that decade. The story he tells is not particularly new, concentrating on the famous struggles, as well as the fatal limitations of the CIO on race and gender. But he also goes on to point out that the partial welfare state, far from creating the dreaded dependence of conservative rhetoric, actually gave millions of workers the opportunity to exert civil rights and real power that they did not under the mythology of a producer's republic. Although he is scathing abou the flaws of the AFL's short sighted and often openly racist stratgey he duly notes that their craft unionism did have some advantages in some places.
The next two-thirds of the book are much more interesting. Lichtenstein denies that there was ever a "Labor-Management Accord," the belief that labour problems were essentially solved held in the sixties by complacent liberals and confused leftists. Lichtenstein points out the exceptional qualities of American management that differed them from their European counterparts and made them less amenable to compromise. He points out the continent wide nature of their businesses, the absence of cartelization and self-regulation, the increased power of big businesses, who were not tained with collaborationism, and the increasing stress placed on smaller companies which made them blame the federal state. He points out the dead weight southern segregation had on trade unionism and other liberal hopes, He notes how Taft-Hartley legalized right to work laws, as well as banning supervisory unioism making the unionization of many service industries like insurance or engineering "virtually impossible."
Lichtenstein goes on to discuss the increasing complacency of the AFL-CIO, under its spectacularly unimaginative leader George Meaney, as well as the calcification of the grievance system, the dissipation of shop-floor pressure, and the strategic disaster of supporting a private welfare state via union contract. This would not stand the ruptures of the eighties and which dissipated efforts to create a national social wage for all. He also reminds us that Kennedy's Keynesianism was the most conservative form on tap, while LBJ's war on poverty failed to confront the structural roots of poverty and thought that if could be fought on the cheap with training programs.
Lichtenstein then goes on to discuss the decline of the union ideal among liberal and leftist thinkers, and notes how even the Warren Court hampered trade unions. Lichtenstein is most helpful in discussing the limits of "rights consciousness." He is unflinching on the complacency and bigotry of many trade unionists that made this necessary. But he quite properly notes that it cannot be a substitute for trade unionism. First off, the legal-regulatory system is not self-supporting and it needs a coherent voice from workers themselves--ie a strong trade union, to support them. Secondly, rights discourse puts the emphasis on regulators as opposed to the workers themsleves, an unhealthy sign. Thirdly, rights consciousness does nothing to change or alter managerial authority. Finally, rights discourse by itself cannot solve the structural crisis that confronts American society. Lichtenstein provides the example of the steel workers where African-Americans challenged and beat Jim Crow, only to end up with fewer steelworkers as the industry collapsed.
Lichtenstein's book is concise and well documented, if largely based on secondary sources, and it contains useful apercus about globalization, the disaster of concession bargaining, the fraud of "quality of life" initiatives, and about the folly of the construction workers. Tthey supported Nixon, beat up anti-war protesters, but were still shafted by him anyway). He also discusses the health insurance debacle, and notes some promising signs of renewal in the last few years, especailly among Hispanic Americans. One might feel he is trying too hard to end on a positive note, but one can only agree when he says that "At Stake is not just an effort to resolve America's labor question but the revitalization of democratic society itself."
solidarity forever.......2002-04-04
Nelson Lichtenstein's new book, "The State of the Union," gives a history of labor unions in the United States by way of arguing for the need to restrengthen them, and I think the case is very persuasive.
Lichtenstein weaves together a number of themes to explain the decline in union membership and power. One is increased reliance on individual rights and legal protections. Federal laws ban all sorts of discrimination, endangerment, and abuse, but the federal government does not do an effective job of protecting workers from retaliation for asserting their rights and almost nothing to maintain other important elements of the workplace, such as wage levels or the prevention of mass layoffs.
We have learned to think of ourselves as individuals protected by laws, rather than brotherhoods and sisterhoods protected by our strength in numbers. We have a long list of rights, including - most notoriously - the "right to work." So called Right to Work laws clearly hurt unions but are not too far afield from modes of thought that labor supporters have engaged in themselves.
Unions are now seen as ways to protect individual jobs and proper grievance procedures following individual wrongs, not as cross-company efforts to lift the wages and benefits of entire industries. If the purpose of a union is simply to protect me from specific injustices, surely I ought also to respect my coworker's right to not be coerced to join, right?
But if the purpose of a union is to change society and improve the lot of all workers, then clearly the "right" of my coworker to be a freeloader and drag us all down is not to be respected.
The case Lichtenstein makes is that in the process of making fantastic gains in the Civil Rights, Feminist, and other movements, leftists unwittingly sacrificed a conception of the labor union that is badly needed today. No doubt, this analysis will annoy some people, but it ought to be taken as encouraging. The right didn't defeat us; we beat ourselves. Therefore, a reconstituted labor left can successfully fight back.
Book Description
In this powerful and moving biography of one of the greatest labor leaders in the history of America, students come face-to-face with an inspirational man whose trials and tribulations echoed the struggles of modern America and whose courage, simplicity and faith changed agriculture in America forever.
Paperback, brief, and inexpensive, each of the titles in the Library of American Biography series focuses on a figure whose actions and ideas significantly influenced the course of American history and national life. In addition, each biography relates the life of its subject to the broader themes and developments of the times. This text focuses on Chavez, but also provides the much needed background of the farm workers movement, the formation of the UFW and the history of migrant workers in the U.S. This text incorporates the latest scholarship on Chavez’s life and times, but makes the story accessible to students in both survey and upper division courses in American history.
Book Description
When George Pullman began recruiting Southern blacks as porters in his luxurious new sleeping cars, the former slaves suffering under Jim Crow laws found his offer of a steady job and worldly experience irresistible. They quickly signed up to serve as maid, waiter, concierge, nanny, and occasionally doctor and undertaker to cars full of white passengers, making the Pullman Company the largest employer of African American men in the country by the 1920s. In the world of the Pullman sleeping car, where whites and blacks lived in close proximity, porters developed a unique culture marked by idiosyncratic language, railroad lore, and shared experience. They called difficult passengers 'Mister Charlie'; exchanged stories about Daddy Jim, the legendary first Pullman porter; and learned to distinguish generous tippers such as Humphrey Bogart from skinflints like Babe Ruth. At the same time, they played important social, political, and economic roles, carrying jazz and blues to outlying areas, forming America's first black trade union, and acting as forerunners of the modern black middle class by virtue of their social position and income. Drawing on extensive interviews with dozens of porters and their descendants, Larry Tye reconstructs the complicated world of the Pullman porter, and provides a lively and enlightening look at this important social phenomenon.
Customer Reviews:
george pullman and his porters.......2006-02-10
The pullman porters are gone but their legacy remains. This elegant telling of their story is part of the history of race relations in America. You need to check it out.
Achievement Lost.......2004-11-06
Larry Tye tells the fascinating story of African Americans, emancipated after the Civil War, starting a steady climb to civil rights and the middle class by exploiting job opportunity that ironcially was supposed to exploit them.
A must read for railroad passenger enthusiasts and civil rights advocates unaware of the noble struggles waged peacefully before the violence encouraged by television.
Their testimony helped me understand life more........2004-11-03
Central to this excellent analytical history are the porters themselves. This book is not a biography of A. Philip Randolph or George Pullman. Rather, the vigor of this narrative arises from the men who were sleeping car porters, and most of their testimony comes with their real names and families. The porters worked hard at their extraordinary jobs, and they left a strong legacy in their descendents. I am a railfan, and I learned a lot of detailed history from this book. However, I also received a sense of the accomplishments of these men of the past 140 years. Author Larry Tye, it seems to me, has done an excellent job of transmitting an understanding of the porters' trials, hopes, and victories. I am most grateful to these American workers, and I am most grateful to the author for his clear presentation.
fascinating historical connections..........2004-11-03
...and stories. that's why i recommend this book, altho my interest flagged toward the end. then i heard mr. tye talk at my public library, and the book took on a new perspective. he was so warm toward invited guests and welcoming to others who introduced themselves as pullman porter relatives. it was genuinely thrilling! Plus, an added bonus: pullman sleeping car and dining car scenes from old movies like hitchcock's "north by northwest" and 1949's "all the king's men" now take on extra meaning and importance. thanx, mr. tye.
A merger of nostalgia and American history.......2004-10-07
Larry Tye did an exemplary job of research and interviewing long before he attempted to tell the story of the Pullman porter's place in history, unionization and civil rights. Such detail would be expected of working journalists...unfortunately it is a rarity. Pullman porters were a group of gentlemen one step removed from slavery when Pullman capitalized on their subservient skills...which they performed to perfection. Only those of us in our senior years can remember when porters greeted you and made you comfortable in peacetime and wartime. Larry has superbly described the porter's talents, dreams, successes and failures. Their struggle set an example for and yielded a notable group of future black leaders. That contribution should never be forgotten.
Customer Reviews:
Impressive and engaging analysis.......2007-05-15
This book is an overview of a very specific area, mainly the history and actions of immigrant Jewish garment workers, who primarily immigrated from the Pale, in great numbers after 1905. Obviously, this is a specialized study and not the sort of thing you would pick up in place of a Danielle Steele novel, but the writing is clear and compelling. One of the main benefits of the book is that although you may have no particular interest in the subject matter, the book is so engagingly written that you learn almost in spite of yourself and have trouble putting the book down.
The book is split into 6 major parts: Jewish Womanhood in Eastern Europe; Remarking the Jewish Family Economy in America; Unwritten Laws: Work and Opportunity in the Garment Industry; The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Work; Women and the Mass Strike Movement; The New Unionism and the New Womanhood.
The book is at its strongest in the earlier and mid sections, when the author relies on a lot of first-hand accounts to create the portrait of what life was like for these women, where they were coming from and what they experienced. The discussions of the actual historical events were a bit more removed from the first-person analysis, and accordingly, less engaging. All in all, a very interesting book, particularly for those interested in understanding what life was like for a substantial portion of immigrants at the turn of last century.
Well Done.......2000-03-02
This book is about the growth of the garment workers' unions and the place within that growth that the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe took. It was well-written, well-researched. Were I a history professor looking for a informative additional text regarding the turn of the Twentieth Century, I believe I would put this book on the top of the list.
A book of information: not a book of analysis.......2000-02-21
Susan Glenn tried her best, but I found it redundant in some places..but it is a must read for jewish studies/labor studies/and Women's studies people. Lot of Info provided with direct accounts
Average customer rating:
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Duquesne and the Rise of Steel Unionism (Working Class in American History)
James D. Rose
Manufacturer: University of Illinois Press
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Book Description
Not all workers' needs were served by the union. Focusing on the steel works at Duquesne, Pennsylvania, a linchpin of the old Carnegie Steel Company empire and then of U.S. Steel, James D. Rose demonstrates the pivotal role played by a nonunion form of employee representation usually dismissed as a flimsy front for management interests.
The early New Deal set in motion two versions of workplace representation that battled for supremacy: company-sponsored employee representation plans (ERPs) and independent trade unionism. At Duquesne, the cause of the unskilled, hourly workers, mostly eastern and southern Europeans as well as blacks, was taken up by the union--the Fort Dukane Lodge of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers. For skilled tonnage workers and skilled tradesmen, mainly U.S.-born and of northern and western European extraction, ERPs offered a better solution.
Initially little more than a crude antiunion device, ERPs matured from tools of the company into semi-independent, worker-led organizations. Isolated from the union movement through the mid-1930s, ERP representatives and management nonetheless created a sophisticated bargaining structure that represented the shop-floor interests of the mill's skilled workforce. Meanwhile, the Amalgamated gave way to the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, a professionalized and tightly organized affiliate of John L. Lewis's CIO, that expended huge resources trying to gain companywide unionization. Even when the SWOC secured a collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Steel in 1937, however, the union was still unable to sign up a majority of the workforce at Duquesne.
A sophisticated study of the forces that shaped and responded to workers' interests, Duquesne and the Rise of Steel Unionism confirms that what people did on the shop floor was as critical to the course of steel unionism as were corporate decision making and shifts in government policy.
Customer Reviews:
A great book.......2002-04-09
Rose has written an important book that should be read by all people interested in work and justice. By carefully examining shop floor activism at the mill and life in the Duquesne community, Rose reveals the challenges of forming a union in a key industry beset by a working class divided by skill, ethnicity, and race. Based on the most impressive archival research I have ever encountered, this books stands as a signal achievement in the profession. It is an important story well told! Buy this book!
Average customer rating:
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Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action, and Contemporary American Workers
Rick Fantasia
Manufacturer: University of California Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0520067959 |
Book Description
A commonplace assumption about American workers is that they lack class consciousness. This perception has baffled social scientists, demoralized activists, and generated a significant literature on American exceptionalism. In this provocative book, a young sociologist takes the prevailing assumptions to task and sheds new light upon this very important issue. In three vivid case studies Fantasia explores the complicated, multi-faceted dynamics of American working-class consciousness and collective action.
Book Description
Between World War I and World War II, African Americans' quest for civil rights took on a more aggressive character as a new group of black activists challenged the politics of civility traditionally embraced by old-guard leaders in favor of a more forceful protest strategy. Beth Tompkins Bates traces the rise of this new protest politics--which was grounded in making demands and backing them up with collective action--by focusing on the struggle of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) to form a union in Chicago, headquarters of the Pullman Company.
Bates shows how the BSCP overcame initial opposition from most of Chicago's black leaders by linking its union message with the broader social movement for racial equality. As members of BSCP protest networks mobilized the black community around the quest for manhood rights and economic freedom, they broke down resistance to organized labor even as they expanded the boundaries of citizenship to include equal economic opportunity. By the mid-1930s, BSCP protest networks gained platforms at the national level, fusing Brotherhood activities first with those of the National Negro Congress and later with the March on Washington Movement. Lessons learned during this era guided the next generation of activists, who carried the black freedom struggle forward after World War II.
Average customer rating:
- Rich, useful and by itself
- Another disappointment
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Steel and Steelworkers: Race and Class Struggle in Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh (Suny Series in American Labor History)
John H. Hinshaw
Manufacturer: State University of New York Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0791452263 |
Book Description
Breaks new ground in the study of an industry and region crucial to the history of American industrial capitalism.
Customer Reviews:
Rich, useful and by itself.......2006-10-20
I found this book an excellect study, a new interpretation that brings more clarity to the post-World War II urban industrial experience for Pittsburgh's African Americans. It brings new material to bear compared to Dickerson's Out of this Crucible from an earlier generation. It's not easy getting a full picture of the African American work world as an urban industrial economy is in precipitous decline. Hinshaw's study is a an excellent first crack at this subject. I've assigned this study several times to my students and it has gone over very well.
Another disappointment.......2004-12-24
I decided to read this book over the summer in an attempt to give John Hinshaw's writing/editing another chance to impress me. The end result? Another disappointment. His writing displayed a tremendous lack of clarity, and I also question his judgment in his use of words and phrases to describe his topic - steel and steelworkers. His style, lack of transitions, and disregard for basic writing rules surprise me for a professor with his credentials. I suggest he read a "Student's Guide for Writing History Papers" and use it to help improve his writing and research techniques.
Book Description
This classic study of the American working class, originally published in 1973, is now back in print with a new introduction and epilogue by the author. An innovative blend of first-person experience and original scholarship, Aronowitz traces the historical development of the American working class from post-Civil War times and shows why radical movements have failed to overcome the forces that tend to divde groups of workers from one another. The rise of labor unions is analyzed, as well as their decline as a force for social change. Aronowitz’s new introduction situates the book in the context of developments in current scholarship and the epilogue discusses the effects of recent economic and political changes in the American labor movement.
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