Carbon County, USA
Carbon County, USA

Author: Christian Wright

Publisher:

Published: 2019-10-31

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9781607817314

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Although unions are by no means entirely gone or lacking in lobbying power, their membership in traditional industries is on the decline and their influence continues to diminish. Only a generation ago, large unions such as the United Mine Workers of America held greater political and economic capital and inspired millions beyond their immediate ranks. In this book, Christian Wright explores the complex history of the UMWA and coal mining in the West over a fifty-year period of the twentieth century, concentrating on the coal miners of Carbon and Emery counties in Utah. Wright emphasizes their experience during the 1970s, which saw the rise and passing of American workers' most successful postwar effort to internally reform a major labor organization: the Miners for Democracy movement. As Wright details how and why Miners for Democracy and nonunion mining raced to control coal's future, he also touches on the UMWA's regional origins during and immediately after the New Deal, when cracks in union efficacy and benefit programs began to appear. Using sophisticated demography, Wright not only details how miners' racial, gender, and generational identities shaped their changing relationships to mining and organized labor, he also illustrates the place of nonunion miners, antiunion employers, the unemployed, ethnic minorities, and women in transforming "Carbon County, USA." Drawing on a variety of primary sources, Wright provides evidence for organized labor's continuing significance and value while effectively illuminating its mounting frustrations during a relatively recent chapter in the history of Utah and the United States.

For this Union to Survive
For this Union to Survive

Author: Christian L. Wright

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781607817246

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"Whither the union movement? is a question of old enough relevance in the U.S. to now seem almost anachronistic. Although unions are by no means entirely gone or lacking in political power, they and their potency are certainly diminished. With growing concerns about the direction of national politics, increasing income and power inequities, and signs of a receding middle class and increasing social division into haves and have nots, one can hear murmurs of union revival, but polls continue to show that many Americans distrust unions or consider them irrelevant to a modern service economy. Christian Wright digests what happened to one important American union, the United Mine Workers of America, over a fifty-year period, with particular focus on the coal miners of Carbon and Emery counties in Utah. Derived from his much more limited in scope but award-winning master's thesis at Northern Arizona University, this book manuscript places that story in a broader context of changes in the union movement and the nation. It draws on a variety of primary sources, including original research in the UMWA archives at Penn State and multiple oral history collections"--Provided by publisher.

The Emerging Democratic Majority
The Emerging Democratic Majority

Author: John B. Judis

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2004-02-10

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0743254783

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ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR AND A WINNER OF THE WASHINGTON MONTHLY'S ANNUAL POLITICAL BOOK AWARD Political experts John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira convincingly use hard data -- demographic, geographic, economic, and political -- to forecast the dawn of a new progressive era. In the 1960s, Kevin Phillips, battling conventional wisdom, correctly foretold the dawn of a new conservative era. His book, The Emerging Republican Majority, became an indispensable guide for all those attempting to understand political change through the 1970s and 1980s. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, with the country in Republican hands, The Emerging Democratic Majority is the indispensable guide to this era. In five well-researched chapters and a new afterword covering the 2002 elections, Judis and Teixeira show how the most dynamic and fastest-growing areas of the country are cultivating a new wave of Democratic voters who embrace what the authors call "progressive centrism" and take umbrage at Republican demands to privatize social security, ban abortion, and cut back environmental regulations. As the GOP continues to be dominated by neoconservatives, the religious right, and corporate influence, this is an essential volume for all those discontented with their narrow agenda -- and a clarion call for a new political order.