Origins of Protective Labor Legislation for Women, 1905-1925

Origins of Protective Labor Legislation for Women, 1905-1925

Author: Susan Lehrer

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1987-07-01

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1438410417

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In this comprehensive, wide-ranging analysis, Susan Lehrer investigates the origins of protective labor legislation for women, exposing the social forces that contributed to its passage and the often contradictory effects it had on those it was designed to protect. A rapidly expanding female work force is prompting both employers and society to rethink attitudes and policies toward working women. Lehrer provides critical insight into current issues affecting female employees—pay equity, equal rights, maternity—that have their roots in past debates about and present realities affecting women workers. Protective labor laws enacted from 1905 to 1925 had the effect of delimiting the position of working women. Lehrer examines the relationship between women's work in the labor force and domestic labor, and the reasons why the government was interested in regulating this relationship. Focusing on the dual need for a continuing labor force (women as producers of children) and cheap labor (women in low-paying jobs), she demonstrates the way in which social reforms worked to the advantage of capitalism even though they materially aided subordinate classes. The principal groups considered herein are social reform organizations (suffragists and the Women's Trade Union League), organized labor (AFL, ILGWU, printing trades' unions), and employers' associations (National Association of Manufacturers and the National Civic Federation). Considered together, this book provides a broad and detailed picture of the forces involved in the issues of protective labor legislation.


Protecting Women

Protecting Women

Author: Ulla Wikander

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780252064647

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Explores the origin and array of protective labor legislation directed at women. This title analyzes ideologies, attitudes, and effects of legislation across women's classes, among employers and workers' organizations, and in both bourgeois and socialist feminist groups.


Origins of Protective Labor Legislation for Women, 1905-1925

Origins of Protective Labor Legislation for Women, 1905-1925

Author: Susan Lehrer

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1987-01-01

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780887065064

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In this comprehensive, wide-ranging analysis, Susan Lehrer investigates the origins of protective labor legislation for women, exposing the social forces that contributed to its passage and the often contradictory effects it had on those it was designed to protect. A rapidly expanding female work force is prompting both employers and society to rethink attitudes and policies toward working women. Lehrer provides critical insight into current issues affecting female employees--pay equity, equal rights, maternity--that have their roots in past debates about and present realities affecting women workers. Protective labor laws enacted from 1905 to 1925 had the effect of delimiting the position of working women. Lehrer examines the relationship between women's work in the labor force and domestic labor, and the reasons why the government was interested in regulating this relationship. Focusing on the dual need for a continuing labor force (women as producers of children) and cheap labor (women in low-paying jobs), she demonstrates the way in which social reforms worked to the advantage of capitalism even though they materially aided subordinate classes. The principal groups considered herein are social reform organizations (suffragists and the Women's Trade Union League), organized labor (AFL, ILGWU, printing trades' unions), and employers' associations (National Association of Manufacturers and the National Civic Federation). Considered together, this book provides a broad and detailed picture of the forces involved in the issues of protective labor legislation.


A Class by Herself

A Class by Herself

Author: Nancy Woloch

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2017-02-28

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 0691176167

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A Class by Herself explores the historical role and influence of protective legislation for American women workers, both as a step toward modern labor standards and as a barrier to equal rights. Spanning the twentieth century, the book tracks the rise and fall of women-only state protective laws—such as maximum hour laws, minimum wage laws, and night work laws—from their roots in progressive reform through the passage of New Deal labor law to the feminist attack on single-sex protective laws in the 1960s and 1970s. Nancy Woloch considers the network of institutions that promoted women-only protective laws, such as the National Consumers' League and the federal Women's Bureau; the global context in which the laws arose; the challenges that proponents faced; the rationales they espoused; the opposition that evolved; the impact of protective laws in ever-changing circumstances; and their dismantling in the wake of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Above all, Woloch examines the constitutional conversation that the laws provoked—the debates that arose in the courts and in the women's movement. Protective laws set precedents that led to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and to current labor law; they also sustained a tradition of gendered law that abridged citizenship and impeded equality for much of the century. Drawing on decades of scholarship, institutional and legal records, and personal accounts, A Class by Herself sets forth a new narrative about the tensions inherent in women-only protective labor laws and their consequences.


California Women and Politics

California Women and Politics

Author: Robert W. Cherny

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 0803236085

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An edited volume exploring the role women played in California politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.


Common Wealth

Common Wealth

Author: Torry D. Dickinson

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13:

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This historical and sociological book makes the argument that, for about 90 years following the rise of steam-powered industry in the United States, low-to moderate-income households continued to rely on extensive informal, non-waged work to supplement low wages. As households became more dependent on wages earned by higher-paid adult males and on the consumption of market goods, informal work and local markets organized by working people began to decline. Dickinson documents this process of transformation through archival research, as well as by reviewing secondary materials. The consequences of the long-term transformation of work are examined in relation to contemporary social identity movements and policy choices. Using historical analysis, CommonWealth also shows how the gender hierarchy was transformed; it demonstrates how the "postmodernist" and post-structuralist gender categories came onto the historical stage in an urban-industrial region. Social change is looked at through informal relations and networks that center around non-waged or informal work, institutions and structures as they relate to wage labor and the state, and social change efforts initiated at the grassroots and "state" or policy levels.


Equality on Trial

Equality on Trial

Author: Katherine Turk

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0812292839

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In 1964, as part of its landmark Civil Rights Act, Congress outlawed workplace discrimination on the basis of such personal attributes as sex, race, and religion. This provision, known as Title VII, laid a new legal foundation for women's rights at work. Though President Kennedy and other lawmakers expressed high hopes for Title VII, early attempts to enforce it were inconsistent. In the absence of a consensus definition of sex equality in the law or society, Title VII's practical meaning was far from certain. The first history to foreground Title VII's sex provision, Equality on Trial examines how the law's initial promise inspired a generation of Americans to dispatch expansive notions of sex equality. Imagining new solidarities and building a broad class politics, these workers and activists engaged Title VII to generate a pivotal battle over the terms of democracy and the role of the state in all labor relationships. But the law's ambiguity also allowed for narrow conceptions of sex equality to take hold. Conservatives found ways to bend Title VII's possible meanings to their benefit, discovering that a narrow definition of sex equality allowed businesses to comply with the law without transforming basic workplace structures or ceding power to workers. These contests to fix the meaning of sex equality ultimately laid the legal and cultural foundation for the neoliberal work regimes that enabled some women to break the glass ceiling as employers lowered the floor for everyone else. Synthesizing the histories of work, social movements, and civil rights in the postwar United States, Equality on Trial recovers the range of protagonists whose struggles forged the contemporary meanings of feminism, fairness, and labor rights.


Labour Law and Economic Policy

Labour Law and Economic Policy

Author: Adrián Todolí-Signes

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-02-22

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 1509973893

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This book studies labour institutions from an economic perspective to justify their existence and the advantages that they bring to innovation, efficiency, productivity, and economic growth. The philosophical foundations of labour law rely on the protection of the weaker party of the employment contract. However, after 40 years of political neoliberalism, these justifications seem insufficient for achieving progress in the area of labour and employment rights. This book changes the narrative of why we need labour standards. It begins with a study of the reasons that gave rise to labour law in the context of the Industrial Revolution and its evolution, and moves on to analyse the current context dominated by globalisation and economic digitisation. It then proceeds to study the main justifications for intervention in the labour market in the current business-economic context on a global scale: economic growth; pre-distribution of wealth; a meritocratic allocation of working conditions and equality among workers. Using case studies and examples from across the EU, the UK, and the US, the book shows how the deregulation of labour markets harms innovation and the economy, especially when considering the challenges of platform work, algorithms, and AI. It demonstrates that labour standards such as the minimum wage, sectoral collective bargaining and collective rights, protection against dismissal and discrimination, occupational risk prevention, and social security are necessary for the economy to function properly.