The period immediately preceding World War II was probably the most critical in the history of the American labor movement. Prior to 1936, the trade unions were weak, but by 1941 a fundamental change in power relationships enabled them to penetrate the strongholds of American industry--steel and automobiles. The CIO Challenge to the AFL is a three-part study. It discusses the split in the American Federation of Labor and the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations; presents eighteen specific industry or union case studies, each an independent essay in economic history; and, finally, analyzes various general aspects of the labor movement.
Central Labor Councils are the local arm of the labor movement responsible for coordinating collective activities among different unions in a region. Once quite powerful organizations with important political roles at local and regional levels, CLCs waned significantly during the 1940s and 50s. This work examines the recent re-emergence of Central Labor Councils and how they are being utilized as effective bodies to help rejuvenate the labor movement. It combines comprehensive history of the CLCs in America since the early 19th century and case studies by CLC leaders in Atlanta, Milwaukee, San Jose, and Seattle -- the regions where CLCs have re-emerged as important players in advancing the labor movement.
The golden key to understanding the last 75 years of American political development, the eminent labor relations scholar Michael Goldfield argues, lies in the contests between labor and capital in the American South during the 1930s and 1940s. Labor agitation and unionization efforts in the South in the New Deal era were extensive and bitterly fought, and ranged across all of the major industries of the region. In The Southern Key, Goldfield charts the rise of labor activism in each and then examines how and why labor organizers struggled so mightily in the region. Drawing from meticulous and unprecedented archival material and detailed data on four core industries-textiles, timber, coal mining, and steel-he argues that much of what is important in American politics and society today was largely shaped by the successes and failures of the labor movements of the 1930s and 1940s. Most notably, Goldfield shows how the broad-based failure to organize the South during this period made it what it is today. He contends that this early defeat for labor unions not only contributed to the exploitation of race and right-wing demagoguery in the South, but has also led to a decline in unionization, growing economic inequality, and an inability to confront and dismantle white supremacy throughout the US. A sweeping account of Southern political economy in the New Deal era, The Southern Key challenges the established historiography to tell a tale of race, radicalism, and betrayal that will reshape our understanding of why America developed so differently from other advanced industrial nations over the course of the last century.
This book explores the relation between democracy and industrialization in United States history. Over the course of the 1930s, the political center almost disappeared as the Democratic New Deal became the litmus test of class, with blue collar workers providing its bedrock of support while white collar workers and those in the upper-income levels opposed it. By 1948 the class cleavage in American politics was as pronounced as in many of the Western European countries-such as France, Italy, Germany, or Britain-with which we usually associate class politics. Working people created a new America in the 1930s and 1940s which was a fundamental departure from the feudalistic and hierarchical America that existed before. They won the political rights of American citizenship which had been previously denied them. They democratized labor-capital relations and gained more economic security than they had ever known. They obtained more economic opportunity for them and their children than they had ever known and they created a respect for ethnic workers, which had not previously existed. In the process, class politics re-defined the political agenda of America as-for the first time in American history-the political universe polarized along class lines. Eric Leif Davin explores the meaning of the New Deal political mobilization by ordinary people by examining the changes it brought to the local, county, and state levels in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, and Pennsylvania as a whole.
