Women and the American Labor Movement

Women and the American Labor Movement

Author: Philip S. Foner

Publisher:

Published: 2018-08-07

Total Pages: 623

ISBN-13: 9781608469215

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A comprehensive account of the women who organized for labor rights and equality from the early factories to the 1970's.


Women and the American Labor Movement: From Colonial times to the eve of World War I

Women and the American Labor Movement: From Colonial times to the eve of World War I

Author: Philip Sheldon Foner

Publisher:

Published: 1979

Total Pages: 621

ISBN-13: 9780317305197

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An account of the efforts of women to improve their working conditions, often in the face of hostility from employers and the public and the indifference of the male-dominated trade unions, discussing these efforts against the background of the major social, political, and economic events in American history.


She Was One of Us

She Was One of Us

Author: Brigid O'Farrell

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2012-01-15

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0801462452

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Although born to a life of privilege and married to the President of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt was a staunch and lifelong advocate for workers and, for more than twenty-five years, a proud member of the AFL-CIO's Newspaper Guild. She Was One of Us tells for the first time the story of her deep and lasting ties to the American labor movement. Brigid O'Farrell follows Roosevelt—one of the most admired and, in her time, controversial women in the world—from the tenements of New York City to the White House, from local union halls to the convention floor of the AFL-CIO, from coal mines to political rallies to the United Nations. Roosevelt worked with activists around the world to develop a shared vision of labor rights as human rights, which are central to democracy. In her view, everyone had the right to a decent job, fair working conditions, a living wage, and a voice at work. She Was One of Us provides a fresh and compelling account of her activities on behalf of workers, her guiding principles, her circle of friends—including Rose Schneiderman of the Women's Trade Union League and the garment unions and Walter Reuther, "the most dangerous man in Detroit"—and her adversaries, such as the influential journalist Westbrook Pegler, who attacked her as a dilettante and her labor allies as "thugs and extortioners." As O'Farrell makes clear, Roosevelt was not afraid to take on opponents of workers' rights or to criticize labor leaders if they abused their power; she never wavered in her support for the rank and file. Today, union membership has declined to levels not seen since the Great Depression, and the silencing of American workers has contributed to rising inequality. In She Was One of Us, Eleanor Roosevelt's voice can once again be heard by those still working for social justice and human rights.


We Stand as One

We Stand as One

Author: Laura B. Edge

Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books

Published: 2010-08-01

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 076136353X

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"Girls, from the bottom of my heart, I beg you not to go back to work. We are all poor, many of us are suffering hunger, none of us can afford to lose a day's wages. But only by fighting for our rights, and fighting all together, can we better our miseries; and so let us fight for them to the end!"―Nineteen-year-old shirtwaist striker, November 1909 In 1909, on the Lower East Side of New York, thousands of immigrant women—many only teenagers―toiled at shirtwaist factories. For up to twelve hours a day, seven days a week, they hunched over sewing machines, making women's blouses. The work was tedious, the pay was low, and the factories were unsafe. Women who dared complain usually were fired. But on November 23, 1909, twenty-thousand shirtwaist workers from five hundred factories walked off the job. Members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, they vowed to strike until factory owners met their demands. They wanted a fifty-two-hour workweek, fair wages, and a guarantee that factories would hire only union workers. Police harassed and arrested the picketers. But they endured for almost three months, and factory owners finally met many of their demands. In this captivating story of grit and determination, we'll explore how the strike became a rallying point for both women and men in the labor movement. We'll also see how the shirtwaist strike dovetailed with the fight for women's suffrage―the right to vote―and for other civil rights reforms.


Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow

Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow

Author: Jacqueline Jones

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2009-12-29

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0465021107

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The forces that shaped the institution of slavery in the American South endured, albeit in altered form, long after slavery was abolished. Toiling in sweltering Virginia tobacco factories or in the kitchens of white families in Chicago, black women felt a stultifying combination of racial discrimination and sexual prejudice. And yet, in their efforts to sustain family ties, they shared a common purpose with wives and mothers of all classes. In Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, historian Jacqueline Jones offers a powerful account of the changing role of black women, lending a voice to an unsung struggle from the depths of slavery to the ongoing fight for civil rights.


Women, Work, and Protest

Women, Work, and Protest

Author: Ruth Milkman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-07

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 1136247688

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As paid work becomes increasingly central in women’s lives, the history of their labor struggles assumes more and more importance. This volume represents the best of the new feminist scholarship in twentieth-century U.S. women’s labor history. Fourteen original essays illuminate the complex relationship between gender, consciousness and working-class activism, and deepen historical understanding of the contradictory legacy of trade unionism for women workers. The contributors take up a wide range of specific subjects, and write from diverse theoretical perspectives. Some of the essays are case studies of women’s participation in individual unions, organizing efforts, or strikes; others examine broader themes in women’s labor history, focusing on a specific time period; and still others explore the situation of particular categories of women workers over a longer time span. This collection extends the scope of current research and interpretation in women’s labor history, both conceptually and in terms of periodization – emphasis is placed on the post-World War I period where the literature is sparse. This book will be valuable for scholars, students and general readers alike.


Gendering Labor History

Gendering Labor History

Author: Alice Kessler-Harris

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 0252073932

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The role of gender in the history of the working class world


My Sisters Telegraphic

My Sisters Telegraphic

Author: Thomas C. Jepsen

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 0821413430

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"This study also explores the surprising parallels between the telegraphy of the nineteenth century and the work of women in technical fields today. The telegrapher's work, like that of the modern computer programmer, involved translating written language into machine-readable code. And anticipating the Internet by over one hundred years, telegraphers often experienced the gender-neutral aspect of the "cyberspace" they inhabited."--BOOK JACKET.


Protest And Popular Culture

Protest And Popular Culture

Author: Mary Triece

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-03-05

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 0429977611

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Protest and Popular Culture is at once a historical monograph and a critique of postmodernist approaches to the study of mass media, consumerism, and popular political movements. In it, Triece compares the self-representations of several late nineteenth and twentieth-century women's protest movements with representations of women offered by contemporaneous mass media outlets. She shows that from the late nineteenth century until the present day, U.S. women's protest movements sought to convince women that they are first and foremost laborer/producers, while the U.S. media has just as consistently sought to convince women that they are primarily consumers. Triece contends that these approaches to portraying women have been and continue to be constructed in opposition to one another. The leaders of women's protest movements, she argues, have long sought to convince women not to spend time and money on reshaping their selves through consumer purchases, but instead to focus attention on empowering themselves politically by asserting control over their own labor power. The mass media, meanwhile, has always treated such movements as potential threats to the financial well-being of the consumer sector (that is, of advertisers), and so has consistently trivialized them, while seeking simultaneously to convince women that they should devote attention and resources to buying things, not to struggling to overcome class and gender discrimination. Many cultural-studies scholars have argued that in recent years, rising prosperity has made consumerism into the primary site of both individual expression and ?resistance? to the dominant socio-economic order, with self-definition through personal purchases supplanting the role formerly played by struggle for an end to inequities of all kinds. These scholars contend that as such, mass media no longer function to naturalize, and thus reinforce such inequities, and consumerism no longer serves to perpetuate them. Triece argues that her examples show that this argument is faulty, and that scholars should continue to take a traditional materialist view in all studies of mass media, consumerism, and popular protest.