Download or read book Becoming a Mighty Voice written by Daniel Cornfield and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1990-03-06 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American labor unions resemble private representative democracies, complete with formally constituted conventions and officer election procedures. Like other democratic institutions, unions have repeatedly experienced highly charged conflicts over the integration of ethnic minorities and women into leadership positions. In Becoming a Mighty Voice, Daniel B. Cornfield traces the 55-year history of the United Furniture Workers of America (UFWA), describing the emergence of new social groups into union leadership and the conditions that encouraged or inhibited those changes. This vivid case history explores leadership change during eras of union growth, stability, and decline, not simply during isolated episodes of factionalism. Cornfield demonstrates that despite the strong forces perpetuating existing union hierarchies, leadership turnover is just as likely as leadership stagnation. He also shows that factors external to the union may influence leadership change; periods of turnover in the UFWA leadership reflected employer efforts to find cheap, non-union labor, as well as union efforts to unionize workers. When unions are threatened by intensified conflict with employers and when entrenched high status groups within the union are obliged to recruit members of lower socioeconomic status, then new social groups are likely to be integrated into union leadership. Becoming a Mighty Voice develops a theory of leadership change that will be of interest to many engaged in the labor, civil rights, and women's movements as well as to sociologists or historians of work, gender, and race, and to students of political and organizational behavior.

Download or read book The Revival of Labor Liberalism written by Andrew Battista and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2023-12-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Revival of Labor Liberalism is a careful analysis of the twentieth-century decline of the labor-liberal coalition and the important efforts to revive their political fortunes. Andrew Battista chronicles the efforts of several new political organizations that arose in the 1970s and 1980s with the goal of reuniting unions and liberals. Drawing from extensive documentary research and in-depth interviews with union leaders and political activists, Battista shows that the new organizations such as the Progressive Alliance, Citizen Labor Energy Coalition, and National Labor Committee made limited but real progress in reconstructing and strengthening the labor-liberal coalition. Although the labor-liberal alliance remained far weaker than the rival business-conservative alliance, Battista illuminates that it held a crucial role in labor and political history after 1968. Focuses on a fraught but evolving partnership, Battista provides a broad analysis of factional divisions among both unions and liberals and considers the future of unionism and the labor-liberal coalition in America.

Download or read book To March for Others written by Lauren Araiza and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the relationships between the African American civil rights groups of the 1960s and 1970s and the United Farm Workers, a primarily Mexican American union, To March for Others examines the complexities of forming coalitions across racial, socioeconomic, and geographic divides in pursuit of justice and equality.

Download or read book Central Labor Councils and the Revival of American Unionism written by Immanuel Ness and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-08 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book A Consumers Republic written by Lizabeth Cohen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-12-24 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this signal work of history, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lizabeth Cohen shows how the pursuit of prosperity after World War II fueled our pervasive consumer mentality and transformed American life. Trumpeted as a means to promote the general welfare, mass consumption quickly outgrew its economic objectives and became synonymous with patriotism, social equality, and the American Dream. Material goods came to embody the promise of America, and the power of consumers to purchase everything from vacuum cleaners to convertibles gave rise to the power of citizens to purchase political influence and effect social change. Yet despite undeniable successes and unprecedented affluence, mass consumption also fostered economic inequality and the fracturing of society along gender, class, and racial lines. In charting the complex legacy of our “Consumers’ Republic” Lizabeth Cohen has written a bold, encompassing, and profoundly influential book.

Download or read book Work and Occupations written by and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An international sociological journal.

Download or read book Labor Under Fire written by Timothy J. Minchin and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-03-08 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Reagan years to the present, the labor movement has faced a profoundly hostile climate. As America's largest labor federation, the AFL-CIO was forced to reckon with severe political and economic headwinds. Yet the AFL-CIO survived, consistently fighting for programs that benefited millions of Americans, including social security, unemployment insurance, the minimum wage, and universal health care. With a membership of more than 13 million, it was also able to launch the largest labor march in American history--1981's Solidarity Day--and to play an important role in politics. In a history that spans from 1979 to the present, Timothy J. Minchin tells a sweeping, national story of how the AFL-CIO sustained itself and remained a significant voice in spite of its powerful enemies and internal constraints. Full of details, characters, and never-before-told stories drawn from unexamined, restricted, and untapped archives, as well as interviews with crucial figures involved with the organization, this book tells the definitive history of the modern AFL-CIO.

Download or read book Constitutional Conventions Procedures written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on the Constitution and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Governing America written by Julian E. Zelizer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-04 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New perspectives on American political history from one of its leading writers In recent years, the study of American political history has experienced a remarkable renaissance. After decades during which the subject fell out of fashion and disappeared from public view, it has returned to prominence as the study of American history has shifted its focus back to politics broadly defined. In this book, one of the leaders of the resurgence in American political history, Julian Zelizer, assesses its revival and demonstrates how this work not only illuminates the past but also helps us better understand American politics today.

Download or read book She Was One of Us written by Brigid O'Farrell and published by ILR Press. This book was released on 2012-01-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Shadow Welfare State written by Marie Gottschalk and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why, in the recent campaigns for universal health care, did organized labor maintain its support of employer-mandated insurance? Did labor's weakened condition prevent it from endorsing national health insurance? Marie Gottschalk demonstrates here that the unions' surprising stance was a consequence of the peculiarly private nature of social policy in the United States. Her book combines a much-needed account of labor's important role in determining health care policy with a bold and incisive analysis of the American welfare state. Gottschalk stresses that, in the United States, the social welfare system is anchored in the private sector but backed by government policy. As a result, the private sector is a key political battlefield where business, labor, the state, and employees hotly contest matters such as health care. She maintains that the shadow welfare state of job-based benefits shaped the manner in which labor defined its policy interests and strategies. As evidence, Gottschalk examines the influence of the Taft-Hartley health and welfare funds, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (E.R.I.S.A.), and experience-rated health insurance, showing how they constrained labor from supporting universal health care. Labor, Gottschalk asserts, missed an important opportunity to develop a broader progressive agenda. She challenges the movement to establish a position on health care that addresses the growing ranks of Americans without insurance, the restructuring of the U.S. economy, and the political travails of the unions themselves.

Download or read book Henry Wallace s 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism written by Thomas W. Devine and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the presidential campaign of 1948, Henry Wallace set out to challenge the conventional wisdom of his time, blaming the United States, and not the Soviet Union, for the Cold War, denouncing the popular Marshall Plan, and calling for an end to segregation. In addition, he argued that domestic fascism--rather than international communism--posed the primary threat to the nation. He even welcomed Communists into his campaign, admiring their commitment to peace. Focusing on what Wallace himself later considered his campaign's most important aspect, the troubled relationship between non-Communist progressives like himself and members of the American Communist Party, Thomas W. Devine demonstrates that such an alliance was not only untenable but, from the perspective of the American Communists, undesirable, as well.

Download or read book WCFL Chicago s Voice of Labor 1926 78 written by Nathan Godfried and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chicago radio station WCFL was the first and longest surviving labor radio station in the nation, beginning in 1926 as a listener-supported station owned and operated by the Chicago Federation of Labor and lasting more than fifty years.

Download or read book Records and Briefs of the United States Supreme Court written by and published by . This book was released on 1832 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Congressional Record written by United States. Congress and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 1426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)

Download or read book Rights Not Roses written by Dennis Deslippe and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the most visible banners of feminism were carried by educated, white-collar, professional women, in fact, working-class women were a powerful force in the campaign for gender equality. "Rights, Not Roses" explores how unionized wage-earning women led the struggle to place women's employment rights on the national agenda, decisively influencing both the contemporary labor movement and second-wave feminism. Drawing on union records, oral histories, and legislative hearings and debates, Dennis A. Deslippe unravels a complex history of how labor leaders accommodated and resisted working women's demands for change. Through case studies of unions representing packinghouse and electrical workers, Deslippe explains why gender equality emerged as an issue in the 1960s and how the activities of wage-earning women in and outside of their unions shaped the content of the debate. He also traces the faultlines between working-class women, who sought gender equality within the parameters of unionist principles such as seniority, and middle-class women, who sought an equal rights amendment that would guarantee an abstract equality for all women. A thoughtful and thorough study of working-class feminism, "Rights, Not Roses" raises important questions about the meaning of equality for working women, the connections of women to their unions, the gendered nature of equal rights, and more.

Download or read book The Failure of Grassroots Pan Africanism written by Opoku Agyeman and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A work of masterful scholarship and powerful feeling, The Failure of Grassroots Pan-Africanism traces the history of a Pan-Africanist inspired non-aligned trade union federation, the All-African Trade Union Federation (AATUF) set up in 1961. This thoroughly researched analysis establishes the multiple causes of the tragic failure of the AATUF to fulfill its mission