William A. Mirola
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038839
- eISBN:
- 9780252096792
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038839.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This introductory chapter discusses the central issue that generated a movement within the labor movement: overwork and the hours of labor. Shortening the workday and reducing the workweek were ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the central issue that generated a movement within the labor movement: overwork and the hours of labor. Shortening the workday and reducing the workweek were umbrella issues for the American labor movement. Reducing the hours of labor linked a host of other industrial reforms and spawned a class-based consciousness among American workers that no other issue had done previously or since. As such, the eight-hour day was salient to native-born and immigrant workers, to labor radicals and conservatives, to the skilled and unskilled, and to men and women, and Chicago's workers were at the center of it all. Indeed, overwork and long hours were the basis for some of the most contentious conflicts between employers and their workers in Chicago, and they forced Protestant clergy, willing or no, to engage the labor question.Less
This introductory chapter discusses the central issue that generated a movement within the labor movement: overwork and the hours of labor. Shortening the workday and reducing the workweek were umbrella issues for the American labor movement. Reducing the hours of labor linked a host of other industrial reforms and spawned a class-based consciousness among American workers that no other issue had done previously or since. As such, the eight-hour day was salient to native-born and immigrant workers, to labor radicals and conservatives, to the skilled and unskilled, and to men and women, and Chicago's workers were at the center of it all. Indeed, overwork and long hours were the basis for some of the most contentious conflicts between employers and their workers in Chicago, and they forced Protestant clergy, willing or no, to engage the labor question.
Helene Slessarev-Jamir
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814741238
- eISBN:
- 9780814708705
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814741238.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter examines the decline of the American labor movement and the barriers to successful organizing created by the dismantling of the federal labor regulations. It then focuses on the work of ...
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This chapter examines the decline of the American labor movement and the barriers to successful organizing created by the dismantling of the federal labor regulations. It then focuses on the work of two major religious worker-justice organizations, Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) and Clergy and Laity Concerned for Economic Justice (CLUE), both of which were constituted as interreligious organizations. Both act as moral voices in the midst of an increasingly difficult union-organizing climate and also function as bridges between borderlands and cosmopolitan social locations. In recent years, the IWJ has created a number of worker-justice centers, which embody the institutional hybridity common among borderlands organizations. Meanwhile, the CLUE recently initiated a series of dialogues between African American and Latino clergy and is successfully recruiting evangelical clergy to support worker justice.Less
This chapter examines the decline of the American labor movement and the barriers to successful organizing created by the dismantling of the federal labor regulations. It then focuses on the work of two major religious worker-justice organizations, Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) and Clergy and Laity Concerned for Economic Justice (CLUE), both of which were constituted as interreligious organizations. Both act as moral voices in the midst of an increasingly difficult union-organizing climate and also function as bridges between borderlands and cosmopolitan social locations. In recent years, the IWJ has created a number of worker-justice centers, which embody the institutional hybridity common among borderlands organizations. Meanwhile, the CLUE recently initiated a series of dialogues between African American and Latino clergy and is successfully recruiting evangelical clergy to support worker justice.
Kenyon Zimmer
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039386
- eISBN:
- 9780252097430
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039386.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Migration Studies (including Refugee Studies)
This chapter explores how Eastern European Jews migrated to the United States. More than half made their homes in New York City, where Yiddish-speaking anarchist and socialist movements emerged from ...
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This chapter explores how Eastern European Jews migrated to the United States. More than half made their homes in New York City, where Yiddish-speaking anarchist and socialist movements emerged from the sweatshops and tenement houses of Manhattan's Lower East Side. From the 1880s until well into the 1920s, anarchists constituted a “vital minority” within the American Jewish labor movement; Yiddish anarchism then grew to become the largest section of America's anarchist movement by the eve of the First World War. Along the way, anarchists created a vibrant revolutionary subculture deeply embedded in the larger “cultures of opposition” developed by immigrant Jewish workers and intellectuals.Less
This chapter explores how Eastern European Jews migrated to the United States. More than half made their homes in New York City, where Yiddish-speaking anarchist and socialist movements emerged from the sweatshops and tenement houses of Manhattan's Lower East Side. From the 1880s until well into the 1920s, anarchists constituted a “vital minority” within the American Jewish labor movement; Yiddish anarchism then grew to become the largest section of America's anarchist movement by the eve of the First World War. Along the way, anarchists created a vibrant revolutionary subculture deeply embedded in the larger “cultures of opposition” developed by immigrant Jewish workers and intellectuals.
Marcella Bencivenni
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814791035
- eISBN:
- 9780814723180
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814791035.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter delves deeper into the sovversivi's poetry by discussing the figure and work of Giovannitti, one of the most charismatic figures of the Italian American Left, who gained national ...
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This chapter delves deeper into the sovversivi's poetry by discussing the figure and work of Giovannitti, one of the most charismatic figures of the Italian American Left, who gained national prominence as the leader of the famed 1912 Lawrence strike and as one of America's best poets. It attempts to bridge the political and “lyrical” sides of Giovannitti and re-situate his poems in the broad cultural context of the early American labor movement. It argues that Giovannitti's poetry blurs traditional distinctions between art and propaganda. His idealism, lyricism, and intense melancholia were never separated from his deeds, and his poetry was never exclusively expressive of his personal inner world. In fact, his political views formed not only the background of but also the impetus for his poetry.Less
This chapter delves deeper into the sovversivi's poetry by discussing the figure and work of Giovannitti, one of the most charismatic figures of the Italian American Left, who gained national prominence as the leader of the famed 1912 Lawrence strike and as one of America's best poets. It attempts to bridge the political and “lyrical” sides of Giovannitti and re-situate his poems in the broad cultural context of the early American labor movement. It argues that Giovannitti's poetry blurs traditional distinctions between art and propaganda. His idealism, lyricism, and intense melancholia were never separated from his deeds, and his poetry was never exclusively expressive of his personal inner world. In fact, his political views formed not only the background of but also the impetus for his poetry.
Marc Dixon
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190917036
- eISBN:
- 9780190917067
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190917036.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Occupations, Professions, and Work, Social Movements and Social Change
Heartland Blues provides a new perspective on union decline by revisiting the labor movement at its historical peak in the 1950s and analyzing campaigns over right-to-work laws and public-sector ...
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Heartland Blues provides a new perspective on union decline by revisiting the labor movement at its historical peak in the 1950s and analyzing campaigns over right-to-work laws and public-sector collective bargaining rights in the industrial Midwest. The focus on 1950s labor conflicts, including union failures, departs from popular and academic treatments of the period that emphasize consensus, an accord between capital and labor in collective bargaining, or the conservative drift and bureaucratization of the labor movement. The state campaigns examined in Heartland Blues instead reveal a labor movement often beset by dysfunctional divisions, ambivalent political allies, and substantial employer opposition. Drawing on social movement theories, the book shows how many of the key ingredients necessary for activist groups to succeed, including effective organization and influential political allies, were not a given for labor at its historical peak but instead varied in important ways across the industrial heartland. These limits slowed unions in the 1950s. Not only did labor fail to crack the Sunbelt, it never really conquered the industrial Midwest, where most union members resided in the mid-twentieth century. This diminished union influence within the Democratic Party and in society. The 1950s are far more than an interesting side story. Indeed, the labor movement never solved many of these basic problems. The labor movement’s social and political isolation and its limited responses to employer mobilization became a death knell in the coming decades as unions sought organizational and legislative remedies to industrial decline and the rising anti-union tide.Less
Heartland Blues provides a new perspective on union decline by revisiting the labor movement at its historical peak in the 1950s and analyzing campaigns over right-to-work laws and public-sector collective bargaining rights in the industrial Midwest. The focus on 1950s labor conflicts, including union failures, departs from popular and academic treatments of the period that emphasize consensus, an accord between capital and labor in collective bargaining, or the conservative drift and bureaucratization of the labor movement. The state campaigns examined in Heartland Blues instead reveal a labor movement often beset by dysfunctional divisions, ambivalent political allies, and substantial employer opposition. Drawing on social movement theories, the book shows how many of the key ingredients necessary for activist groups to succeed, including effective organization and influential political allies, were not a given for labor at its historical peak but instead varied in important ways across the industrial heartland. These limits slowed unions in the 1950s. Not only did labor fail to crack the Sunbelt, it never really conquered the industrial Midwest, where most union members resided in the mid-twentieth century. This diminished union influence within the Democratic Party and in society. The 1950s are far more than an interesting side story. Indeed, the labor movement never solved many of these basic problems. The labor movement’s social and political isolation and its limited responses to employer mobilization became a death knell in the coming decades as unions sought organizational and legislative remedies to industrial decline and the rising anti-union tide.
Mollie Gregory
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780813166223
- eISBN:
- 9780813166759
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813166223.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Movies projected women’s “proper place”: they did not come to anyone’s rescue; they were wives and mothers. Stuntwomen’s work decreased. Labor unions and guilds were formed—the Screen Actors Guild, ...
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Movies projected women’s “proper place”: they did not come to anyone’s rescue; they were wives and mothers. Stuntwomen’s work decreased. Labor unions and guilds were formed—the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild. White men managed the studios and the guilds, controlled the work, ran the stunts, doubled for women, and, in blackface, doubled for minority actors. To enhance their stars’ profiles, studios demanded secrecy regarding stunt players who doubled them in action scenes. The Motion Picture Production Code delivered “morals” to movies. A few stuntwomen, such as Helen Thurston, succeeded in action roles (Destry Rides Again, 1939).Less
Movies projected women’s “proper place”: they did not come to anyone’s rescue; they were wives and mothers. Stuntwomen’s work decreased. Labor unions and guilds were formed—the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild. White men managed the studios and the guilds, controlled the work, ran the stunts, doubled for women, and, in blackface, doubled for minority actors. To enhance their stars’ profiles, studios demanded secrecy regarding stunt players who doubled them in action scenes. The Motion Picture Production Code delivered “morals” to movies. A few stuntwomen, such as Helen Thurston, succeeded in action roles (Destry Rides Again, 1939).
James B. Jacobs and Kerry T. Cooperman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814743089
- eISBN:
- 9780814743669
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814743089.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
In 1988, Manhattan US Attorney Rudolph Giuliani brought a massive civil racketeering suit against the leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), at the time possibly the most ...
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In 1988, Manhattan US Attorney Rudolph Giuliani brought a massive civil racketeering suit against the leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), at the time possibly the most corrupt union in the world. The lawsuit charged that the mafia had operated the IBT as a racketeering enterprise for decades, systematically violating the rights of members and furthering the interests of organized crime. On the eve of trial, the parties settled the case, and twenty years later, the trustees are still on the job. This book is an in-depth study of the US v. IBT, beginning with Giuliani's lawsuit and the politics surrounding it, and continuing with an incisive analysis of the controversial nature of the ongoing trusteeship. The book addresses the larger question of the limits of legal reform in the American labor movement and the appropriate level of government involvement.Less
In 1988, Manhattan US Attorney Rudolph Giuliani brought a massive civil racketeering suit against the leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), at the time possibly the most corrupt union in the world. The lawsuit charged that the mafia had operated the IBT as a racketeering enterprise for decades, systematically violating the rights of members and furthering the interests of organized crime. On the eve of trial, the parties settled the case, and twenty years later, the trustees are still on the job. This book is an in-depth study of the US v. IBT, beginning with Giuliani's lawsuit and the politics surrounding it, and continuing with an incisive analysis of the controversial nature of the ongoing trusteeship. The book addresses the larger question of the limits of legal reform in the American labor movement and the appropriate level of government involvement.
