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A Donnybrook in the House

James A. Wooten

in The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974: A Political History

In August 1973, John Dent was taken to task by the president of the Steelworkers union. In September, the House Labor Committee found its jurisdiction over pension reform in jeopardy. The Senate bill ... More

In August 1973, John Dent was taken to task by the president of the Steelworkers union. In September, the House Labor Committee found its jurisdiction over pension reform in jeopardy. The Senate bill included both a portability program and termination insurance. There was to be “a Donnybrook” if H.R. 2 went to the floor without one. Al Ullman warned that if the House acted too quickly, it would send an “irresponsible” bill to conference with “a pretty lousy bill from the Senate.” John Dent and Ullman’s deal on jurisdiction avoided a political brawl, but no one tried to defend it as good policy. The agreement was fundamentally different from the Senate compromise. When H.R. 2 reached the Senate on March 4, the Senate quickly substituted the provisions of H.R. 4200 for the language of the House bill.Less

Enacting ERISA

James A. Wooten

in The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974: A Political History

H.R. 2, now christened the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), was among the first measures Gerald Ford signed after assuming the presidency. More than two months after the House ... More

H.R. 2, now christened the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), was among the first measures Gerald Ford signed after assuming the presidency. More than two months after the House passed H.R. 2, House and Senate staffers appeared still to be deadlocked on a number of issues. The first installment of the staff summary covered jurisdiction, vesting, funding, and portability. These four issues of conferees are addressed, together with termination insurance, effective dates for termination insurance, preemption, fiduciary standards, and taxation of retirement plans. The Steelworkers and Auto Workers pressed the conferees to phase in insurance coverage for benefit increases. They also urged the conferees to reconsider their earlier decision to phase in coverage for existing plans. On September 2, 1974, legislators and committee staff, officials from the executive branch, and representatives of labor and management gathered at the White House. The ERISA of 1974 was law.Less

Congress Misses the Mark

Richard Revesz and Jack Lienke

in Struggling for Air: Power Plants and the "War on Coal"

For polluters, America in 1970 was still something of a Wild West. A number of federal, state, and municipal laws aimed at improving air quality were already on the ... More

For polluters, America in 1970 was still something of a Wild West. A number of federal, state, and municipal laws aimed at improving air quality were already on the books, but few were enforced, and pollution from the nation’s ever-growing stock of motor vehicles, power plants, and factories remained uncontrolled in much of the country. A passage from the Ralph Nader Study Group’s Vanishing Air, published in May 1970, vividly illustrates the extent to which dirty air was a fact of life for city dwellers of the period: . . . The New Yorker almost always senses a slight discomfort in breathing, especially in midtown; he knows that his cleaning bills are higher than they would be in the country; he periodically runs his handkerchief across his face and notes the fine black soot that has fallen on him; and he often feels the air pressing against him with almost as much weight as the bodies in the crowds he weaves through daily. . . . New York’s problems with air quality were hardly unique. In an October 1969 letter to the Senate Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution, a resident of St. Louis expressed similar sentiments about the sheer pervasiveness of pollution in her community: . . . What really made me take the time to write this letter was the realization that I had begun to take the haze and various odors for granted. Close the doors and windows and they’ll be less noticeable[. I]t is very disturbing to think I’ve become used to the burning-rubber smell in the evening and the slightly sour smell in the morning. What does air smell like? . . . And air pollution’s costs went far beyond sour smells and dirty handkerchiefs, as a series of deadly “inversions” both here and abroad had made dramatically clear beginning in the late 1940s. Typically, the air at higher altitudes is cooler than that below. This is because the surface of the earth absorbs sunlight and radiates heat, warming the air closest to the ground. That warm surface air then cools as it rises higher into the atmosphere. Less

Struggling for Good Green Jobs in Toronto’s Deindustrializing Suburbs

James Nugent

in Unions and the City: Negotiating Urban Change

This chapter explores the difficulties of attempting to bring the different moments of the production process together in a deindustrialized low-income neighborhood in Toronto's inner suburbs. Here, ... More

This chapter explores the difficulties of attempting to bring the different moments of the production process together in a deindustrialized low-income neighborhood in Toronto's inner suburbs. Here, a resident organization backed by the Communication, Energy, and Paperworkers Union (now UNIFOR), the Steelworkers, and the local labor council sought revitalization through green manufacturing, rather than a future of gentrification and big-box retail employment envisioned by developers and the city. The chapter then traces the evolution of the campaign from a focus on industrial heritage preservation to green jobs, and ultimately a broader antipoverty campaign that incorporated gender, race, and ecology. Although the campaign failed to attract a private-sector firm to invest in the site, the coalition managed to overcome some of the dilemmas that labor has faced in similar site fights in the city.Less

Mexican Workers and Life in South Chicago

Michael Innis-Jiménez

in The Latina/o Midwest Reader

By recognizing and not underestimating the significance of everyday forms of resistance and the politics of culture, as well as institutions and organizations not normally seen as vehicles for ... More

By recognizing and not underestimating the significance of everyday forms of resistance and the politics of culture, as well as institutions and organizations not normally seen as vehicles for everyday and working class change, we can delve into the strategies that helped Mexicans in interwar South Chicago cope with the oppressive environment that surrounded them. Individual Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans in interwar South Chicago, including steel workers, shop owners, union organizers, and social workers, formed a community that was able to change its physical and cultural environment to help its members and create a degree of resistance that helped Mexicans persevere against intimidation and prejudice. These individual and community histories—the stories of people, organizations, and their physical surroundings—shed light on Mexicano life in a place far from the border and at the industrial heart of the United States.Less

Mexican Radicals and Traditionalists Unionize Workers in the United States

John H. Flores

in The Mexican Revolution in Chicago: Immigration Politics from the Early Twentieth Century to the Cold War

This chapter explains why Mexicans joined the CIO and compares the aspirations of radicals and traditionalists within the United Packinghouse Workers of America and the United Steelworkers of ... More

This chapter explains why Mexicans joined the CIO and compares the aspirations of radicals and traditionalists within the United Packinghouse Workers of America and the United Steelworkers of America. Radical Mexican nationalists entered the CIO, because they remained committed to building a broad and left-of-center international labor movement. By comparison, traditionalists supported the CIO, because they defined it as an alternative to the radical Industrial Workers of the World and Magonistas. Repulsed by postrevolutionary Mexican radicalism and anticlericalism, traditionalists naturalized as they joined the CIO, but they did not, however, sever their cultural ties to Mexico. By the 1950s, naturalized traditionalists had developed a deterritorialized brand of mexicanidad that celebrated aspects of Mexican culture but was devoid of any allegiance to the Mexican state. Mexican traditionalists were becoming Mexican Americans.Less

African American Civil Rights and Conservative Mobilization in the Jimmy Carter Years

Joseph Crespino and Asher Smith

in Winning While Losing: Civil Rights, the Conservative Movement, and the Presidency from Nixon to Obama

The chapter describes President Carter’s attempts to chart a middle ground on civil rights that appealed to his liberal constituency and that recognized the growing conservative backlash to civil ... More

The chapter describes President Carter’s attempts to chart a middle ground on civil rights that appealed to his liberal constituency and that recognized the growing conservative backlash to civil rights policies such as affirmative action. Carter chose to support civil rights policies but often opposed the mechanism of implementation. The chapter looks at Carter’s responses to key civil battles on school desegregation and affirmative action.Less

As Close to Hell as They Hoped to Get: Steel, Death, and Community in Western Pennsylvania, 1892–1919

Michael K. Rosenow

in Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865-1920

This chapter examines the steelworkers' experiences with death and dying in western Pennsylvania, and more specifically in Monongahela Valley, during the period 1892–1919. It begins by recounting the ... More

This chapter examines the steelworkers' experiences with death and dying in western Pennsylvania, and more specifically in Monongahela Valley, during the period 1892–1919. It begins by recounting the Homestead strike of 1892, which pitted the wealthy owners of the Carnegie Steel Company against the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. It then considers other factors that shaped steelworkers' experiences with death after the defeat at Homestead, including work life and life outside of work. It also explores the responses of steelworkers and their families to death, focusing on their creation of networks of mutual aid by turning to religious and secular fraternal societies to help care for the sick and bury the dead. It also discusses the McKees Rocks strike of 1909 and the themes of death and dignity that defined it before concluding with a look at the story of steelman Joe Magarac and its similarities to steelworkers' experiences in turn-of-the-century steel mills. The steelworkers' rituals of death and dying suggests that death provided a key place where they nurtured spirits of resistance.Less

Introduction

in Brazil's Steel City: Developmentalism, Strategic Power, and Industrial Relations in Volta Redonda, 1941-1964

In 1941, Getúlio Vargas, president of Brazil, created the National Steel Company (Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional; CSN), which would become the leading state-owned company and the largest industrial ... More

In 1941, Getúlio Vargas, president of Brazil, created the National Steel Company (Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional; CSN), which would become the leading state-owned company and the largest industrial enterprise in the country in the mid-twentieth century. CSN was designed to be the engine of import-substituting industrialization, a set of policies introduced by the Brazilian government to expand domestic industrial production and reduce dependence on imported capital goods. CSN built an integrated steel mill in Volta Redonda, which came to be known as the Cidade do Aço (Steel City). This book examines the history of CSN, focusing on the role of the steelworkers of Volta Redonda in Brazil's economic development and their demand for a fair share of the company's profits. It looks at industrial relations and labor management in Brazil during the late 1940s, the political police and the 1943 federal labor law as instruments of the state in controlling labor at CSN, and the production process and the division of labor in the company's integrated steel mill.Less

State Paternalism in the Making of a Company Town

in Brazil's Steel City: Developmentalism, Strategic Power, and Industrial Relations in Volta Redonda, 1941-1964

Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas envisioned Volta Redonda as the cornerstone of his ambition to start an industrial revolution in Brazil without violent class conflict. To this end, he provided the ... More

Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas envisioned Volta Redonda as the cornerstone of his ambition to start an industrial revolution in Brazil without violent class conflict. To this end, he provided the National Steel Company (Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional; CSN) with the political mandate, financial resources, and institutional power to engineer workers with technical skill, work discipline, and a commitment to social peace. The social engineering began with the physical construction of Volta Redonda and would continue long after construction of the steel mill had been completed. CSN management tried to shape the steelworkers' culture by resorting to paternalism, a strategy used in nineteenth-century Europe that combined coercion with welfare measures. This chapter explores the intellectual origins of state paternalism and how it was translated by CSN into social assistance programs to engineer a peaceful industrial community, the famìlia siderúrgica (steel family). It shows how the implicit social contract became an integral part of the local community's self-perception and assesses its impact on union discourse and demands in later years.Less

From Construction to Production: Labor Management in Transition

in Brazil's Steel City: Developmentalism, Strategic Power, and Industrial Relations in Volta Redonda, 1941-1964

This chapter examines labor management in Brazil during the late 1940s, focusing on the National Steel Company's (Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional; CSN) transition to steel production that necessitated ... More

This chapter examines labor management in Brazil during the late 1940s, focusing on the National Steel Company's (Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional; CSN) transition to steel production that necessitated the creation of a workforce with the skills to operate highly specialized equipment. It discusses the bureaucratization of CSN's labor management and the rationalization of its labor regime by implementing personnel policies, staffing plans, and career ladders without eliminating the essential principles of paternalism, including penalties for failure to comply with work orders and merit-based awards and promotions. This paternalist approach prevented the steelworkers from enjoying some of the opportunities that came with the career ladders as well as legally guaranteed benefits such as profit sharing. The inherent conflict between the paternalist and rational tenets of CSN's labor management would contribute to the revival of the local trade union in the early 1950s.Less

Power over Production: The Technical Division of Labor and Workers' Strategic Positions in Steel

in Brazil's Steel City: Developmentalism, Strategic Power, and Industrial Relations in Volta Redonda, 1941-1964

This chapter examines the latent strategic power of steelworkers employed by the National Steel Company (Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional; CSN) in Brazil, focusing on the production process and the ... More

This chapter examines the latent strategic power of steelworkers employed by the National Steel Company (Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional; CSN) in Brazil, focusing on the production process and the division of labor at the integrated steel mill in Volta Redonda. It looks at potential bottlenecks in the production process that led entire departments and individual workers to disrupt production by means of their strategic power. The ability of labor union leaders to think strategically, combined with the workers' strategic power, allowed them to improve their bargaining power, leading to higher salaries and more benefits throughout the 1950s.Less

Trump, Carrier, and the Invisible Worker

Christopher Martin

in No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class

Chapter 1 analyzes news media coverage of President-elect Donald Trump’s visit to the Carrier furnace assembly plant in Indianapolis in December 2016. The plant became Trump’s symbolic beachhead in ... More

Chapter 1 analyzes news media coverage of President-elect Donald Trump’s visit to the Carrier furnace assembly plant in Indianapolis in December 2016. The plant became Trump’s symbolic beachhead in his “plan” to save jobs, only after the steelworkers there gained national visibility for efforts to prevent outsourcing of their jobs to Mexico. The news media, including CNN, Fox News, NBC, and the Washington Post, emphasized stories of grateful white men whose jobs had been saved by Trump, playing into his(and the conservative media’s) public relations narrative. A few news organizations continued to follow the story when Trump’s promises to save jobs at Carrier fell short by hundreds of workers and the local union president accused Trump of lying.Less

Signing Up in the Shipyard

Lane Windham

in Knocking on Labor's Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide

This chapter recounts the successful effort by a multi-racial group of 19,000 men and women at the Newport News shipyard to form a union with the steelworkers union in 1978, and a brutal strike in ... More

This chapter recounts the successful effort by a multi-racial group of 19,000 men and women at the Newport News shipyard to form a union with the steelworkers union in 1978, and a brutal strike in 1979 in which the workers fought for a union contract. The civil and women’s rights movements clearly fed the union fire in this organizing campaign.Less

The Bridge

Stephanie Elizondo Griest

in All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands

Twelve different jurisdictions wield some degree of power over the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne: four counties, one state, two provinces, two countries, and three different tribal governments. When ... More

Twelve different jurisdictions wield some degree of power over the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne: four counties, one state, two provinces, two countries, and three different tribal governments. When calamity strikes, any of the following law enforcement agencies can be summoned: the Akwesasne Mohawk Police, the St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Police, the New York State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Border Patrol, the Sûreté du Québec, the Ontario Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and/or the Canada Border Services Agency. “No wonder we are crazy,” a Mohawk elder tells the author. In this chapter, the author joins hundreds of Mohawks as they shut down their version of a border wall: a series of bridges connecting their nation with Ontario and New York. Also featured is a history of Mohawks’ timeheld trade of steelwork.Less

Class Struggle in Steel

Michael Goldfield

in The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s

Chapter 4 focuses on the successful organization of the steel industry by the CIO, showing how John L. Lewis and Philip Murray utilized the talents and connections of Communists, who were well rooted ... More

Chapter 4 focuses on the successful organization of the steel industry by the CIO, showing how John L. Lewis and Philip Murray utilized the talents and connections of Communists, who were well rooted in steel mills and communities, as well as in civil rights, ethnic, and immigrant organizations. The chapter argues for the special militancy of steelworkers, contrary to what is described in much of the extant literature, looking at the special difficulties that steelworkers faced in the “takeoff” of their struggles. The chapter shows how a movement with much democratic and racial egalitarian promise ended up as a racially backward, undemocratic organization.Less