Arts and Media

The Little Steel strike of 1937 has taken on iconic significance for historians, in large part because of the anti-labor violence of the Memorial Day Massacre. What has garnered considerably less attention is the community mobilization that accompanied the strike. For a brief moment, steel workers and their allies challenged the anti-democratic tendencies in the Steel Workers Organizing Committee. While SWOC leaders focused almost exclusively on the achievement of a signed contract, women of the steel auxiliaries, workers on the picket line, and middle-class liberals from across Chicago sought to transform the strike into something larger than a showdown over union recognition. For this coalition, the Little Steel strike was a flashpoint in a wider struggle social democratic reform. In the mobilization prior to Memorial Day and in the protest movement that followed it, key elements of Chicago's liberal-labor coalition espoused the egalitarian values of the Popular Front. Far from an exercise in bread-and-butter moderation, the strike became the occasion for a larger social uprising. This expression of united front commitment drew on the example of the Unemployed Councils and the front-line militancy that is often only associated with the Flint sit-down strike and the general strikes of 1934. In Chicago, the Little Steel strike raised the possibility that steelworkers might embrace the ‘civic unionism’ that animated the left-led unions of the era.     

民主革命时期开滦工人运动在中国工运史上的地位

开滦煤矿是中国近代较大的工业企业之一,有数万产业工人,建矿后的几十年间,矿工进行了数十次罢工运动,沉重打击了晚清政府、英国资本家、日本帝国主义和国民党反动派的反动统治,在中国民主革命时期工人运动史上占有极其重要的地位。     

Command and control at work: the evolution of the rules of work on Mexican railroads, 1883–1923

Abstract

This article examines the evolution of written work rules on the railroads in Mexico from 1883 to 1923, looking at three sets of work rules from the Porfiriato and three from the Revolution. Just as foreign investors, British and American, and foreign skilled workers, mostly American, played an important role in the establishment of Mexico’s first railroad companies, these same foreign businesses brought their written rule books, necessary for the impersonal management of labor in companies with large, diverse, and a far-flung labor force like the railroads, to Mexico. The first rules are often Spanish translations of the English-language originals and paid no attention to the workers’ opinions. Through the Porfiriato, however, Mexican railroad workers unionized, in part following the pattern of the American Brotherhoods, and their unions, through labor activism and strikes, fought to transform work rules from company commands to negotiated terrain, with some success before the Revolution broke out. When the Revolution did break out, however, it radically transformed the terrain of work rules, first because railroad companies, even before they collapsed in the face of revolutionary violence, lost the support of the state that they so needed to impose their work rules, and second, because the new state that emerged from the Revolution allied with organized workers to provide them with many of their revolutionary demands: legal trade unions, mandated work benefits, and collective bargaining. Thus, newly powerful railroad unions through strikes and activism and in alliance with the new state made work rules not only negotiated terrain between companies and workers, but terrain in which workers and their unions held the upper hand. As a consequence, the work rules of 1923, where unions are powerful and impose significant benefits to workers, bear little resemblance to those of 1883, where unions are not recognized by the companies, which felt no obligation to provide any benefits at all.     

‘We Want Both!’: pressuring Philadelphia unions for inclusion and equity during the long 1970s

ABSTRACT

This article examines local labor insurgency in Philadelphia between the mid-1960s and mid-1980s. Drawing on alternative press sources, it traces the efforts of Black, Puerto Rican, and female workers to reshape their unions as stable employment opportunities declined. Across industries and job sites, workers pressured both their unions and their employers through public criticism, running slates of candidates in union elections, and taking part in picketing and wildcat strikes. Existing scholarship has privileged rank-and-file activism among White men focused on wages and working conditions. Enlarging our view to include a more representative workforce at the local level while following workers’ resistance forward through time recharacterizes the rank-and-file rebellion to include defiant, multiracial coalitions demanding progressive reform. That broader rebellion, in turn, challenges some long-held assumptions about US labor during the 1970s.     

Shutting down ‘Big Brown’: reassessing the 1997 UPS strike and the fate of American labor

In the summer of 1997, organized labor won a major strike against United Parcel Service. Staying out for just over two weeks, more than 185,000 members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) crippled UPS's operations, securing pay increases and more full-time positions as a result. At the time, observers widely predicted that the strike would lead to a revival of organized labor's fortunes, especially as it showed that American unions could still win public support. Revisiting the strike more than a decade later, this article re-assesses its impact and explores why the predicted labor revival did not happen, as union density has continued to fall since 1997. It argues that observers exaggerated the strike's transformative impact, overlooking the structural barriers that have continued to cause organized labor to decline. The strike was a defensive victory that helped uphold the pay and conditions of the UPS workers themselves but unions in general have continued to be undermined by broad trends such as the growth of the service sector, the decline of manufacturing, and ongoing corporate hostility to organized labor. In addition, there were many unique features of the UPS strike, including the favourable economic climate at the time and public sympathy for UPS drivers, which have ensured that the strike has not provided a blueprint for most American workers. Finally, ongoing political divisions within the IBT also thwarted efforts to capitalize on the strike.     

Bringing the State's Workers in: Time to Rectify an Imbalanced US Labor Historiography

This article considers the reasons why labor historians have continued to neglect the history of workers and unions in the US public sector. It argues that the most compelling explanation for historians’ failure to examine the history of public sector unions is that conducting such an examination would challenge a number of deeply rooted preconceptions regarding the history of American labor since World War II. The article goes on to suggest what we might learn if US labor historians began to probe the experience of public sector workers more fully.     

化解过剩产能中的劳动关系风险形成机制与治理研究

去产能过程中企业与劳动者之间将发生密集的劳动关系调整,并可能产生劳资矛盾。针对74家企业1657份员工调查问卷的分析发现,去产能企业群体性劳资冲突风险总体可控,但仍有可能发生。年龄偏大、学历较低、缺乏技能和手艺的职工和非正式工通常采取激烈维权方式,发生劳动关系风险的概率较高。在评估去产能企业劳动关系风险水平的基础上,研究从外部环境、政府行为、企业应对三个角度提出了劳动关系风险发生的诱发性因素和抑制性因素,并提出了治理化解过剩产能中劳动关系风险的相关建议。     

‘Labor's Empty Gun’: Permanent Replacements and the International Paper Company Strike of 1987–88

In June 1987, managers at International Paper Company (IP) permanently replaced more than 2,200 union members who had gone on strike after resisting the firm's demands for extensive concessions. Previous accounts of this dispute, which lasted until October 1988, have focused on Jay, Maine, where around half the strikers were located. This study gives a fuller history, detailing the involvement of strikers in De Pere, Wisconsin and Lock Haven, Pennsylvania as well. In addition, it highlights the important part played by 1,200 IP workers in Mobile, Alabama. In March 1987, IP executives locked out the Mobile workers, precipitating the entire conflict between the two sides. Blending oral history interviews with unprocessed archival material and local newspaper accounts, Minchin shows that the company's use of permanent replacements tipped the balance in its favor, despite the union's efforts to launch a corporate campaign against IP. Although the strikers held firm, they had little bargaining power once they had been replaced. The dispute graphically highlights how difficult it is for unions to win strikes in the contemporary US, confirming union leaders’ complaints that the hiring of permanent strike replacements has left them with an ‘empty gun.’     

A stroll down memory lane: my fifty years-plus association with Labor History

Mexico's rail workers’ struggle of 1926–27 encompassed one of the largest strikes following the 1910–20 revolution, yet contemporary official government statistics omitted any mention of it. The labor struggle involved an independent, militant confederation of transport workers and, opposed to it, the largest rail company in the country (heavily indebted to foreign creditors), the state, and its principal labor ally. While the strike was broken, the confederation leading it obtained an impressive judgment from the nation's supreme court against the authoritarian federal executive power, which, moreover, vindicated the right to strike affirmed in the 1917 Constitution. But the judicial and administrative decisions reached in connection with the strike subsequently served to structure and limit labor's right to strike. This article analyzes the railroad strike of 1927, the judicial and administrative response to it, and its legal significance, which together have contributed to the formation of the nation's post-revolutionary system of regulating industrial conflict.     

Organizing a wildcat: the United States postal strike of 1970

This article, part of a larger work in progress, uses archives, key secondary sources, and oral histories from participants in the 1970 United States postal wildcat strike for better pay and working conditions to argue that this was a monumental event both unique and representative of the times. It was a rank-and-file effort that began in New York City – with a history of labor militancy – and rapidly spread across the country. The strike defied federal statute outlawing federal employee strikes, and also union leaders who opposed striking. A spike in 1960s hiring of blacks, veterans, women, and young people, combined with established labor unity tradition, a nationwide workplace and long-simmering frustrations produced the strike. But its dual character (both spontaneous and organized by local union officials and activists) allowed it to grow and maintain for eight days with no central coordination. Besides winning a living wage, the strike triggered the transformation of the US Post Office Department into the US Postal Service (USPS) with full collective bargaining rights for postal unions representing its employees. Moreover, it brought rank-and-file politics into postal unions while contributing to the increased strength of postal unions, public union organizing, and the labor movement in general.     

劳工权益争取和保障方式的演化

劳资关系成为现代经济中的常态,而没有随着时间推移逐渐衰弱,很可能同劳资关系在演化中得到长足的改进有关.对数百年来劳资关系的演化进行回顾和分析,研究发现劳工权益的争取和保障通常呈现激进和渐进两种方式.研究认为,从演化视角观察,劳工权益的争取和保障以渐进方式为主,劳工组织、进步力量和法律制度是最主要的驱动因素,且法律制度的...     

Forging feminism within labor unions and the legacy of democracy movements in South Korea

Abstract

Although most scholarship stresses that ‘male regular worker-centeredness’ is a trait of mainstream Korean labor unions, the specific reasons why feminism has failed to spread within Korean unionism have not been clarified. In order to answer this question, this article focuses on the entangled interrelations of feminism with broader social movements, maintaining that the historical legacy of the victory of the 1987 Great Worker Struggle – led by male workers from the heavy and chemical industries – is still a powerful factor in discouraging the spread of feminism, even though a fundamental transformation in the nature of Korean labor unions from being primarily class conscious to economistic has taken place. This article also highlights that Korean women’s movements have raised little criticism against the gender-blindness of labor unionism largely because Korean labor unions have been positioned as a ‘moral force’ in bringing about democratization. Furthermore, I stress that conflict between old feminists (socialist feminism) and young feminists (radical feminism), who tend to reflect on the dichotomous relations between gender and/or class, has actually been counterproductive to the proliferation of feminism within Korean labor unions.     

Joseph Weydemeyer's “dictatorship of the proletariat”

This article responds to Jean-Christian Vinel's assessment of the ‘critical synthesis’ whose proponents created labor law history as a new and flourishing field of scholarship in the decade after 1978. Vinel accords my book, The State and the Unions (1985) a key role in the development of this new field. Here, I situate my book in relation to the critical synthesis, and assess the capacity of critical legal scholarship to address the current parlous state of the U.S. labor movement. I look to current labor historians to engage with and build on the work that the labor law historians undertook.     

An early attempt at labor regulation in the Global South: the Argentine Ley Nacional del Trabajo of 1904 and the response of working-class organizations

ABSTRACT

In the first months of 1904, in a context of intense labor unrest, the Argentine executive branch presented to Congress a bill that became known as the ‘National Labor Law’ (Ley Nacional del Trabajo). It comprised a very extensive set of rules designed to regulate the labor market, the labor process and workers’ organizations. By that time, Argentina had a growing capitalist economy, a young and radical labor movement and no labor regulations whatsoever – in this context, the bill was the first attempt of regulating the relations between capital and labor and, not surprisingly, it sparked an important debate. Although it never became a law, the bill became an iconic reference in the history of labor regulations in Argentina. This article introduces the main characteristics of the proposed bill and focuses on the reactions that working-class organizations developed toward it. While anarchist-oriented groups and unions made clear its complete rejection toward an initiative that was seen as another intervention of an authoritarian state, the Socialist Party found itself in a much more complicated position. This article addresses these debates and tensions in order to better understand the reactions of working-class organizations with regard to the first attempt of labor regulation made by the Argentine state.     

Showdown at Nissan: the 1989 campaign to organize Nissan in Smyrna,Tennessee, and the rise of the transplant sector

In July 1989, workers at Nissan’s plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, voted 1622 to 711 against being represented by the United Automobile Workers of America (UAW). At the time, many reporters saw the well-publicized Nissan vote – dubbed a ‘showdown’ by the New York Times – as a defining moment in modern labor history. The election deserves further exploration, especially as it played a key role in establishing the non-union ‘transplant’ sector. UAW leaders blamed the Smyrna loss on Nissan’s anti-union tactics, while the company claimed that workers did not need a union because they were already well paid (although this was largely due to the UAW’s presence). This article is the first to provide a detailed analysis that draws on the union’s records of the campaign, as well as many other sources. While the factors cited publicly were important, the article demonstrates that there were additional reasons for the union’s defeat, including internal divisions, unanticipated staffing problems, and the logistical challenge of organizing such a big – and new – facility. Although Nissan workers had many grievances, the company also fostered loyalty by not laying off workers, and by expanding the plant. Finally, it secured a high level of community support, and drew off the conservative political climate of the era.     

Linkages of oil and politics: oil strikes and dual power in the Iranian revolution

ABSTRACT

Looking at the oil strikes during the Iranian revolution (1978–79), this article challenges dominant narratives of the relationship between oil and politics and the processes that shaped the outcome of the revolution. The main arguments of the article are developed in a critical dialogue with Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy. Firstly, the article argues that the scale of the oil strikes and their central role in the creation of organs of revolutionary power call into question the generalization about the material characteristics of oil that supposedly prevented mobilization. Secondly, the article argues that the fact that oil workers were able to organize mass strikes, but failed to create an independent organization, calls for an explanatory approach that combines material factors with the role of consciousness, ideology and organization. This leads to a rereading of the Iranian revolution that highlights the essential role of the oil strikes in the emergence of dual power in early 1979, and the contingency of their outcome.     

A pivotal role? The AFL–CIO and the 2008 presidential election

This article explores the role that organized labor played in the landmark presidential election of 2008. In particular, it explores the work of the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO), which ran its biggest ever election campaign in 2008, spending upwards of $250 million. While there is a vibrant emerging literature on the election, particularly from political scientists and former reporters, labor’s role in the story has been largely overlooked. Drawing on new parts of the AFL–CIO’s papers, as well as interviews with key staffers and federation leaders, this article highlights the important – and overlooked – role that labor played in putting Barack Obama into the White House. Especially important were its extensive efforts to educate – and pressure – white members, many of whom had backed other candidates during the Democratic primaries, to support Obama. Indeed, the Washington Post asserted that union members played a ‘pivotal role’ in Obama’s victory, especially in terms of delivering the white vote. It was a conclusion largely supported by exit polls, which showed that white union members were much more likely to support Obama than whites who were not in unions. The article highlights that despite the decline in union density – by this time only about 12% of American workers belonged to unions, compared to 35% in the 1950s – the labor movement retained considerable political influence, chiefly because of reforms carried out by AFL–CIO President John J. Sweeney. While Obama was unable to fulfill many of the expectations generated by his campaign, the story of labor and the 2008 election is an important one in its own right, showing that contemporary labor could still be a powerful and constructive force.     

Women with(out) class: social workers in the twentieth-century United States

This article examines women's work culture in professional-managerial labor in the twentieth-century United States through a history of social workers, an occupation particularly well suited to examine how race and gender shape work cultures. It suggests a chronology for understanding the changing ways in which social workers adopted middle-class identities that draw upon both professionalism and unionism. Imaging themselves variously as workers and ‘middle-class’ professionals, each identity had implications for their ability to understand and respond to the changing working conditions at both the beginning and end of the twentieth century that threatened to undermine them. Middle-Class Worker and Professional Worker identities in the 1930s and 1960s armed male and female social workers to defend their unions and fight for their clients against economizing bosses, and miserly state politicians. At the end of the century, however, the rush of social workers into the role of therapists gave them a work identity that relatively disempowered them to deal with the welfare cutbacks or the new work of deindustrialization with ‘jobless recovery’.     

劳动法律的中国条件——国家规制与社会权利建构之社会合作相协调

检视近年来中国的劳动法律,已经不是有无法律而是需要什么样的法律的问题。问题所在是,国家规制下社会权利和社会合作显现缺失,工人们甚至用牺牲乃至生命呼唤社会权利和社会合作。回望近代以来的中国劳动法制历史,国家规制下社会权利和社会合作的缺失乃是一种长久之痛。环顾世界劳动法制的演进,劳动法律在中国有效实施的基本条件,便是补救社会权利和社会合作的缺失,国家规制则需要与之相互协调。     

私营企业集体劳动关系预警指标体系研究

近年来,罢工、停工、示威等劳资群体性事件在私营企业内屡见不鲜,私营企业集体劳动关系正面临很大的挑战。而预警作为防范劳动关系危机发生的有效方式,对改善私营企业集体劳动关系起着关键作用。因此,应设计一套具有针对性的预警指标体系,提早介入防范危机发生,以期为企业和政府超前预控、正确决策提供一定的依据。