Labor'S War At Home

Labor'S War At Home
Author: Nelson Lichtenstein
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2010-06-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1439904235

A new edition of a classic book on how World War II changed the face of labor in the US.

A Contest of Ideas

A Contest of Ideas
Author: Nelson Lichtenstein
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2012-09-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 025209512X

For more than thirty years Nelson Lichtenstein has deployed his scholarship--on labor, politics, and social thought--to chart the history and prospects of a progressive America. A Contest of Ideas collects and updates many of Lichtenstein's most provocative and controversial essays and reviews. These incisive writings link the fate of the labor movement to the transformations in the shape of world capitalism, to the rise of the civil rights movement, and to the activists and intellectuals who have played such important roles. Tracing broad patterns of political thought, Lichtenstein offers important perspectives on the relationship of labor and the state, the tensions that sometimes exist between a culture of rights and the idea of solidarity, and the rise of conservatism in politics, law, and intellectual life. The volume closes with portraits of five activist intellectuals whose work has been vital to the conflicts that engage the labor movement, public policy, and political culture.

The CIO, 1935-1955

The CIO, 1935-1955
Author: Robert H. Zieger
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2000-11-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 080786644X

The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) encompassed the largest sustained surge of worker organization in American history. Robert Zieger charts the rise of this industrial union movement, from the founding of the CIO by John L. Lewis in 1935 to its merger under Walter Reuther with the American Federation of Labor in 1955. Exploring themes of race and gender, Zieger combines the institutional history of the CIO with vivid depictions of working-class life in this critical period. Zieger details the ideological conflicts that racked the CIO even as its leaders strove to establish a labor presence at the heart of the U.S. economic system. Stressing the efforts of industrial unionists such as Sidney Hillman and Philip Murray to forge potent instruments of political action, he assesses the CIO's vital role in shaping the postwar political and international order. Zieger's analysis also contributes to current debates over labor law reform, the collective bargaining system, and the role of organized labor in a changing economy.

Employing Bureaucracy

Employing Bureaucracy
Author: Sanford M. Jacoby
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2004-04-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 113570547X

Deftly blending social and business history with economic analysis, Employing Bureaucracy shows how the American workplace shifted from a market-oriented system to a bureaucratic one over the course of the 20th century. Jacoby explains how an unstable, haphazard employment relationship evolved into one that was more enduring, equitable, and career-oriented. This revised edition presents a new analysis of recent efforts to re-establish a market orientation in the workplace. This book is a definitive history of the human resource management profession in the United States, showing its diverse roots in engineering, welfare work, and vocational guidance. It explores the recurring tension between the new professional order and traditional line management. Using a variety of sources, Jacoby analyzes the complex relations between personnel managers, labor unions, and government from the late 19th century to the present. Employing Bureaucracy: *analyzes the origins of the modern employment relationship's distinctive features; *combines a variety of disciplinary perspectives, from business and labor history to economics, sociology, and management; *shows the transformation of the American workplace over the course of the 20th century, from market-oriented to bureaucratic to recent efforts to move back to a market orientation; and *provides the single-best and most sophisticated history of the origins and development of the modern "HR" profession. For historians, social scientists, and practitioners, this book is a readable and rewarding study. With the future of work currently under debate, it is critical that the historical process that produced the modern American workplace is understood. Read the Workforce Management Magazine review about Employing Bureaucracy at www.erlbaum.com.

Clearing the Air

Clearing the Air
Author: Gregory Wood
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2016-10-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 150170687X

In Clearing the Air, Gregory Wood examines smoking's importance to the social and cultural history of working people in the twentieth-century United States. Now that most workplaces in the United States are smoke-free, it may be difficult to imagine the influence that nicotine addiction once had on the politics of worker resistance, workplace management, occupational health, vice, moral reform, grassroots activism, and the labor movement. The experiences, social relations, demands, and disputes that accompanied smoking in the workplace in turn shaped the histories of antismoking politics and tobacco control.The steady expansion of cigarette smoking among men, women, and children during the first half of the twentieth century brought working people into sustained conflict with managers’ demands for diligent attention to labor processes and work rules. Addiction to nicotine led smokers to resist and challenge policies that coldly stood between them and the cigarettes they craved. Wood argues that workers’ varying abilities to smoke on the job stemmed from the success or failure of sustained opposition to employer policies that restricted or banned smoking. During World War II, workers in defense industries, for example, struck against workplace smoking bans. By the 1970s, opponents of smoking in workplaces began to organize, and changing medical knowledge and dwindling union power contributed further to the downfall of workplace smoking. The demise of the ability to smoke on the job over the past four decades serves as an important indicator of how the power of workers’ influence in labor-management relations has dwindled over the same period.

Rethinking the American Labor Movement

Rethinking the American Labor Movement
Author: Elizabeth Faue
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2017-04-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136175504

Rethinking the American Labor Movement tells the story of the various groups and incidents that make up what we think of as the "labor movement." While the efforts of the American labor force towards greater wealth parity have been rife with contention, the struggle has embraced a broad vision of a more equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth and a desire for workers to have greater control over their own lives. In this succinct and authoritative volume, Elizabeth Faue reconsiders the varied strains of the labor movement, situating them within the context of rapidly transforming twentieth-century American society to show how these efforts have formed a political and social movement that has shaped the trajectory of American life. Rethinking the American Labor Movement is indispensable reading for scholars and students interested in American labor in the twentieth century and in the interplay between labor, wealth, and power.