Harry Bridges

Harry Bridges
Author: Robert W. Cherny
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2023-01-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0252053796

The iconic leader of one of America’s most powerful unions, Harry Bridges put an indelible stamp on the twentieth century labor movement. Robert Cherny’s monumental biography tells the life story of the figure who built the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) into a labor powerhouse that still represents almost 30,000 workers. An Australian immigrant, Bridges worked the Pacific Coast docks. His militant unionism placed him at the center of the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike and spurred him to expand his organizing activities to warehouse laborers and Hawaiian sugar and pineapple workers. Cherny examines the overall effectiveness of Bridges as a union leader and the decisions and traits that made him effective. Cherny also details the price paid by Bridges as the US government repeatedly prosecuted him for his left-wing politics. Drawing on personal interviews with Bridges and years of exhaustive research, Harry Bridges places an extraordinary individual and the ILWU within the epic history of twentieth-century labor radicalism.

Saving Florida

Saving Florida
Author: Leslie Kemp Poole
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2015-05-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813059410

In Saving Florida, Leslie Kemp Poole casts new light on the women at the forefront of Florida’s environmental movement. From creating parks to protesting air pollution, fighting dredge-and-fill operations, and exposing the health dangers of pesticides, these women caused unprecedented changes in how the Sunshine State values its many and marvelous natural resources. At the beginning of the twentieth century women didn’t have the vote, but by the end of the century they were founding issue-specific groups, like Friends of the Everglades, and running state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They set the foundation for the next century’s environmental agenda, which came to include the idea of sustainable development, which meshes ecology and economy to enhance energy efficiency and the function of natural systems. This is an indispensable history that not only underscores the importance of women in the environmental movement but also shows how as a collective force they forever altered how others saw women’s roles in society.

Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939

Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939
Author: Daniel Soyer
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2018-02-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0814344518

Study of a vital immigrant institution and the formation of American ethnic identity. Landsmanshaftn, associations of immigrants from the same hometown, became the most popular form of organization among Eastern European Jewish immigrants to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880–1939, by Daniel Soyer, holds an in-depth discussion on the importance of these hometown societies that provided members with valuable material benefits and served as arenas for formal and informal social interaction. In addition to discussing both continuity and transformation as features of the immigrant experience, this approach recognizes that ethnic identity is a socially constructed and malleable phenomenon. Soyer explores this process of construction by raising more specific questions about what immigrants themselves have meant by Americanization and how their hometown associations played an important part in the process.

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters
Author: Walter Galenson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 466
Release: 1983
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780674921962

Historical account of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters (trade union) in the USA, 1881 to 1981 - covers trade unionization, trade union structure and collective bargaining, demarcation disputes and other labour disputes, political ideology and management attitudes; notes successes in wage increases, reduced hours of work and the abolition of racial segregation.

The Master of Seventh Avenue

The Master of Seventh Avenue
Author: Robert D. Parmet
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2012-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0814770363

The Master of Seventh Avenue is the definitive biography of David Dubinsky (1892—1982), one of the most controversial and influential labor leaders in 20th-century America. A “character” in the truest sense of the word, Dubinsky was both revered and reviled, but never dull, conformist, or bound by convention. A Jewish labor radical, Dubinsky fled czarist Poland in 1910 and began his career as a garment worker and union agitator in New York City. He quickly rose through the ranks of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’Union (ILGWU) and became its president in 1932. Dubinsky led the ILGWU for thirty-four years, where he championed “social unionism,” which offered workers benefits ranging from health care to housing. Moving beyond the realm of the ILGWU, Dubinsky also played a leading role in the American Federation of Labor (AFL), particularly during World War II. A staunch anti-communist, Dubinsky worked tirelessly to rid the American labor movement of communists and fellow-travelers. Robert D. Parmet also chronicles Dubinsky’s influential role in local, national, and international politics. An extraordinary personality whose life and times present a fascinating lens into the American labor movement, Dubinsky leaps off the pages of this meticulously researched and vividly detailed biography.

Nursing the Nation

Nursing the Nation
Author: Jean C. Whelan
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 123
Release: 2021-02-12
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0813585996

Modern health care cannot exist without professional nurses. Throughout the twentieth century, there was seldom a sustained period when the supply of nurses was equal to demand. Nursing the Nation offers a historical analysis of the relationship between the development of nurse employment arrangements with patients and institutions and the appearance of nurse shortages from 1890 to 1950. The response to nursing supply and demand problems by health care institutions and policy-making organizations failed to address nurse workforce issues adequately, and this failure resulted in, at times, profound and lengthy nurse shortages. Nurses also lost the ability to control their own destiny within health care institutions while nevertheless establishing themselves as the most critical part of health care provision today.

The CIO Challenge to the AFL

The CIO Challenge to the AFL
Author: Walter Galenson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 764
Release: 1960
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The period immediately preceding World War II was probably the most critical in the history of the American labor movement. Prior to 1936, the trade unions were weak, but by 1941 a fundamental change in power relationships enabled them to penetrate the strongholds of American industry--steel and automobiles. The CIO Challenge to the AFL is a three-part study. It discusses the split in the American Federation of Labor and the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations; presents eighteen specific industry or union case studies, each an independent essay in economic history; and, finally, analyzes various general aspects of the labor movement.

Organizing the Unemployed

Organizing the Unemployed
Author: James J. Lorence
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 432
Release: 1996-07-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1438411251

Focusing on Michigan during the Great Depression, this book highlights the efforts of community organizers and activists in the United Automobile Workers (UAW) to mobilize the jobless for mass action. In doing so, it demonstrates the relationship between unemployed activism and the rise of industrial unionism. Moreover, by discussing Communist and Socialist initiatives on behalf of displaced workers, the book illuminates the impact of radicalism on social change and shows how political claims influenced the cultural discourse of the 1930s. The book not only helps fill a void in our knowledge of community activism, worker culture, and labor history in the 1930s but also sheds light on the New Deal's domestication of American labor and the channeling of mass protest toward politically and socially acceptable goals. The UAW acceptance of responsibility for the underclass of the 1930s raises pertinent questions for labor in the 1990s.