The Emergence of White-Collar Unionism in New York’s Culture Industries

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-97
Author(s):  
Shannan Clark
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
White Collar ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Culture Industries ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Congress Of Industrial Organizations ◽  
Industrial Organizations ◽  
Professional Workers ◽  
White Collar Workers

Chapter 2 explores the development of white-collar unionism in New York’s culture industries during the Great Depression. Culture workers responded to the crisis with new organizing initiatives, many of which eventually gravitated toward the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Larger groups of workers received charters from the CIO as affiliated international unions, such as the American Newspaper Guild, with the New York locals containing a substantial share of total national membership. Organizing efforts in cultural fields that were more concentrated in the metropolitan area, like the Book and Magazine Guild and the American Advertising Guild, became local unions within the United Office and Professional Workers of America, which was the CIO affiliate with a general jurisdiction covering white-collar workers. This chapter also examines the important role of women activists in white-collar organizing as well as unionists’ participation in the broader Popular Front social movement of the 1930s.

The Making of the American Creative Class

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannan Clark
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
White Collar ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Culture Industries ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
White Collar Workers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

During most of the twentieth century, the production of America’s consumer culture was centralized in New York to an extent unparalleled in the history of the modern United States. Within a few square miles were the headquarters of broadcast networks like NBC and CBS, the editorial offices of book and magazine publishers, major newspapers, and advertising and design agencies. Every day tens of thousands of writers, editors, artists, performers, technicians, secretaries, and other white-collar workers made advertisements, produced media content, and enhanced the appearance of goods in order to boost sales. While this center of creativity has often been portrayed as a smoothly running machine, within these offices many white-collar workers challenged the managers and executives who directed their labor. This book examines these workers and New York’s culture industries throughout the twentieth century. As manufacturers and retailers competed to attract consumers’ attention, their advertising expenditures financed the growth of enterprises engaged in the production of culture. With the shock of the Great Depression, employees in these firms organized unions to improve their working conditions; launched alternative media and cultural endeavors supported by public, labor, or cooperative patronage; and fought in other ways to expand their creative autonomy. As blacklisting and attacks on unions undermined these efforts after the Second World War, workers in advertising, design, publishing, and broadcasting found themselves constrained in their ability to respond to economic dislocations and to combat discrimination on the basis of gender and race in these fields of cultural production.

White-Collar Work, the Culture Industries, and the Origins of the Creative Class

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-54
Author(s):  
Shannan Clark
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New Technology ◽  
White Collar ◽  
Culture Industries ◽  
Consumer Capitalism ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Related Development ◽  
The Media

Chapter 1 surveys the growth of the white-collar workforce during the first three decades of the twentieth century, and the related development of the culture industries centered in New York. The fundamental relationships that linked advertisers to the media took shape during these years, as manufacturers’ need to reach potential consumers fueled the expansion of existing newspapers and magazines, quickly dominated the new technology of radio, and pushed firms to become more attentive to the design and appearance of products. Even as the culture industries swelled to meet the imperatives of consumer capitalism, economic inequality constrained consumer demand, contributing to the onset of the Great Depression. Although business interests attempted to defend capitalist principles and to maintain their control over the advertising and media enterprises, the severity and duration of the Depression incited radical critiques of both the working conditions within the culture industries and the content that they produced.

New York’s White-Collar Unions during Wartime and Reconversion

2020 ◽  
pp. 188-243
Author(s):  
Shannan Clark
Keyword(s):  
White Collar ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
The Political ◽  
Equal Distribution ◽  
Culture Industries ◽  
The Social ◽  
White Collar Workers ◽  
Distribution Of Income

Chapter 5 refocuses the narrative on the experiences of white-collar workers employed within New York’s culture industries between 1941 and 1947. As economic conditions improved rapidly with the mobilization for war, the chronic underemployment and precariousness of work during the Depression gave way to the tightest labor market of the twentieth century. Wartime conditions facilitated union organizing even as they restricted unionists’ range of permissible collective action, leading white-collar unionists to support the social consumerism of the Office of Price Administration. The resurgence of unionism occurred within the context of a seismic shift toward a more equal distribution of income and wealth in the United States, which only intensified the political polarization of white-collar workers. In addition, this chapter also highlights the continued vibrancy of Popular Front labor feminism during the 1940s and women’s profound influence on the surge in white-collar organizing.

The Cultural Deindustrialization of New York

2020 ◽  
pp. 339-386
Author(s):  
Shannan Clark
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
White Collar ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Economic Insecurity ◽  
Culture Industries ◽  
Daily Newspapers ◽  
White Collar Workers ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The City

Chapter 8 examines New York’s publishing and broadcasting sectors, which underwent significant deindustrialization during the postwar period. Even as intellectuals and social commentators heralded the rising tide of affluence, supposedly epitomized by white-collar workers engaged in cultural production, in fact tens of thousands employed in the city’s culture industries experienced considerable economic insecurity and inequality. The production of primetime television entertainment largely left the city for Southern California during the 1950s, and attempts during the 1960s at revitalizing New York as a production center were unsuccessful. The structural crisis of the city’s print media led to the closing of multiple daily newspapers during the mid-1960s, followed a few years later by major magazines like Life. Although a new wave of feminist activists combatted workplace discrimination as well as sexist media content, the weakened position of unions and the more general economic retrenchment of the 1970s limited their gains.

The Cold War in New York’s Culture Industries

2020 ◽  
pp. 244-292
Author(s):  
Shannan Clark
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Culture Industries ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Professional Workers ◽  
White Collar Workers ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

Chapter 6 examines the impact of the domestic Cold War on white-collar workers in New York’s culture industries. As relations between the United States and the Soviet Union rapidly deteriorated during the late 1940s, anticommunists’ attacks on the Popular Front and its supporters within the culture industries became more intense and more effective. Changes in labor law targeted unions like the United Office and Professional Workers of America that had procommunists among the leadership, while congressional investigations and blacklisting ruined the careers of numerous writers, artists, and other culture workers who had strongly backed the Popular Front. By the 1950s, the unions in the city’s culture industries were weakened or destroyed from the onslaught, diminishing the options for workers in publishing, advertising, broadcasting, and design to fight for improved working conditions and greater creative autonomy.

To See and to Be Seen

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoqing Fan ◽  
Huan Chen
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Phenomenological Study ◽  
White Collar ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Chinese White ◽  
Professional Workers ◽  
White Collar Workers ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

In recent years, microblogging has gained enormous popularity in China, especially among urban professional workers. This phenomenological study investigates how white-collar workers in China experience microblogging and how they perceive the impact of microblogging on their lives. Twenty in-depth face-to-face interviews were conducted in Beijing and Qingdao with young white-collar professionals who are active users of Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo. The analysis revealed that by engaging in microblogging activities workers can increase their social capital. In addition, the results suggested that through microblogs white-collar professional users can not only increase their social capital at the individual level but also enhance it at the collective level. The authors conclude that information sharing and social interaction enabled through microblogging platforms empower Chinese white-collar workers and strengthen their social capital.

Back to Work

2020 ◽  
pp. 200-242
Author(s):  
Jarod Roll
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
White Men ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Congress Of Industrial Organizations ◽  
Industrial Organizations ◽  
Company Union ◽  
A Company ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
Back To Work

As the Great Depression crushed the mining industry, Tri-State miners looked for ways to restore their standing as hard-working-white men and their faith in capitalism. The New Deal offered hope but brought labor unions back into the district. Some miners, but not a majority, looked to organized labor as the best way to roll back the power of the companies. This chapter explores their 1935 strike to regain what they had lost and the ways the New Deal labor regime was too weak to protect them. While strikers waited for allies in the nascent Congress of Industrial Organizations, the mining companies organized the majority of the district’s nonunion miners into a back-to-work movement that became a company union. This group rallied around old promises of racial superiority and high pay for loyal, hard-working white men who were willing to destroy the CIO union. The CIO, with the help of New Deal officials, eventually won this dispute in court, but it could not overrule the reactionary commitments in the hearts of the majority of Tri-State miners as a new world war brought the mining economy to life again.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document