Silk Stockings and Socialism

Union Leaders ◽

History Of ◽

The New Deal

The 1920s Jazz Age is remembered for flappers and speakeasies, not for the success of a declining labor movement. A more complex story was unfolding among the young women and men in the hosiery mills of Kensington, the working-class heart of Philadelphia. Their product was silk stockings, the iconic fashion item of the flapper culture then sweeping America and the world. Although the young people who flooded into this booming industry were avid participants in Jazz Age culture, they also embraced a surprising, rights-based labor movement, headed by the socialist-led American Federation of Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers (AFFFHW). In this first history of this remarkable union, Sharon McConnell-Sidorick reveals how activists ingeniously fused youth culture and radical politics to build a subculture that included dances and parties as well as picket lines and sit-down strikes, while forging a vision for social change. In documenting AFFFHW members and the Kensington community, McConnell-Sidorick shows how labor federations like the Congress of Industrial Organizations and government programs like the New Deal did not spring from the heads of union leaders or policy experts but were instead nurtured by grassroots social movements across America.

Slave Market

10.5406/illinois/9780252037696.003.0016 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Arna Bontemps

Keyword(s):

Working Conditions ◽

Labor Movement ◽

The South ◽

Employment Practices ◽

American Federation ◽

The Poor ◽

Fair Employment

This chapter discusses the poor working conditions for Negroes and those within the labor movement trying to improve them after emancipation, as reflected in the so-called “slave market” in a Chicago street in 1938. As Negro migrants came from the South, they were often excluded from unions. However, some in the meatpacking and garment industries allowed Negroes into their unions after seeing them used as strikebreakers. This chapter considers some important developments that spoke of advancements for Negro laborers, including the establishment in 1925 of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, made up entirely of Negro porters, in Chicago and eventually admitted into the American Federation of Labor; the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which organized workers industry-wide and openly recruited Negroes; and the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), which conducted a hearing in Chicago early in 1942 to investigate allegations that several firms practiced discrimination in their employment practices.

History of the Labor Movement in the United States. From Colonial Times to the Founding of the American Federation of Labor

The New England Quarterly ◽

10.2307/361107 ◽

1948 ◽

Vol 21 (3) ◽

pp. 402

Author(s):

Henry F. May ◽

Philip S. Foner

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Labor Movement ◽

The United States ◽

American Federation ◽

History Of

History of the Labor Movement in the United States, from Colonial Times to the Founding of the American Federation of Labor. By Philip S. Foner. (New York: International Publishers. 1947. Pp. 576. $4.50.)

The American Historical Review ◽

10.1086/ahr/54.3.632 ◽

1949 ◽

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

New York ◽

Labor Movement ◽

The United States ◽

American Federation ◽

History Of

History of the Labor Movement in the United States, from Colonial Times to the Founding of the American Federation of Labor. By Philip S. Foner. New York: International Publishers Company, 1947. Pp. 576. $4.50.

The Journal of Economic History ◽

10.1017/s0022050700069953 ◽

1948 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 239-240

Author(s):

Lloyd G. Reynolds

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

New York ◽

Labor Movement ◽

The United States ◽

American Federation ◽

History Of

A Labor-Liberal Constellation

The Rise of Political Action Committees ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190075514.003.0007 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 168-196

Author(s):

Emily J. Charnock

Keyword(s):

Political Education ◽

National Committee ◽

Labor Organizations ◽

American Federation ◽

Liberal Democrats ◽

Democratic Action

This chapter traces the initial diffusion of the PAC concept from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to other labor organizations, including the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and liberal ideological groups. Though the AFL had previously opposed the CIO’s partisan electoral strategy and the formation of P.A.C., it came to emulate both following passage of the Taft-Hartley Act by a Republican Congress in 1947, forming Labor’s League for Political Education (LLPE) to engage in elections. That same year, two avowedly “liberal” groups were created to bolster the anti-Communist Left and champion liberal Democrats: the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and the National Committee for an Effective Congress (NCEC). The chapter traces the intertwined electoral efforts and tactical innovations of these liberal and labor organizations through the AFL-CIO merger in 1955, the subsequent creation of their joint PAC, the Committee on Political Education (COPE), and the latter’s activities in the 1956 elections.

Business Unionism and Rank-and-File Unionism at the Turn of the Millennium

10.5406/illinois/9780252036378.003.0002 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Dana L. Cloud

Keyword(s):

Economic Crisis ◽

Labor Movement ◽

Turn Of The Millennium ◽

Similar Transformation ◽

Union Movement ◽

Union Leadership ◽

Labor Institutions ◽

American Union

This chapter introduces the arguments of the book in the context of a summary of the critique of traditional American union leadership as pro-business and dangerously invested in partnerships with management. First, it chronicles the two waves of the American union movement, telling the story of the rise of democratic unionism with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and its subsequent decline in the postwar years. It then provides some examples from the 1990s and 2000s of instances in which conservative unions led workers to defeats, primarily because of the failure to prioritize rank-and-file action in favor of more administrative, legalistic, and consumer-oriented strategies. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the changing situation of labor today. It argues that that the story of the rise of the CIO provides an inspiring model of the birth of a fighting labor movement out of a period of fragmentation, exclusivity, and weakness in existing labor institutions. It further suggests that present conditions of economic crisis and the stirrings of a new militancy are ripe for a similar transformation.

Organizing the Sexual Division of Labor

10.5406/illinois/9780252040320.003.0003 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Ruth Milkman

Keyword(s):

Women Workers ◽

Division Of Labor ◽

Women's Labor ◽

American Federation ◽

Sexual Division ◽

Job Segregation ◽

Sexual Division Of Labor

This chapter examines the effects of union organization on women workers and sexual division of labor, focusing on the 1930s and 1940s along with earlier developments in U.S. women's labor history. It draws on feminist scholarship that argued that labor unions' efforts to exclude women from membership had helped to consolidate patterns of job segregation by gender in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After reviewing theories of occupational segregation by sex, especially with regards to the role of unions in the formation of labor-market boundaries between “women's work” and “men's work,” the chapter discusses the ways that the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (initially called Committe for Industrial Organization) contributed to the sexual division of labor. It argues that industrial unions had the opportunity to challenge job segregation by sex during the 1930s and 1940s, but instead helped consolidate it. In both periods, the labor movement showed litte interest in recruiting women into its ranks.

Able and Militant Fighters for Workers

10.5406/illinois/9780252039492.003.0004 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Robert Bussel

Keyword(s):

Working Class ◽

Union Organizing ◽

Textile Workers ◽

Transport Service ◽

Shared Experience ◽

Service Employees ◽

American Federation ◽

American Federation Of Teachers ◽

Industrial Organizations

This chapter examines how their time in Chicago led Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway to the shared experience of industrial union organizing and reinforced their faith in the potential of working-class mobilization. It begins with an account of the Memorial Day Massacre in 1937 and how Chicago provided Calloway with his first opportunity to exercise leadership in a union setting. It then considers Gibbons's involvement in Chicago's labor community as member of American Federation of Teachers Local 346 as well as his role in helping Chicago workers organize under the banner of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). It also discusses Gibbons's work as an organizer for the Textile Workers Organizing Committee (TWOC) and looks at two men who played instrumental roles in shaping Calloway's career: Willard Townsend and John Yancey. Finally, it describes Calloway's involvement with the United Transport Service Employees of America (formerly International Brotherhood of Red Caps), during which he also began to articulate a concept of working-class citizenship.

Sewing the Fabric of Statehood

10.5622/illinois/9780252041464.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Adam M. Howard

Keyword(s):

Foreign Policy ◽

Jewish History ◽

Jewish State ◽

Cultural Centers ◽

American Federation ◽

Economic Aid ◽

American Labor

This book explores the untold story of how three influential garment unions worked with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in support of a new Jewish state. It reveals a coalition at work on multiple fronts. Sustained efforts convinced the AFL and CIO to support Jewish development in Palestine through land purchases for Jewish workers and encouraged the construction of trade schools and cultural centers. Other activists, meanwhile, directed massive economic aid to Histadrut, the General Federation of Jewish Workers in Palestine, or pressured the British and American governments to support the Jews in Palestine and later, recognize Israel’s independence. Ultimately, these efforts led American labor to forge its own foreign policy--and reshape both the postwar world and Jewish history.

Le rôle social des syndicats aux États-Unis

Relations industrielles ◽

10.7202/1021401ar ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 363-385

Author(s):

Leon Dale

Keyword(s):

New Jersey ◽

Atlantic City ◽

Executive Council ◽

American Federation ◽

Industrial Organizations

Sommaire « L'établissement de l'AFL-CIO a stimulé le développement du programme syndical de service à la communauté et fut la cause d'une participation plus active des syndicats dans les affaires de la communauté. » Report of the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO, Second Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, December 5, 1957, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, p. 287.