Knowledge Is Power: The Rise and Fall of the Libraries of the United Automobile Workers' Union

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 72
Author(s):  
Daniel
Keyword(s):  
United Automobile Workers

How to Build a Trade Union Oligarchy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Stephenson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Context ◽  
Free Communication ◽  
National Differences ◽  
United Automobile Workers ◽  
Occupational Communities

Trade unions are ostensibly democratic organizations, but they often fail to operate as democracies in practice. Most studies of Western trade union democracy have acknowledged that oligarchy is the norm among unions but have nonetheless examined exceptional democratic unions to understand how those unions defied the trend. My study inverts this approach and instead examines two known oligarchical unions, the Australian Workers Union (AWU) and the United Automobile Workers (UAW) in the United States. I argue that union oligarchy requires certain conditions to thrive. Both unions lacked democratic rules, close-knit occupational communities, local autonomy, rank-and-file decision making, internal opposition, equality between members and officials, and free communication, but these absences were expressed in different ways in each organization. Comparing a prominent US union with a prominent Australian union allows for assessment of the extent to which oligarchy was the result of national context. I argue that the experience of trade union oligarchy in the United States and Australia was more similar than different. National differences between the two countries were important, but they manifested primarily as different methods to achieve similar outcomes.

Rosie the Riveter Revisited

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Milkman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Automobile Industry ◽  
World War ◽  
Sexual Division ◽  
Sexual Division Of Labor ◽  
United Automobile Workers ◽  
Hiring Policies

This chapter examines the ways in which employers contributed to the historical formation of the sexual division of labor and to patterns of job segregation by gender. It begins with a discussion of the formation of the sexual division of labor in the automobile industry prior to World War II. It then considers the logic of Fordism and the lack of incentive to retain or hire women workers after the war, with particular emphasis on how hiring policies fostered the gender division of labor. It shows that labor unions, and more specifically the United Automobile Workers (UAW), collaborated with management in purging women from the auto industry, with the latter playing the far more powerful role owing to its preference for male workers.

The Racial Politics of Progressive Americanism: New Deal Liberalism and the Subordination of Black Workers in the UAW

2005 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Williams
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Foreign Country ◽  
General Motors ◽  
Black Workers ◽  
American Federation Of Labor ◽  
American Federation ◽  
Congress Of Industrial Organizations ◽  
Industrial Organizations ◽  
United Automobile Workers

In February 1937, members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) celebrated their pioneering victory over General Motors by waving American flags as they marched out of Fisher Body and paraded through the streets of Flint, Michigan. Later that year, as the UAW turned to organizing Ford's massive River Rouge plant, the Ford edition of the United Automobile Worker described the complex as a foreign country and called on workers to “win this for America” and “win the war for democracy in River Rouge!” When a successful strike finally led to union recognition and an NLRB election in 1941, the UAW urged Rouge workers to “keep faith with America” and its greatest leaders, Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, by voting for the inclusive unionism of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) over the un-American alternative of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

The Origins of the United Automobile Workers, 1933-1935

1958 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidney Fine
Keyword(s):  
Automobile Industry ◽  
International Union ◽  
United Automobile Workers

On August 26, 1935, delegates from sixty-five American Federationof Labor locals in the automobile industry gathered in Detroit to launch the International Union, United Automobile Workers of America. Although many of the delegates thought that the A.F. of L. had unnecessarily delayed the convocation of this convention, they were no doubt mindful of the fact that an international was being formed in an industry where only a little more than two years previously unionism had been conspicuous primarily because of its absence.

Comment on “The Racial Politics of Progressive Americanism: New Deal Liberalism and the Subordination of Black Workers in the UAW”

2005 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-104
Author(s):  
Rogers M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Racial Equality ◽  
Black Workers ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
United Automobile Workers ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Formal Equality ◽  
Charles Williams

My comments on Charles Williams' “Racial Politics of Progressive Americanism” can be brief, because it is an excellent essay and I could not agree more with its central argument. Williams demonstrates that, even though United Automobile Workers (UAW) leaders used the language of racial equality to support some civil rights advances, Walter Reuther and others also invoked a merely formal equality to deny power to blacks thought to be allied with Communists, and to sustain the support of anti-black workers. They pretended that African Americans were an ethnic group like those of many European-descended Americans, ignoring the enormous differences in the oppression black Americans had long experienced and continued to experience (and still experience). In these ways, an Americanist language, arguably a “liberal” language, of equal rights worked against the racial equality it purported to honor. On these points, I am fully persuaded.

Business, Anti-Communism, and the Welfare State, 1945–1958

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen Doody
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Unemployment Insurance ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Corporate Managers ◽  
Price Controls ◽  
United Automobile Workers ◽  
Modern Welfare State ◽  
The Government ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter focuses on the Detroit business community's opposition to the growth of the government. These men made little distinction between the New Deal, Socialism, and Communism. The former, they argued, would ultimately lead to the latter. As a result, Detroit businessmen during the late 1940s and 1950s carried out a campaign to check state power. They targeted labor, particularly the United Automobile Workers (UAW), in this fight because they saw the union as one of the greatest advocates of an expanded welfare state. Like other conservatives, these men were anti-Communists. Their hostility to Communism was inextricably linked to their perception that free enterprise, as they understood it, was threatened by an expanding welfare state. Corporate managers discussed such issues as social security, unemployment insurance, and peacetime price controls—all measures they saw as part of the “march toward socialism or collectivism” and that labor-liberals believed were key to creating a modern welfare state.

To Furnish a Workplace Free from Recognized Hazards: OSHA, State Occupational Safety and Health Agencies, and Fetal Protection Policies

1993 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-254
Author(s):  
Suzanne U. Samuels
Keyword(s):  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Occupational Safety And Health ◽  
Fetal Protection ◽  
Adequate Response ◽  
Safety And Health ◽  
United Automobile Workers ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Fertile Women

The U.S. Supreme Court's 1991 decision in United Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls capped a decade of adjudication of fetal protection policies under Title VII. In its decision, the Supreme Court barred the use of these policies, holding that the policies constituted unlawful gender discrimination. Prior to Johnson Controls, employers had justified these policies, which barred “fertile” women from certain workplaces, by contending that the workplace was not safe for women or their fetuses. Given this implicit disclosure by employers that their workplaces were unsafe, it is surprising that federal and state occupational safety and health agencies, charged with ensuring that employers furnish a workplace free from recognized hazards, did not play a larger role in the debate over these policies. This article examines the response of these agencies to the proliferation of fetal protection policies in the 1980s. It concludes that neither federal nor state occupational safety and health agencies crafted an adequate response to these policies during these years.

scholarly journals Building Union Power Across Borders: The Transnational Partnership Initiative of IG Metall and the UAW

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Fichter
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
Power Resources ◽  
United Automobile Workers ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Preparation Phase ◽  
Transnational Strategy ◽  
Transnational Solidarity ◽  
Made In

This is a case study of how the transnational cooperation between two unions – IG Metall in Germany and the United Automobile Workers (UAW) in the United States – was put on a new trajectory. It is a template for the challenges unions face in adapting their nationally oriented self-interest toward building transnational solidarity and being able to leverage global corporate power in defence of workers’ interests across borders. Using the power resources approach, it highlights the unions’ transnational strategy built on mobilising associational and institutional resources. Understanding their make-up and utilisation became crucial in the process as limits to institutional power without involvement and mobilisation on the ground became evident. The case study focuses on the initiation and preparation phase of a more comprehensive organisational cooperation, culminating in a formal agreement to establish a Transnational Partnership Initiative (TPI) in 2015. While no organising gains were made in this phase – indeed, only losses – it was crucial for building trust and mutual understanding, as well as for actively promoting a broadly based anchoring of the TPI in terms of policy in both unions. The case study’s conclusions are generally positive on this count; yet they are preliminary as the overall project is a work-in-progress and its basis of support beyond the two unions (societal power) is still untested.

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