Solidarity and the Legacy of Exclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
David M. Struthers
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Southern California ◽  
The State ◽  
Agricultural Workers ◽  
American Federation Of Labor ◽  
Shared Resources ◽  
American Federation

This chapter begins with an overview of the Anti-Asian premise of the labor movement in California during its foundation in the 1880s and carried forward into the twentieth century in trade-union organizing in the state. The chapter then examines two important departures from racist exclusionary organizing in Southern California in 1903. In Los Angeles Mexican laborers formed the Unión Federal Mexicana. In Oxnard, Japanese and Mexican agricultural workers formed the Japanese Mexican Labor Association (JMLA). Anglo socialist members of Los Angeles’s Council of Labor pushed Los Angeles’s trade union body to support both unions with financial and organizing resources. Laborers in Los Angeles and Oxnard also shared resources, but the national American Federation of Labor (AFL) ultimately rejected Japanese membership.

Organizing Mobile workers

2019 ◽  
pp. 106-126
Author(s):  
David M. Struthers
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
The State ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
American Federation Of Labor ◽  
Top Down ◽  
American Federation ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
The World

In 1909 the California State Federation of Labor (CSFL) voted to direct resources toward organizing migrant workers within a new branch of American Federation of Labor (AFL) affiliated United Laborers locals throughout the state. These locals gave form to a largely top-down attempt by the Anglo-dominated trade union to organize nonwhite unskilled laborers. This effort placed the AFL in the same organizing terrain as the expanding Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Competition between the unions, internal conflicts within the AFL, and the structural difficulties of organizing mobile workers at temporary jobsites all contributed to the CSFL withdrawing support for the United Laborers in 1912 and all of the United Laborers locals shuttering by 1913.

Workers in Transition

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-75
Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Organization ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Working Class ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
American Federation Of Labor ◽  
Labor Laws ◽  
American Federation ◽  
The U.S

This chapter argues that change in the U.S. labor movement from American Federation of Labor (AFL) craft unionism to Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) industrial unionism largely lay behind Jersey City’s opposition to the CIO in 1937, not just Mayor Hague’s supposed antilabor inclinations. Hague aligned with AFL unions, but Depression and New Deal labor laws weakened them, while boosting CIO industrial unionism and its appeal to suffering Jersey manufacturing workers, including women and African Americans. Moreover, the CIO’s class-conscious culture of “working-class Americanism” clashed with Hague’s ethnicity-based rhetoric of “Patriotic Americanism.” Meanwhile, interwar anticommunism intensified Jersey City’s opposition to CIO organizers, who themselves drew on Popular Front rhetoric of antifascism to oppose “dictatorial” regimes like Hague’s. This polarization complicated Jersey City’s reception of the CIO.

Russian Artists in the United States

Experiment ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-259
Author(s):  
Oleg Minin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Southern California ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Artistic Legacy

Charting Nicholas Remisoff’s artistic legacy during his California period, this essay explores his contributions to the cultural landscape of the state and emphasizes his work on live stage productions in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the early 1930s and 1940s. Delineating the critical reception of Remisoff’s work in opera, ballet and theatre in these cities, this essay also highlights the artist’s interactions and key collaborations with other Russian and European émigré artists and reflects on the nature of Remisoff’s particular affinity with Southern California.

Racial Segregation and the San Francisco Musicians' Union, 1923–60

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
LETA E. MILLER
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
Black Musicians ◽  
American Federation ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
The Us ◽  
Class Status

The practice of segregated union locals, common in the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) during the first half of the twentieth century, led to racial confrontation in San Francisco. In 1934, black Local 648 sued its much larger counterpart, Local 6, which had attempted to control all musical employment in the Bay Area. Though Local 648 eventually withdrew its suit, its charter was revoked and black musicians were placed in “subsidiary” status. A new “colored local” (669) was chartered in 1946 and worked alongside Local 6 until the state forced amalgamation in 1960. Many other segregated locals did not merge until the late 1960s or early 1970s.The saga of Locals 6, 648, and 669 brings into focus the complex social and economic forces buffeting the working musician in the early twentieth century. Racialist attitudes in the US labor movement, mirrored in the musicians' union, forced blacks to organize separately and accept lower wages in order to secure employment. The AFM, for its part, was constrained by its dedication to local autonomy. Black union musicians were themselves divided—torn between outrage at their second-class status and the apparent benefits of working for change from within the organization.

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