Workers in Transition

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.

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 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 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 ◽

The Educational Front

Bad Faith ◽

10.5422/fordham/9780823281169.003.0007 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 108-128

Author(s):

Andrew Feffer

Keyword(s):

Educational Reform ◽

Community Mobilization ◽

Mass Action ◽

Popular Front ◽

Social Democrats ◽

Teachers Union ◽

American Federation ◽

Union Leaders ◽

This chapter recounts the history of conflicts between communist teachers and liberal educators, inside the teachers union and in the educational reform movement generally. It focuses on communist teacher-activists Alice Citron, Isidor Begun, and Williana Burroughs, who came into conflict with liberal union leaders over their emphases on the use of “mass action” and community mobilization to achieve higher salaries, better schools, and racial equality, as well as to promote the Popular Front against fascism. In reaction to their confrontational activism, perceived as a challenge to his authority, Linville and other liberals and social democrats tried once more to oust the communist “factions” from the union in 1935, supported by liberals, social democrats, and conservatives in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Failing, the liberals walked out of Local 5 to form an explicitly anti-communist organization, the Teachers Guild.

Solidarity and the Legacy of Exclusion

The World in a City ◽

10.5622/illinois/9780252042478.003.0004 ◽

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 ◽

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.

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

Studies in American Political Development ◽

10.1017/s0898588x05000040 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 19 (1) ◽

pp. 75-97 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Charles Williams

Keyword(s):

New Deal ◽

Racial Politics ◽

Foreign Country ◽

General Motors ◽

Black Workers ◽

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 Other New Deal and Labor: The Regulatory State and the Unions, 1933–1940

Journal of Policy History ◽

10.1353/jph.2001.0010 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 367-390 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Daniel Nelson

Keyword(s):

New Deal ◽

Large Scale ◽

The Other ◽

Regulatory State ◽

Relevant Alternative ◽

Skilled Workers ◽

American Federation

At the end of Turbulent Years, his classic study of the labor upheavals of the 1930s, Irving Bernstein unexpectedly announces that the American Federation of Labor “gained a decisive and permanent victory.” This is a remarkable admission. Bernstein had devoted the bulk of his study to the failures of the AFL and the emergence of a more relevant alternative, the CIO. Like most authors, he associated the turbulence of the 1930s with the rise of industrial unionism, which addressed the apparent deficiencies of the AFL, notably its preoccupation with skilled workers and neglect of large-scale manufacturing. Still, the AFL grew more rapidly. Bernstein tries to explain: the triumph of the AFL “was hidden by the mystique of power [John L] Lewis had imparted to the CIO, by the highly publicized contemporary successes of SWOC…and UAW…and the deliberate falsification of membership records.” While these factors may account for the misleading imagery of the CIO, they do not explain the behavior of millions of workers who opted for AFL organizations. Clearly other forces were at work.