Music and Sound Design as Propaganda in Hell-Bent for Election

Though political television and film commercials may be thought of as a recent phenomenon, these have in fact existed for a number of years. Consider, for example, the animated two-reel film Hell-Bent for Election from 1944. Created by the left-leaning studio Industrial Film and Poster Service (later UPA) for the United Auto Workers union, the cartoon pushes for the re-election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt over Thomas Dewey. The film is a metaphor where the two candidates are represented by trains. Joe Worker represents the voter, who must let the “Win the War Special” (Roosevelt) through the station rather than the “Defeatist Limited,” despite the obstacles put in Joe’s way. As with many propagandistic and political messages, the symbolism is not subtle, and the cartoon certainly gets the message across. This chapter examines how Earl Robinson’s music, along with the lyrics of Yip Harburg, works with the other aspects of the film to accomplish the mission of getting out the vote. Robinson, a classically trained composer who is best known for his pro-labor songs, uses a variety of musical styles to convey the message in the animated film, from classical modernist to popular song quotation to agitprop mass song, each of which is designed to appeal to the primary audience: the working class and union members.

The Left and the Class Struggle

Both Toni Gilpin's The Long Deep Grudge and Michael Goldfield's The Southern Key offer ample evidence that the grand era of U.S. labor history scholarship is not yet past. The Long Deep Grudge is in equal parts labor history and family reminiscence as Gilpin seeks the fuller story of her father, who played a leadership role in the United Auto Workers union. The Southern Key is in many ways a study of a different variety, but very much of a similarly militant kind. Goldfield, a labor activist veteran himself, draws the big picture of what he sees as the central failure of the U.S. left: the failure to organize the South.

Pathways to precarity: Work, financial insecurity and wage dependency among Australia’s retrenched auto workers

Precarious work research has increasingly understood that precarity is not limited to poor job quality. However, this idea has received insufficient attention among older workers whose careers have been erased by retrenchment. The sense in which retrenched workers’ lives are co-determined by the residual effects of previous long-term careers has been under-studied. Through a study of the closure of Australia’s automotive manufacturing industry, this article shows how workers’ life trajectories were differentiated by benefits accrued through their long careers, including union-negotiated redundancy pay and wealth accumulated in home ownership. Retrenched workers adopted different positions on a continuum of wage dependency and household-scale financial security which insulated some from the negative effects of precarious work and relegated others to a pathway of rising precarity. This latter pathway is likely to become more important among older workers due to the disappearance of large-scale manual employment in secure, well-paying jobs.

Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They Aren’t After You

Under orders from President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) tightened the regulatory screws on conservative broadcasters. The IRS launched the “Ideological Organizations Project” to challenge the tax-exempt status of conservative broadcasters and to stem the flow of donations. The FCC strengthened its “Fairness Doctrine” rules, which required radio stations to ensure politically balanced discussion of public policy and to give free response time to victims of personal attacks made on the air. The United Auto Workers financed the creation of an opposition research clearing house, Group Research Inc., that compiled dossiers of damaging information on conservative broadcasters and politicians. The White House also organized a front organization, the Citizens Committee for a Nuclear Test Ban, to gain free, pro-administration airtime from radio stations that aired conservative critiques of the proposed treaty.

The Struggle to Decommodify the Service Sector: The Canadian Auto Workers and the Casino Industry

Research objective: Through relatively higher unionization rates within the casino industry, casino employment provides a counterexample to the connection between low-skill service work and low wages. The existing literature, however, suggests that casino workers embrace a commodified vision of their labour. It is of interest to understand whether and how unions are successful in decommodifying both ideologically and materially, wage entitlements in this expanding industry as this is a main mechanism through which unions challenge income inequality. This article examines the Canadian Auto Workers’ (CAW) attempt to decommodify wages in the casino industry.Methodology: These findings are based on a case study of Casino Windsor, located in Windsor, Ontario—the automotive capital of Canada and the first city to host a resort casino outside of Atlantic City and Las Vegas. Ninety-one interviews were conducted with Windsor stakeholders (20), and automotive (43) and casino (28) workers. The local newspaper from 1994-2014 is also examined and descriptive statistics are utilized.Results: Casino workers initially did adopt a decommodified vision of wage entitlements; yet, due to political—the New Democratic Party of Ontario—and institutional—low sectoral union density—forces, casino workers during 2014-2015 interviews embrace aservice mindwhere wages are determined by a market-oriented human capital model.Conclusions: CAW union representatives and the casino membership now view the CAW’s attempt to bring anindustrial mindsetinto the casino as a mistake, naturalizing the link between decommodified wages in automotive manufacturing and the market-oriented wage entitlements of the service sector. This case study marks a critical lost opportunity by the CAW to decommodify wage entitlements in the casino industry and the broader service sector.

Merging Traffic

This chapter surveys the institutions and movements that brought together the city’s musical life with the aim of merging disparate styles, trends, and personnel. First comes the auto industry, based on archival sources from Ford and General Motors that show how the companies deployed music for worker morale and company promotion. The complementary work of labor follows, through the United Auto Workers’ songs. Next comes the counterculture’s musical moment in the age of the folk revival and the artist collectives of the 1950s–1960s. Motown offers a special case of African American entrepreneurial merging of musical talent and style. The chapter closes with a look at the media—radio and newspapers—with their influential role in bringing audiences together, through music, in a city known for segregation, oppressive policing, and occasional outbursts of violence.

Autoworkers and Their Unions

Since the introduction of “Fordism” in the early 1910s, which emphasized technological improvements and maximizing productive efficiency, US autoworkers have struggled with repetitive, exhausting, often dangerous jobs. Yet beginning with Ford’s Five Dollar Day, introduced in 1914, auto jobs have also provided higher pay than most other wage work, attracting hundreds of thousands of people, especially to Detroit, Michigan, through the 1920s, and again from World War II until the mid-1950s. Successful unionization campaigns by the United Auto Workers (UAW) in the 1930s and early 1940s resulted in contracts that guaranteed particular wage increases, reduced the power of foremen, and created a process for resolving workplace conflicts. In the late 1940s and early 1950s UAW president Walter Reuther negotiated generous medical benefits and pensions for autoworkers. The volatility of the auto industry, however, often brought layoffs that undermined economic security. By the 1950s overproduction and automation contributed heavily to instability for autoworkers. The UAW officially supported racial and gender equality, but realities in auto plants and the makeup of union leadership often belied those principles. Beginning in the 1970s US autoworkers faced disruptions caused by high oil prices, foreign competition, and outsourcing to Mexico. Contract concessions at unionized plants began in the late 1970s and continued into the 2000s. By the end of the 20th century, many American autoworkers did not belong to the UAW because they were employed by foreign automakers, who built factories in the United States and successfully opposed unionization. For good reason, autoworkers who survived the industry’s turbulence and were able to retire with guaranteed pensions and medical care look back fondly on all that they gained from working in the industry under UAW contracts. Countless others left auto work permanently and often reluctantly in periodic massive layoffs and the continuous loss of jobs from automation.

Imagining Racial Equality

Local 65 United Warehouse Workers Union (1933–1987), which became District 65 United Auto Workers, promoted photography with a camera club, and a member-edited newspaper New Voices, featuring photographs taken by members. This left-led, New York City distributive industry union began in 1933 on the Lower East Side, and it became the city’s second largest local. The union utilized photography to normalize the role of African American members within the union and to advance a civil rights and anti-racism agenda. This article includes photographs taken by member-photographers, and photo-reproductions of New Voices. New Voices’ photographs included African Americans in the everyday life of the union, challenged race-based labor segmentation, supported community struggles, and defied racial norms in midcentury America.