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The 1987-88 strike at International Paper's Androscoggin Mill in Jay, Maine severed a longstanding 'social contract' where workers and community residents tolerated the mill's air and water pollution in return for good-paying jobs and a robust local economy. This article traces the development of environmental consciousness among union workers and community residents during the strike and their efforts to protect the environment from the pollution of the mill. The union publicized environmental problems at the mill and the state's failures to regulate pollution when the strike began. After a series of environmental accidents during the strike, including a massive chlorine dioxide gas leak that threatened the safety of the town, Jay residents formed a community environmental organization and pressured the company and the state to close the mill. The environment remained an important issue after the strike, as labor and environmental activists joined forces to uphold a municipal ordinance that allowed the town to enforce state and federal environmental laws. This article studies how labor and environmental politics converged on a local level and also explores the broader themes of the conflict between job prosperity and environmental protection in industrial communities, labor and environmental movement alliances, and the current issues surrounding the 'green economy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 1987, managers at International Paper Company (IP) permanently replaced more than 2,200 union members who had gone on strike after resisting the firm's demands for extensive concessions. Previous accounts of this dispute, which lasted until October 1988, have focused on Jay, Maine, where around half the strikers were located. This study gives a fuller history, detailing the involvement of strikers in De Pere, Wisconsin and Lock Haven, Pennsylvania as well. In addition, it highlights the important part played by 1,200 IP workers in Mobile, Alabama. In March 1987, IP executives locked out the Mobile workers, precipitating the entire conflict between the two sides. Blending oral history interviews with unprocessed archival material and local newspaper accounts, Minchin shows that the company's use of permanent replacements tipped the balance in its favor, despite the union's efforts to launch a corporate campaign against IP. Although the strikers held firm, they had little bargaining power once they had been replaced. The dispute graphically highlights how difficult it is for unions to win strikes in the contemporary US, confirming union leaders’ complaints that the hiring of permanent strike replacements has left them with an ‘empty gun.’ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opening of new archival sources often turns up surprising and interesting information. For example, one of political activist Lillian Hellman's biographers discovered in intellectual Joseph L. Rauh Papers statements by Hellman confirming her Communist Party membership in the late 1930's, an affiliation previously vigorously denied in some circles although suspected in others. Rauh, a leading civil liberties lawyer, had been Hellman's counsel when she prepared for a confrontation with the United States Congress House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1952. Hellman was prepared to testify regarding her own Communist activity but not to name others. Rauh's files contain drafts of a statement regarding her Communist affiliation that Hellman would give should HUAC agree to her condition. Joseph Rauh handled many important internal security cases in the late 1940's and 1950's, and historians will find much of interest in his legal files on his successful defense of playwright Arthur Miller, his removal of the Independent Socialist League from the Attorney General's list of subversive organizations, and his files on the hotly debated lawyer William Remington prejury case. The Ludwig Donath file in the Rauh Papers is an example of chance discovery of an unknown episode in the history of Hollywood Communism and the show business blacklist.

The Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress seeks to preserve personal papers and organizational records that document the course of America's national experience. Its more than 10,000 collections with more than 40,000,000 manuscript items touch upon every aspect of American history and culture. Collections containing labor-related material are considerable and constitute a major archive for labor history research. Some of the organizational records in the library includes the American Federation of Labor Letterbooks, American Friends Service Committee Work Camp Diary, Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Association of Railway Postal Clerks, National Child Labor Committee, National Consumers League, National Women's Trade Union League of America, and People's Legislative Service. Some of the personal papers included in the library are of Henry J. Allen, former governor of Kansas, Otto S. Beyer, a consulting engineer and labor-management relations specialist, Warren K. Billings, a labor militant, William E. Borah, a former U.S. Senator from Idaho, and Andrew Carnegie, a labor activist in the late 19th century.

The Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs, Walter P. Reuther Library at the Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, was established in 1960 to collect and preserve the records of the American labor movement, with special emphasis upon industrial unionism and related social, economic and political reform movements in the U.S., especially those relating to workers. Later, in 1970, the scope of the Archives was expanded to include urbanization, especially relating to Detroit and southeastern Michigan. The majority of the archival collections relate to the period after 1920, though some collections like those of the Industrial Workers of the World, the American Federation of Teachers, and the personal papers of labor leaders date back to the turn of the century. Archives. From its beginning in 1960, the Archives has adopted a vertical collecting policy for union records. This vertical collecting policy differs sharply from the acquisitions policy of many archives that concentrate almost solely upon key offices of an international union and the personal papers of top union leadership.

The Martin P. Catherwood Library at the Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, is the largest academic collection on labor and industrial relations in the United States. The 813 manuscript accessions and 230,833 documentary items held by its Labor-Management Documentation Center, make the Catherwood Library an especially rich source for the study of labor history. The Library of the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations was founded in 1945. It was renamed in 1971 to honor Martin P. Catherwood, second Dean of the School, who subsequently served as New York State Industrial Commissioner. Although its primary purpose has always been to support the instructional, research, and extension functions of the academic unit of which it is a part, the Catherwood Library has, as well, developed a world- wide reputation for the quality of its holdings in the areas of collective bargaining, labor law, labor union administration, labor economics, income security, human resources, personnel administration, and, of course, labor history. The book, periodical, and government document collections housed in the Catherwood's open stacks include convention proceedings, officers' reports, and journals for every major and most minor 20th century labor unions.

The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America in Cambridge, Massachusetts was founded in 1943 when Radcliffe College, Cambridge, accepted the Woman's Rights Collection (WRC) . The WRC documents several woman's suffrage organizations and includes the papers of Maud Wood Park and other women active in the women rights movement. But it does not end with 1920, the year the federal suffrage amendment was ratified, and it includes the library's first labor collection, papers of Frances Perkins, U.S. Secretary of Labor, 1933-45, and the first woman in the Cabinet. Thus despite the emphasis on suffrage and women's political and legal rights, labor issues, from the beginning have been an integral part of the Schlesinger Library. At about the time the WRC arrived at Radcliffe, president Wilbur K. Jordan and Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, of the Harvard University's history department decided to make it the centerpiece of a growing research library on women, rather than a static memorial to the suffrage movement. Soon after, in December 1945, another major labor collection arrived, the papers of Leonora O'Reilly. O'Reilly's papers make up one major series in the micropublication, "The Papers of the Women's Trade Union League and Its Principal Leaders," a project sponsored by the Schlesinger Library, edited by Edward T. James, and published by Research Publications Inc. in 1981.

While T.H. Marshall's famous three-tiered general analysis of citizenship stands as a landmark development, no one has examined how during the Progressive Era (1890–1920) and thereafter a female group of thinkers and labor leaders in the United States redefined the previously restricted definition of citizenship to produce an ameliorative response to the new trends of urbanization, industrialization, and immigration. Reformers such as Florence Kelley and Jane Addams established the principles of industrial citizenship in various publications. Kelley then started a movement called social justice feminism to effectuate this new theory. Social justice feminists' goal of a gender-specific agenda to provide an entering wedge for the eventual inclusion of all workers under the state's protection originally centered on court action and legislation. Then, labor leader Rose Schneiderman brought the fight of industrial citizenship in the United States to female workers even extending the concept to African-American female laundry workers from 1925 to 1933. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Labor History Resources in the University of Iowa Libraries (UIL), the State Historical Society of Iowa/Iowa City (SHSI), and the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library (HHPL), all located within 12 miles of one another in east central Iowa, have long been known as a major repository of source materials concerning the politics of American agriculture, Iowa history, and the Hoover Presidency and Commerce Secretariat. UIL sources mentioned here. Pertinent oral history collections at UIL are the Communications Workers of America-University of Iowa Oral History Project, and the Quad Cities Oral History Project, along with a 1936 typescript history of the area's labor and radical movements by R.F. McNabney. The SHSI holds a magnificent and in some ways unparalleled collection which, due to staff shortages in recent years, remains largely unprocessed and therefore somewhat difficult to access. The HHPL, opened to scholars in 1966, holds the Hoover papers, totaling some 2450 linear feet, and the papers of more than 100 of Hoover's associates and contemporaries, totaling over 2200 linear feet.

The American labor movement has been heavily Catholic for more than a century, both in its rank and file composition and top leadership. From its inception in 1948 the Department of Archives and Manuscripts at the Catholic University of America, Washington D.C., has therefore devoted a substantial portion of its holdings to collections in the field of American labor history. Many of these collections were acquired with the help of clerical faculty who had themselves been important figures in early 20th century social reform. The records of the National Conference of Catholic Charities, the Catholic Interracial Council of New York, and the National Council of Catholic Women/National Council of Catholic Men contain much material on Church welfare work, Catholic social programs, and efforts to influence government social and economic policy. The National Catholic War Council undertook extensive social surveys among the Catholic urban population with particular emphasis on the conditions of women and child laborers, extent of immigrant citizenship and health conditions at home and in the armed service camps. The John Brophy papers is the most consistently useful of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) holdings. The Philip Murray Collection covers the period 1943 to 1952 when Murray was simultaneously president of the CIO and United Steelworkers of America.

This article surveys the holdings gathered on social and cultural movements at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace in the U.S. The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was founded at Stanford University by Herbert Hoover in 1919 to collect materials documenting the causes and consequences of World War I. The Hoover Institution is available without charge to all individuals regardless of citizenship, residence, academic affiliation, or lack thereof. Socialist activities during World War I are illuminated by the microfilm collection (10 reels) assembled by Frank L. Grubbs, Jr., as research material for his book "The Struggle for Labor Loyalty." Grubbs' topic was the competition between the pro-war American Alliance for Labor and Democracy and the anti-war People's Council of America, both founded in 1917. The Archives' holdings on the Communist Party, U.S., are far more extensive, and, without question, the single richest source is the Jay Lovestone Papers (330 linear feet). Lovestone a founding member of the party in 1919, played a central role in its internal factional wars of the 1920s, became its general secretary in 1927, and was expelled together with a core of followers in 1929 at the insistence of Communist International headquarters in Moscow.

"We are going to have to find some way to secure the approval of organized labor," warned Aubrey Williams, as he and Harry Hopkins began planning a work relief program in October, 1933. As the New Deal struggled to meet the winter's unemployment crisis, the two social workers knew they had to placate the American Federation of Labor, which had historically opposed government !made jobs. As the nation's largest single employer during the winter of 1933-34, the Civil Works Administration created jobs for four million Americans on "economically and socially desirable" public projects. Although half the applicants would come from relief rolls, the remainder would be among the self-sustaining unemployed, who could avoid a demeaning investigation and simply register at the local United States Employment Office. By reaching out to skilled artisans and even white collar workers and professionals, many out of work for the first time and too proud to accept charity, Hopkins intended to preserve skills and boost morale.

Negotiations over wages have always been a central part of industrial relations in capitalist economies. The unstable value of money in the 19th and 20th centuries has made these negotiations both crucial and complex. Linking contemporary understandings of monetary values to wage bargaining provides an important historical background for a better understanding of real wage developments and the agency of workers. Adopting a comparative perspective, this paper discusses how managers and workers dealt with changing monetary values in Germany and the United States from the 1870s to the immediate aftermath of the First World War. The paper also discusses the extent to which actors understood the instability of their respective currencies' purchasing power and whether their perceptions changed over time. The paper reveals that negotiations were never exclusively shaped and guided by concepts such as inflation or the 'cost of living' in both countries but that the importance of the concepts changed with the level of price fluctuations and institutional setting. Indices could achieve a dominant role only in exceptional circumstances due to their artificial and contestable nature, their neglect of the complexity of workers' job contexts and living environments, and their normative implications concerning wage demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents several news related to various universities in the U.S. Indiana University of Pennsylvania has acquired the United Mine Workers of America District 2 Collection. The collection consists of almost 400 boxes and includes papers associated with the presidencies of John Brophy and James Mark and executive files including presidential correspondence, injunctions and other documents. The Knight Library at the University of Oregon has opened the Records of the International Woodworkers of America to researchers. The records, which span from 1936 to 1987 and till nearly 600 linear feet, consist primarily of correspondence, minutes, proceedings, negotiation files, expired contracts, legal and financial documents and officer and departmental records. In addition to the union's basic activities, such as organizing, negotiations, litigation, and strikes, the collection documents the conflict between the red bloc and white bloc forces in the union during the 1940s and 1950s. Papers from the presidency of Keith Johnson deal with Canadian softwood lumber imports, national health insurance, labor law reform, affirmative action, occupational safety and health and other issues.

This paper analyzes simultaneous strikes during the first half of the 20th century in North America. The transformation of production in copper, lead, zinc, and silver mining districts determined the formation of a working class that operated between Mexico and the United States. Therefore, the labor conflicts combined market circumstances and management-imposed homologation of work structures across firm divisions with the international coordination of miners. The paper describes the emergence, growth, and demise of a regional industrial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article lists the labor history holdings contained in the Archives and Manuscripts Department of the Chicago Historical Society. Established in 1856, the city's oldest cultural institution, the Chicago Historical Society, collects, preserves, and interprets the history of Chicago and selected aspects of American history through exhibitions, research collections, educational programs, and publications. Some 200,000 people view the Society's exhibitions and attend its programs annually, 10000 more use its library and various archival research collections. The Archives and Manuscripts Department holds about 14,000 linear feet of records on the city's history from its earliest days to the present, along with selected materials on the American Civil War, the American Revolution, Illinois prior to the Civil War, and other aspects of American history. Materials of and about labor unions and working people are an important segment of the Society's holdings and an active area of collecting efforts. Labor history holdings include large archival collections from major American trade unions along with scattered individual items and small collections, the great majority of them emanating from the Chicago area.

The article presents information about the Urban Archives Center at California State University at Northridge, California. The Center was established in 1979 through the efforts of university faculty and concerned community organizations and leaders. The primary purpose of the Center has been to collect the historically significant records of voluntary associations and prominent citizens who have directed growth in Los Angeles County and influenced government and public thinking since the beginning of the 20th century. Major subject areas developed during the Center's first 10 years of operation include, trade, tourism, and urban development; education; minority and ethnic organizations; politics; social services; women of Los Angeles; and recreation, sports and leisure studies. The center sent out 800 questionnaires inquiring about materials being stored in union halls and administrative offices. The responses revealed the existence of a wealth of untapped historical documents as well as the willingness of many labor organizations to participate in an archival program.

The labor history resources at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin are, in part, the result of the first systematic attempt to document the rise of working-class movements and trade unionism in the U.S. In the early 1890s, when Richard T. Ely joined the University of Wisconsin faculty in Madison, Wisconsin, the Society began assisting him in gathering source material for the study of the labor movement. When, in 1904, Ely formed the American Bureau of Industrial Research and brought John R. Commons to Madison, the Society began collecting labor material on a systematic basis. From the 1890s to the present, those collecting for the Society have had a very broad definition of the labor movement, including not only trade unions but also anarchism, communism, cooperation, socialism, utopianism, and other working-class movements. Society research collections are divided functionally into three major areas, Library, including newspapers, pamphlets, books; Archives, including organizational records, personal papers, and Wisconsin governmental records; and Visual and Sound Archives, including photographs, posters and other graphics.

The Ohio Historical Society (OHS) began the Ohio Labor History Project in 1975 to locate, inventory, acquire, preserve, and provide access to labor union records and personal papers of Ohio labor leaders and to conduct oral history interviews. Initial funding came from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ohio American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the Labor Education Research Services of the Ohio State University at Columbus and OHS. Since 1979 the Society's manuscripts department, through continuing support from the Ohio General Assembly, has expanded the collections and conducted extensive research into the history of Ohio labor. The majority of collections at OHS are of local unions in the central Ohio area, but district and regional headquarters for many internationals are located in Columbus and larger central labor bodies also are included. The Ohio AFL-CIO Records for the years 1922-1984 cover nearly all aspects of organized labor in the state, including material on the important defeat of the right-to-work campaign in 1958. The Columbus-Franklin County AFL-CIO, Newark Area AFL-CIO Council, and the Columbus-Franklin County Building and Construction Trades Council records also are at OHS.

The article presents information about the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), which has, in the past two years, significantly added to already existing archival collections with the addition of several important groups of labor-related materials. In 1986 due to the expansion of its present office structure and the creation of an in-house computer center, the Rochester and Pittsburgh (R&P) Coal Co. donated many of its corporate archives to IUP. This collection, consisting of 420 linear feet, constitutes one of the most complete groups of coal company records in the East. Probably the most significant group of papers consists of the presidential files of R&P and of its several predecessor companies. Lucius Waterman Robinson left papers rich in labor history and the industrial heritage of Western Pennsylvania. B.M. Clark and his son, Heath S. Clark, both served as president during periods of industrial expansion and labor-management strife, and these are reflected in their surviving correspondence. The R&P collection also contains a unique group of early financial ledgers which document the founding of the company's 17 mining towns, beginning with the parent company's incorporation in 1881.

The article presents information about the Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and its labor history resources. Rutgers University was founded in 1766 and has been in the process of building library collections for over two centuries, however, the concept of building manuscript and archival holdings in an organized fashion dates back less than 50 years. Rutgers' Special Collections and Archives now includes approximately 3000 manuscript collections and the largest and most comprehensive collection of New Jersey books, pamphlets, newspapers, maps, broadsides, and pictorial materials. Although the major focus of the collection has been New Jersey and its history, significant 20th century holdings have been developed in such areas as the consumer movement, social welfare policy, and women's history, all areas that have collections relating to labor history. Also at Rutgers are the papers of over 20 New Jersey politicians who have served in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, dating from William Paterson's term in the Senate to former Congressman/now Governor James J. Florio.

In this paper, we put forward a theoretical framework for understanding a positive relationship between labor laws and innovation and rigorously test it against both historical and empirical data. We show how several periods in the economic history of the United States - like the increase in slave-field hand productivity in cotton picking in the Antebellum South, the transition in the North from artisanal shops to nonmechanized factories, the increase in productivity in mechanized textile factories in the Northeast in the late Antebellum period, and the increase in productivity in sharecropping after the Civil War - can be understood, at least partially, through our theoretical framework. To build further support for the framework, we empirically analyze how change in labor laws during the early twentieth century affected patent issuance by state. And we also look at how changes in worker power, as proxied by strike activity, affected patent issuance by industry between the early twentieth century and 1980. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role that organized labor played in the landmark presidential election of 2008. In particular, it explores the work of the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO), which ran its biggest ever election campaign in 2008, spending upwards of $250 million. While there is a vibrant emerging literature on the election, particularly from political scientists and former reporters, labor’s role in the story has been largely overlooked. Drawing on new parts of the AFL–CIO’s papers, as well as interviews with key staffers and federation leaders, this article highlights the important – and overlooked – role that labor played in putting Barack Obama into the White House. Especially important were its extensive efforts to educate – and pressure – white members, many of whom had backed other candidates during the Democratic primaries, to support Obama. Indeed, theWashington Postasserted that union members played a ‘pivotal role’ in Obama’s victory, especially in terms of delivering the white vote. It was a conclusion largely supported by exit polls, which showed that white union members were much more likely to support Obama than whites who were not in unions. The article highlights that despite the decline in union density – by this time only about 12% of American workers belonged to unions, compared to 35% in the 1950s – the labor movement retained considerable political influence, chiefly because of reforms carried out by AFL–CIO President John J. Sweeney. While Obama was unable to fulfill many of the expectations generated by his campaign, the story of labor and the 2008 election is an important one in its own right, showing that contemporary labor could still be a powerful and constructive force. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The establishment of archival institutions whose primary objective is to collect and preserve the records of labor unions, labor organizations and the personal papers of labor leaders and workers is a relatively recent development in the U.S. and Canada. The National Archives and Record Administration established in 1934 has extensive public records relating to government and labor, as do a number of state archival programs. However, for the most part, up to 1950, collections relating to the labor movement were not given priority by the major archival institutions which concentrated their collecting priorities on the "white male elite" in the U.S. The 1960s witnessed a change in this emphasis, resulting in the establishment of new archival programs devoted to specialized subject areas such as immigration, social welfare, women, minorities, native American Indians, and urban America. Several international unions have established archival programs to preserve their own records, rather than placing them in an archival institution. In addition to new labor archives programs, existing archives have expanded their labor holdings since 1982.

The article focuses on the battle between the trade unions and the Knights of Labor during 1881-1896 with the emphasis on carpenters. The fifteen years of strife in the Washington labor movement arose not over the broader concepts of wage and hour goals versus cooperativism, but over the more immediate problem of a dues hike. Personal antagonisms between the local rank and file, as well as hatred toward the BCJA Secretary, accentuated the problem. The experiences of the Washington carpenters offers an insight into the workings of the Knights-trade union conflict on one local level. Washington carpenters split in 1886 over an internal Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (BCJA) dispute concerning the scale of the benefit system. Yet, whether Washington carpenters chose to stay in the BCJA or to join the Knights, they remained trade unionists devoted to trade union goals and tactics. Personal antagonisms arising out of the split made later cooperation difficult. Although on the national level, the BCJA was one of the most successful of the AFL unions, the Washington split prohibited the Brotherhood from controlling the carpentry trade in the nation's capital for over a decade.

Reports on developments about labor in the United States as of spring of 1995. Includes the 35th Western History Association Conference from October 11-14, 1995 in Denver, Colorado; Awarding of the Barbara Mayer Wertheimer Prize by the New York Labor History Association; Series of prizes to be awarded by the Western History Association.

The article reports on literature and several activities related to labor history which took place in the U.S. in 1992 and 1993. The Kansas City Labor History Tour was researched, and presented in October 1992, by the Kansas City Labor History Workshop, a group of union members and scholars working to retrieve the area's labor history. The 15th annual North American Labor History Conference will be held at Detroit's Wayne State University on October 14-16, 1993. Its theme will be "Labor, Citizenship, and the State." The 8th biennial Southern Labor Studies Conference will be held from October 14-17, 1993 in Birmingham, Alabama. The conference theme will be Race and Culture. One of the initial activities of the newly created Center for Labor Studies at the University of Washington is a series of working papers in Comparative Labor History. The Minnesota Historical Society's Publication and Research Division each year makes available grants of up to $5000 to support original research and interpretive writing on the history of Minnesota by academicians, independent scholars and professional and nonprofessional writers.

This article assesses the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) during the presidency of John J. Sweeney, which lasted from 1995 until 2009. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including press accounts and the AFL-CIO's own papers, it provides one of the first scholarly assessments of the entire Sweeney presidency. Sweeney won office in the first contested election in the AFL-CIO's history, and he came into power promising to revitalize the Federation, which is the largest labor federation in the Western world. Under Sweeney, the AFL-CIO invested an unprecedented amount of resources into both organizing and political mobilization, two key areas. In the early years of his presidency, Sweeney oversaw some important gains, particularly in the organizing arena, but the 2000 presidential election proved to be a turning point. After 2000, Sweeney's reforms were undermined primarily by external factors, particularly mounting corporate opposition, deindustrialization, and a hostile political climate, although internal resistance and division also played a role. As a result, a major campaign to secure labor law reform fell short, and union density continued to decline, yet the rate of decline was slower than it had been in the 1980s and early 1990s. Overall, although the results of Sweeney’s efforts were mixed, the important role that the AFL-CIO played in electing Barack Obama partly justified Sweeney’s emphasis on political mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the history of southern teacher association mergers during the Civil Rights Movement. Desegregated teacher associations promised opportunity for black educators during the transformation of public schools in the 1960s and 1970s. Southern black educators at the moment of desegregation controlled the mergers of their own associations and carried forth a civil rights agenda that protected the gains of the movement and the integrity of their professional labor. Threatened with widespread unemployment and the perils of working under white school officials committed to segregation, black educators defended their right to teach in a newly desegregated and volatile work environment. White teacher associations responded by pursuing a 'right to work' in desegregated schools that built upon the rhetoric of conservative and antiunion ideology. The perennial yet evolving tensions that underpinned the merger highlights the limitations of the Civil Rights Movement, which promised opportunity yet ironically put forth new forms of resistance that deprived black teachers of the equity they sought through desegregation. The conflict inherent to the merger of education associations provides a nuanced perspective by which to understand desegregation as it precipitated fractures and tensions still evident in the teaching profession today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professor James F. Willard, head of the Dept. of History from 1907 to 1935 and history professor Frederick L. Paxson at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, devoted much of their time to collecting manuscripts throughout the state which led the foundation of the Western Historical Collections (WHC) at the University. During World War I, Willard received the first financial support specifically for historical records development. This period was the official beginning of WHC. With the decline during the 1920s of the West's hardrock mining industry, collecting of materials from the fading bonanza towns resulted in major groups of records being found. The University Library accepted complete responsibility for the development of the Western Historical Collections in 1959, and with this change, a full-time, permanent, and qualified staff was hired. In 1964, the curator, John A. Brennan, a history professor, began to change the direction of acquisition from frontier and pioneer era material to 20th century manuscripts concerning political, social, and economical history emphasizing labor, politics, women, and non-profit organizations.

In November 1966, at the Southern Historical Association (SHA) convention in Memphis, Tennessee, some 20 participants organized the Association of the Southern Labor Historians whose purpose was to promote the Southern labor history by encouraging the collection of labor records in various states and tile presentation of scholarly labor papers at annual meetings concurrent with SHA. The author and his friends inquired that no university in the Southwest was soliciting labor records. Professor Dick Shuttee, a labor economist at the University of Texas, Arlington, (UTA) was quite enthusiastic about the idea of an archives. With the permission of the History Department of UTA, the author and his colleagues started the Archives Project with a half-summer salary. About three dozen Texas labor newspapers and newsletters have been collected or have been purchased from other archives' microfilmed holdings. The Texas Labor Archives of UTA is currently the only depository in the Southwest that actively seeks union records.

The article presents information about the George Meany Memorial Archives, for which a new building was dedicated on the campus of the George Meany Center for Labor Studies in Silver Spring, Maryland, ending the formative years of the Archives and creating a national center for the study of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). The Meany Archives serves as the official archives of the AFL-CIO and has defined as its collecting scope the records of the federation and its predecessor organizations, the constitutional trade and industrial departments, affiliated institutes and selected personal papers of AFL-CIO officers and staff. It is the plan of the Archives to eventually become a national clearing house for information about labor-related archival collections through participation in the Chadwick-Healey Inc. micropublication "The National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the United States" and through cooperation with the "Labor Archives Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists."

Renowned labor activist and socialist Eugene V. Debs was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he resided throughout his life except for two periods when he was incarcerated for his labor and antiwar activities. After his death, Marguerite Debs Cooper, the sole surviving family member left in Terre Haute came into possession of Eugene's and her father's private papers, including family and other correspondence. In 1962 the Eugene V. Debs Foundation had been founded with the primary goals of historic preservation of the Debs Home and its utilization as a museum open to the public. Many charter members of the Foundation were professors at Indiana State University at Terre Haute, whose campus now surrounds the Debs Home. Having faculty as members of the Foundation helped ensure from the start close and productive ties with Cunningham Memorial Library, where the Debs Collection is now located in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. The initial gift establishing the Debs Collection contained 3800 letters, 6000 speeches, 220 telegrams, 170 typescripts, 60 manuscripts, and 300 other items, including campaign memorabilia and photographs. A gift of particular significance came to the Collection through the efforts of J. Robert Constantine, a member of the university's Department of History, who for many years was Secretary of the Debs Foundation and was instrumental in the inception of the Debs Collection.

This article describes the basic parameters of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s surveillance system, outline the Bureau's filing system, and discuss the procedures for obtaining files. The basic source for this article is the case file that the FBI developed during its surveillance of the Farm Equipment Workers from 1941 to 1955. The Farm Equipment Workers, which originated in the Chicago Steel Workers Organizing Committee, organized the majority of International Harvester plants, other agricultural implement plants, and miscellaneous manufacturing shops. The FBI carries on investigations at the Field Office level. The Field Offices have their own files, which differ drastically from those kept at FBI headquarters. The Field Office files contain the raw material produced by investigations and provide the basis for reports sent to Washington. The first and most obvious source of information is an FBI organizational file. Volume of paper, especially in the case of the FBI, is certainly no guide to the quality of information, but the amount produced on Congress of Industrial Organizations is staggering. One important function that FBI files serve is to confirm or expand upon data gathered from other sources. Information on the backgrounds and movements of the organizers and leaders of 236 is a case in point.

On 4 August 2017, workers at Nissan’s plant in Canton, Mississippi, voted 2244 to 1307 against being represented by the United Automobile Workers of America (UAW). The organizing campaign in Canton - which began shortly after the plant opened in 2003 - was one of the most important in recent labor history, and it attracted national and international media coverage. It also mobilized some high-profile supporters, including actor Danny Glover, musician Common, Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez, and presidential contender Bernie Sanders. This article uses interviews with Nissan workers and UAW staffers, together with the records of the long organizing drive, to provide the first detailed examination of this landmark campaign, revealing problems that press accounts did not cover. While the UAW and its supporters blamed Nissan’s fierce opposition for the outcome, this article reveals that the reasons for the loss were more complex. Apart from corporate opposition, community hostility, the increasing number of temporary workers - who were unable to vote in the election - and racial divisions were all important factors. Most of the UAW’s supporters were African-American, and they were mobilized by a campaign that declared that, ‘Labor Rights are Civil Rights.’ This slogan alienated many whites, however, weakening the union. While the UAW pledged to fight on, the defeat was another blow to its long campaign to organize foreign-owned automakers in the U.S., an increasingly important sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reframes the discussion on vulnerable and exploited agricultural labour in twentieth-century United States using the overarching category of unfree labour. In order to do so, it bridges two usually distinct historiographies by linking the phenomenon of 'peonage' during the New Deal, with the one of immigrant contract labour in southern Florida, under the H2 visa. Archival research on the practices at the U.S. Sugar Corporation in southern Florida illustrates this link. The article draws on Federal archives, U.S. Government proceedings, papers of political activists and legal and labour scholarship to argue: firstly, that unfree labour has been an enduring feature of agricultural labour relations at regional level during the twentieth century, through both a transmission and a transformation of practices that had their origin in the control of black emancipated labour; secondly, that the introduction of 'guest workers' under the H2 and Bracero programme meant a modernisation in the practices of unfree labour, pivoting on the lack of citizenship rights, racial discrimination, debt at home and threat of deportation; and, finally, that the failure to recognise forms of legal and economic deprivation and coercion as unfree labour has hurt the ability of the United States to enforce protection of human rights at home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s, governments around the world have been engaged in a conflict over the appropriate role of public services in society. In the U.S. and elsewhere, public services have faced pressures to restructure, reduce the size of government, and make government more ‘business-like.’ This paper examines how the evolution of public services and public sector unions shaped the distinctive character of public sector industrial relations in the U.S. Next it demonstrates how this distinctive character made public services and public sector unions vulnerable to neoliberal attacks and New Public Management reforms. It concludes by theorizing about how the frameworks of citizenship at work and union renewal may be used to strengthen the essential identity and restore the positive role that public sector unions have traditionally played in society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction to the journal is presented which discusses topics covered in the issue, including historical perspectives on labor geography and labor relations, the field of "working-class studies" and unions, and the working class of Detroit, Michigan and a duck hunting swamp.

This article explores the ‘Crafted With Pride in the U.S.A.’ campaign, a high-profile effort to encourage American consumers to buy domestically made textiles and apparel. Using a wide range of sources, this study examines an important campaign that has received little scholarly attention. Launched in 1984, the initial seven-year operation cost $100 million, and the funds were used to sponsor Miss America and to purchase national advertising on network television, including commercials that featured celebrities such as Ted Danson, Linda Evans, Eddie Murphy, Jerry Hall, and Bob Hope. Funding was provided by both textile and apparel companies and by labor unions, who put aside their historic differences, because they recognized the seriousness of the import threat. Roger Milliken – a powerful executive with considerable political influence – also bankrolled the campaign. Overall, the Crafted With Pride effort did succeed in uniting the industry and in winning some important backers, most notably, Sam Walton of Wal-Mart. Overtime, however – and especially after Walton's death in 1992 – both Wal-Mart and some textile and apparel producers began to embrace off-shore production, and the campaign also struggled to change consumer behavior. Ultimately, importers and retailers prevailed, paving the way for the domestic industry's decline. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is a plea for changes in the way we tell the history of work in America. The full story of the labor history of the construction industry is not contained in trade union records. To fully understand the context of work and conflict, historians need to look to corporate records, government records, oral histories, and other sources that can provide important documentation of work relations and technological change. If the construction industry is understood as a complex and changing entity, its trade union politics, discrimination, and the political battles surrounding the transformation of neighborhoods and modern life can become part of the larger story of the dynamic of development rather than merely a story of workplace antagonisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the status of social justice feminism and labor legislation in the U.S. during the 1920s. To some an extension of the Progressive Era, to others a New Era, the 1920s are generally perceived as a stagnant period for American labor. While this may be true in terms of wages, conditions, and national political influence, the 1920s shows a transitional period at least in terms of what may be loosely labeled the women's labor movement. Focusing on a particular organization, the Women's Joint Legislative Conference (WJLC), the article examines the endeavor to produce reform in the face of hostile Supreme Court precedent. Created in September 1918, the WJLC initially propounded an aggressive agenda of labor legislation, only to face internal tensions and the strong opposition of a counter-network of Republican state legislators, businessmen, and members of the National Woman's Party. The WJLC and other, similar organizations such as the Women's Joint Congressional Committee, also continued the efforts of social justice feminism movement which begun in the late nineteenth century. Women faced the peculiar legal situation of receiving the right to enact social justice legislation at the expense of being treated as second-class citizens.

In the summer of 1994, 150 workers at a cement plant in Calera, Alabama, abandoned a month-long strike after Blue Circle Cement Co. permanently replaced more than three-quarters of them. The company's tactics deeply alienated its experienced workforce. Tyrone Perkins, who had more than 18 years of seniority at the Calera plant, summed up how the experience of being replaced had transformed the attitude of workers to the company. In the 1980's and 1990's, employers faced with strikes increasingly resorted to hiring replacement workers.

Presents an update on issues concerning labor history in the U.S. as of January 1993. Overview of the 1993 Lowell Conference on Industrial History; Information on several conferences on labor studies and industrial relations; Establishment of a working group to focus on labor movements and free trade.

This article focuses on labor movements against Communism in Miami, Florida, during the 1940s. In the late 1940s, the Transport Workers Union and Michael Quill, a powerful and charismatic union leader who had long aligned himself with the Communists, played a central role in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)' gravitation into the orbit of the liberal anti-Communism of the Democratic Party. Quill's dramatic departure from the Communist wing of the CIO is commonly attributed to Communist-initiated programs to which he could not in good conscience subscribe. In fact, the anti-Communist factional fight in Miami provided a powerful push to move Quill off the fence at a crucial moment.

The article discusses the "war on unionism" by Ford Motor Company's war effort against the United Automobile Workers and Committee of Industrial Organization (UAW-CIO). A wrestler named "Fats" Perry was summoned by the production manager of Ford on the charges of forming an "outside" squad which consisted of group of employees of unusual muscular development drawn from the plant's champion tug-of-war team. The CIO was directed by Harry Bennett. The U.S. was the only advanced industrial country where business corporations wielded coercive military power. Paradoxically, the nation that never experienced feudalism and that pioneered in introducing civil liberties allowed corporations to develop powerful private armies that often operated outside the law, denying workers' basic Constitutional rights. All of the automobile manufacturers and their parts suppliers were hostile to unionism and used systematic espionage and sometimes violence to discourage it, but none fought it as violently as Ford, which was alone in establishing a private army.

Presents information on several conferences and meetings on labor to be held at universities in the U.S. from 1996 to 1997. Labor and Democracy at the University of Washington; Obscure Objects of Desire: Reviewing the Crafts This Century at the University of East Anglia; Workers and the City at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

The article lists the labor archives' holdings of the Society of American Archivists, related to the history of the trade union movement in the U.S. Information about the availability of a particular archives' holdings through national data bases is included where repositories have reported processed collections to the Research Libraries Information Network, the On-Line Computer Library Center Inc. or the National Union Catalogue of Manuscript Collections. Anne Rand Memorial Library of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union in San Francisco, California contains a modest book collection of 4,000 volumes. The California Northcoast Labor/Community Archives Project has documents of terminated labor organizations in Northwestern California, the Redwood District Council of Lumber and Sawmill Workers, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. The non-print holdings at Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research include 25 documentary films on labor.

The article provides information on materials related to labor migration acquired by the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The IHRC is approaching its 26th year of work in the acquisition, preservation, and provision of archival and library resources on the experiences of some 24 European and Near Eastern ethno-linguistic groups in the U.S. The Center also serves as an active agent in stimulating research and activity in immigration and ethnic studies. The 1986 Center-sponsored symposium, "A Century of European Migrations, 1830-1930: Comparative Perspectives," emerged as a milepost for research on migration history, drawing together leading scholars from 10 countries whose work sounded a number of themes, including labor issues. The Center's holdings document those immigrant groups most commonly associated with the great trans-Atlantic migration to the U.S. from roughly the 1880s to the 1920s. IHRC holds over 45,000 monographs and bound periodicals, nearly 900 newspaper files and 3000 serial titles, and over 800 manuscript collections amounting to some 4000 linear feet.

Several international unions which have national offices in the greater Washington, D.C. area have sought assistance from the University of Maryland at College Park, the state's land grant institution, in preserving their archival records. A combination of developments also contributed significantly to the creation of a labor archives program at College Park, the formal establishment of what is now called the Historical Manuscripts and Archives Department in 1972 and the commencement of the Samuel Gompers Papers Project at the University campus in 1973. The first major archival collection to arrive at College Park was the records of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America (IUMSWA) in 1967. The archives located at College Park provide in-depth documentation on the origins of the union, its contact with civilian and military agencies during World War II, labor and race relations during the war, and the union's efforts to combat the decline of the shipbuilding industry during the late 1940s and 1950s.

The Urban Archives Center at Temple University was established in 1967 by a member of the History Department to document the lives of common urban dwellers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Instead of collecting the papers of well-known figures, these new social history archives acquired manuscript collections that represented services provided to working-class people. Typical collections include the records of housing, minority, educational reform, social welfare; and labor organizations. Currently, the Urban Archives Center serves as the research base of the newly established Center for Public History which is jointly administered by the library system of the and the History Department of the Temple University. The Archives is one component of the Center for Public History, which also offers courses in applied history through the History Department, programs with the Philadelphia Board of Education, and conferences on various aspects of public history. One of the Center's most important acquisitions of the last few years is the records of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. Acquired through the Center's participation in the Penn Central Railroad Appraisal Project, the collection now comprises one of the largest collections of organizational records housed at the Temple University.