Listing 1 - 6 of 6
Sort by
Pure and simple politics : the American Federation of Labor and political activism, 1881-1917
Author:
ISBN: 1280416645 0511173148 0511152124 0511302118 0511509790 0511052642 0521433983 0521028809 1107111919 Year: 1998 Publisher: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press,

Loading...
Export citation

Choose an application

Bookmark

Abstract

Scholarship on American labor politics has been dominated by the view that the American Federation of Labor, the dominant labor organization, rejected political action in favor of economic strategies. Based upon extensive research into labor and political party records, this study demonstrates that, despite the common belief, the AFL devoted great attention to political activity. The organization's main strategy, however, which Julie Greene terms 'pure and simple politics', dictated that trade unionists alone should shape American labor politics. Exploring the period from 1881 to 1917, Pure and Simple Politics focuses on the quandaries this approach generated for American trade unionists. Politics for AFL members became a highly contested terrain, as leaders attempted to implement a strategy which many rank-and-file workers rejected. Furthermore, its drive to achieve political efficacy increasingly exposed the AFL to forces beyond its control, as party politicians and other individuals began seeking to influence labor's political strategy and tactics.


Book
Commonsense Anticommunism : Labor and Civil Liberties between the World Wars
Author:
ISBN: 1469601710 0807869899 9780807869895 9781469601717 9780807835418 0807835412 Year: 2012 Publisher: Chapel Hill : Baltimore, Md. : University of North Carolina Press, Project MUSE,

Loading...
Export citation

Choose an application

Bookmark

Abstract

Between the Great War and Pearl Harbor, conservative labor leaders declared themselves America's ""first line of defense"" against Communism. In this surprising account, Jennifer Luff shows how the American Federation of Labor fanned popular anticommunism but defended Communists' civil liberties in the aftermath of the 1919 Red Scare. The AFL's ""commonsense anticommunism,"" she argues, steered a middle course between the American Legion and the ACLU, helping to check campaigns for federal sedition laws. But in the 1930s, frustration with the New Dealorder led labor conservatives to redbai

Pure and simple politics
Author:
ISBN: 0511009194 9780511009198 0511037406 9780511037405 9780521433983 0521433983 9780511509797 0511509790 9780521028806 Year: 1999 Publisher: Cambridge New York, NY Cambridge University Press

American labor and European politics : the AFL as a transnational force
Author:
ISBN: 0844809195 9780844809199 Year: 1976 Publisher: New York (N.Y.): Crane Russak

Battling for American labor
Author:
ISBN: 0585078939 0520922743 9780520922747 9780585078939 0520218329 0520218337 Year: 1999 Publisher: Berkeley University of California Press

Loading...
Export citation

Choose an application

Bookmark

Abstract

In this incisive reinterpretation of the history of the American labor movement, Howard Kimeldorf challenges received thinking about rank-and-file workers and the character of their unions. Battling for American Labor answers the baffling question of how, while mounting some of the most aggressive challenges to employing classes anywhere in the world, organized labor in the United States has warmly embraced the capitalist system of which they are a part. Rejecting conventional understandings of American unionism, Kimeldorf argues that what has long been the hallmark of organized labor in the United States-its distinctive reliance on worker self-organization and direct economic action-can be seen as a particular kind of syndicalism.Kimeldorf brings this syndicalism to life through two rich and compelling case studies of unionization efforts by Philadelphia longshoremen and New York City culinary workers during the opening decades of the twentieth century. He shows how these workers, initially affiliated with the radical IWW and later the conservative AFL, pursued a common logic of collective action at the point of production that largely dictated their choice of unions. Elegantly written and deeply engaging, Battling for American Labor offers insights not only into how the American labor movement got to where it is today, but how it might possibly reinvent itself in the years ahead.

Listing 1 - 6 of 6
Sort by