HISTORY 144G Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Union Representative, Wage Labour, National Labor Relations Board
Period in between Great Depression and WWII: lots of workers in unions + lots
of exposure in the press—>a lot of people thought US on way to solving labor
question
Showed that labor made claims that super important at ballot box, in
legislative chambers, and deliberations of highest court
○
•
Questions still remaining: To what extent did the new unionism and the New
Deal actually generate the industrial democracy, the social security, and the
standards of living so long sought by early twentieth-century reformers,
unionists, and radicals? To what extent had workers become full citizens at
work?
•
Labors greatest impact: democratic reform of way in which workers + managers
began to share governance of American workplace for CIO companies
People began to see this as a way of the future
○
Not hegemonic: resistance from American Federation of Labor
○
•
The Fruits of Industrial Unionism
Industrial unionism in mass production sectors of economy=testing ground for
New Deal answer to 20th century labor question
•
But then Great Depression/"Roosevelt Recession" (1937) brought organizing
drive to a halt
Corporations opposed this and would sometimes end in bloody
confrontations w/ company thugs and local polices
○
•
Post-1940s employment boom—>no one feared losing a paycheck if they
organized—>way more union participation—>certain stability
War Labor Board supported this—>managers forced to sign new contracts
adjudicated by this wartime agency
Saw institutionally secure trade unionism as essential to success of
war effort
§
○
Despite increasingly difficult legal and political environment, labor won
more NLRB elections than it lost
○
•
1950s less underconsumption + living standards went up
Economists debate how much unions themselves responsible for this but
unions still played major role: helped determine extent to which working
class would win its share of growth dividend + bargained for wage
increases + secured auto cost of living adjustments that protected real
wages from inflationary erosion
○
•
Leading up to Great Depression, lots of pay inequalities for workers doing the
same work
Some meant to keep workforce divided
○
Mirrored ethnic, racial, gender divisions in working population to reflect
segregation within this production hierarchy
○
•
Industrial unionism began to shrink wage inequalities
Uniform wages important to reinforce sense of solidarity within workforce
+ deprive managers of an incentive to shift work to low-paid regions,
factories, or departments
CIO unions pushed up wages of lowest-paid workers by negotiating
in cents per hour rather than in percentages—>really helped
§
○
•
Now companies within same industry would cease to compete for lower wages
+ wage differentials decline—>new blue-collar social structure
•
While decline of wage differentials, there was still a lot of discrimination in
many union and management practices
•
Shop Democracy
Industrial justice—>unions had to fight pervasive insecurity and arbitrary
discipline that so many workers though the essence of factory autocracy under
old regime
1930s and 1940s: supervisors, foremen, and straw bosses basically made
the lives of people under them hell—expected orders to be taken w/ no
questions asked
○
Union activists demanded a steward for every foreman + committeeman
for every department to try to solve this "dictatorship"
○
•
"collective bargaining" embodied wide range of tactics and practices that
defined relationship between workers and their employers
A lot of early union contract unclear—>few workers accepted distinction
between contract negotiation and contract administration—>lots of shop-
floor assemblies, slowdowns, stoppages
Direct shop floor activity legitimized union's presence for hesitant
workers + their job actions est. pattern of union influence and
authority (shop democracy)
§
○
•
Seniority idea: used to protect against incompetence and corruption
Was and is key facet in moral economy of American work life
○
Lots convinced that tenure gave them a kind of "property right" + first call
upon any better one that opened up
○
By eliminating deference and favoritism, seniority list generated new
realm of freedom and dignity
○
•
Lots of executives hated the new work rules + system of shop steward power
sustaining them—seemed to threaten flexibility managers thought necessary to
run workplace + how obedient workers would be to them
•
Whole situation still pretty unstable—shop traditions that disrupted production
subverted idea of collective-bargaining agreement—>grievance arbitration
Managers said that they violated contracts and robbed collective
bargaining of usefulness
○
Grievance arbitration: move grievances up through factory hierarchy—>
now couldn't just be discharged w/o just cause
Deprived managers of more unilateral power within enterprise
§
○
•
The AFL Worldview
CIO model of trying to put industrial democracy in workplace during New Deal
era never completely dominant
•
Trade unionists thought that "House of Labor" must be autonomous and
independent, whether organized or not
AFL a lot more skeptical about government power than CIO
○
•
AFL hated early NLRB—tended to marginalize craft-union claims; preferred CIO-
style bargaining units appealing to industrial democracy idea more—>joined w/
some of new unionism's most steadfast enemies to get NLRB to revise Wagner
Act
•
Eventually state officials and legislatures became increasingly hostile to CIO-
style industrial unionism + courts accommodated craft prerogatives while
narrowing capacity of industrial unions to organize against intransigent
employers
•
AFL vs. CIO—>split union mvt—>lots of conservative attacks
AFL objected to NLRB's statist presumptions: power to determine size +
makeup of union's bargaining unit + conduct election to find out wants of
workers in unit
○
AFL more concerned about mobilizing employers than workers
○
•
The Craft Alternative
AFL reaped a bunch of benefits from upsurge of worker militancy + industrial
unionization
CIO was working within what AFL defined—>workers that used to be
scorned by them were now mobilizing for both
Example: Teamsters union: mobilized a bunch of people (even those
whom the CIO had previously ignored)—>so much participation
Helped that they had innovative mobilization techniques□
These truckers began to blockade shipments from non-union
firms—>employers struggled
□
Able to unionize trucking barns of major cities □
§
○
•
Craft unionism/"occupational" model of trade unionism—successfully used by
waitresses and longshoremen
Got burst of health—defended work rights in fashion usually superior to
CIO
○
Goal: defend general "employment" security of members
Instead of "job" security of particular workers at specific work sites
§
○
Used "closed shop" + hiring halls to try to achieve this
"closed shop": workers had to join union before employed in their
trade/occupation
§
Hiring halls: if workers lost jobs, they just cycled back through hiring
call + found other jobs similar to what they had previously been
doing/suited their abilities
Sometimes gives workers control over when and how much
they work instead of employer having that power
□
Example: ILWU abolished shape-up along West Coast + used
this that decasualized work + gave "wharf-rats" high wages,
political clout, unprecedented control over their cargo-
handling work
□
§
○
•
Big craft unions + CIO-style industrial unions political conservative,
racially/sexually exclusive, ill-equipped to deal w/ technological change—>form
of unionism fell at midcentury
Trying to monopolize labor market—>excluded a lot of different
populations from membership
○
Craft unions also supported municipal + state politicians who stood
against New Deal + liberal-labor coalition that sought to perpetuate its
program
○
Labor unions tend to want to control certain tech niche—>if employer
wants a new work process/technique, their labor monopoly gets
disrupted or even eliminated
○
•
Breaching the Color Line
Most skilled building-construction crafts, didn't have any racial issues—so much
racial exclusion
•
Mass-production industries/unions that tried to reorder labor relations within
nation's factories, shipyards, mills had to deal with issues of race though
Heyday of CIO, demographic revolution—>agricultural laborers became
urban ones
○
•
If certain industries wanted to be organized, they would need the loyalty of
many racial minorities
Difficulties:
African Americans skeptical bystanders—to much racism and craft-
union exclusion already
§
African Americans usually brought in as strikebreakers
§
○
•
Herrenvolk Democracy
White working-class racism all up in American political culture during
midcentury decades
•
"whiteness" of immigrant Americans took on sharper, more well-defined
edge—>fraternal organizations of foreign born lost so many members 1930s
and 1940s
What caused this subordination of older ethnic identities within
transcendent sense of whiteness
New Deal + new unions—>sense of social entitlement
§
Entire male generation participating in segregated military
§
○
•
In steel mills, shipyards, and auto plants
New trade unionism—>segregated, hierarchical job structures originally
put in place by pre-union managerial practice + racially stratified labor
market frozen in place
○
•
White workers started seeing their committeemen and union seniority system
as protectors of new sort of property right to job
•
Segregation didn't just stop in the work place
While some of the union meetings were integrated, everything else for
social and residential life was segregated and the races kept to
themselves mostly
Northern white workers committed New Deal Democrats but still
defended residential apartheid (segregation based on race) through
1940s and 1950s
§
○
•
"Negro and White: Unite and Fight"
Ideology less significant than practice and rhetoric super important too even on
the left where color line had been in place for more than 3 generations
○Didn't help that Socialists argued that Asians, African Americans, other
nonwhite people were a stupid/uninterested in revolutionary
advancement, don't know about how to be in solidarity, eager to serve
capital—>subversive of white wages and living standards
•
• At leadership level, blatant racism rare in years after 1935
○Old racism still there though even within formal union ideology—until end
of 1930s, progressive labor leadership took inspiration from socialist
tradition
○African American liberation would be a product of labor's victory instead
of precondition before advancements
§This is pretty similar to main body of New Deal thought on race
question
□ But there was a problem: Rooseveltian liberals timid when it
came to making direct assault on Southern racial norms—
thought that economic transformation of South would
basically get rid of racialism there (as their solution to the
"Negro question")
• This "solution" was soon replaced by Communist slogan of "Negro and White:
Unite and Fight"
○ironic—thought of African Americans in US as "national" minority
○But this helped set standard by which American labor-liberalism would
come to measure racial progress
§They wanted militant racial equality
○But this slogan couldn't be taken at face value
• Crucial to this understanding was that African Americans needed own leaders,
stewards, campaigns, even own unions within labor movement to make sure
that their own "national" interests had a hearing
○Main goals: power, income, racial dignity
§It'd be cool if they got integration and desegregation out of this too
• Rise of CIO—>new opportunities for black empowerment (81)—>cohort of post-
WWII civil rights activists
○They realized that they had more power if they stuck together
Shop-Floor Citizenship
• In both North and South black America really pro-union
○In the South though, union consciousness kind of embarrassing to CIO
leaders who feared that white workers would reject any union or
organization seen as mostly black or black loving
• Union movement still most favorable terrain at this time for which racial
liberalism could flourish + African Americans could advance their interests
• New unionism brought semblance of citizenship rights to shop floor (83)
○New Deal gave African Americans so many more rights years before they
got rid of the poll tax, the white primary, and the segregated schools
• CIO presence made it so that people didn't have to be so worried about being
fired for dumb things like being too curt with their employer
• But the kind of uniform wage raises generated by New Deal + trade unions
disproportionately benefited African American workers (84)
• Union contracts which raised and rationalized wage standard which eliminated
a bunch of inequities boosted black pay more than white
• Although blacks and whites would remain socially segregated, racism still had its
limits—they had shared dependence on wage labor—>forced them to
cooperate and even formed "solidarity"
The Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC)
• For first time since Reconstruction, federal government put racial discrimination
on national policy agenda
• Had an interracial staff + expansive mandate—>legitimized black protests,
asserting new social right to fairness on job and at hiring gate
• Unlike NLRB, worked with and through individuals
○Took complaints of workers, investigating grievances, issuing directive
orders
○Endorsed industrial version of new social citizenship
• Broad mandate: no discrimination against blacks or Jews, Hispanics, other
minorities
○Didn't really include gender though
• As an admin entity, they were super weak—couldn't do anything to change
segregation in armed forces + Southern federal discrimination policy
• But it was still pretty important—controversies that swirled around it warned of
the race and rights discourse that would come up again after the Congress
passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act (86)
○FEPC dealt with discrimination on a case by case basis
§But they would also find that discriminatory intent was hard to
prove against particular employer
• Also it helped advance new sense of militant industrial citizenship (87)—>wave
of direct, forceful action by black workers + allies turned into action
○Remarkable how blacks stood its ground, found allies, fought back
§"hate" strikes didn't intimidate them
New Deal Masculinity
• New unionism + New Deal didn't do much against rigidly gendered structure of
work + welfare during midcentury decades (88)
○Not a lot of feminism
○More concerned about restoration of male dignity and livelihood
• New Deal programs put very few women to work—more focused on employing
men
• Women unionists usually found in garment and electrical products trades,
clerical and sales work, canning and tobacco progressing
• Usually male union activists didn't welcome female leadership
○Women who played important roles in labor movement usually atypical:
divorcees, widows, political radicals, members of intensely union-
conscious households
• In beginning stages of union-building, women played important roe of linking
labor movement's shop activism to larger community
• NLRB policy, union leadership, popular consciousness started defining
contractual relationship at work site—>women's participation in movement
narrowed
○Their role became defined as being more supportive/supplemental
§During 1930s, a lot of women had been excluded from whole
categories of employment on basis of either gender or marital
status
§Many trade unions endorsed discriminatory practices
Equal Pay for Equal Work
• Institutional sexism just wouldn't work for during the war—>women workers
took advantage of the labor shortage to fill hundreds of job categories once
considered entirely "male"—>union movement became supporter for "equal
pay for equal work"
○Men feared that managerial adversaries would use tide of cheap women
workers to erode male wage standards—>this slogan would help reduce
capital's incentive to substitute female workers for male
• But this slogan didn't actually relieve paternalism practiced by so many
employers and unions toward women workers + didn't stop division of all jobs
into those labeled for women or for men
• Most employers kept de facto set of sex discriminations by dividing work into
jobs labeled "light" and "heavy"
• Most women burdened by "double day" whose impact could be felt at every
stage of life cycle
• Women usually worked in low-wage, non-union industries
• Labor liberals opposed social inequity—>trade unions and social feminists
opposed congressional enactment of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
○Mandated formal equality for women—>eliminate "protective" labor
legislation passed on behalf of women workers during Progressive era
§All this legislation had been based on patriarchal definition of
woman's moral and physical capacity
• Social feminists hoped there would be protective legislation for all
workers—>1938 Fair Labor Standards Act
○Abolished most child labor, put floor under factory wages, introduced the
40 hour work week
○Unfortunately racial and gender assumptions of New Deal-era legislators,
unionists, policy makers made sure that social wage standards would
barely help the people who needed it the most
• There was the idea about extent to which wage earner a legitimate,
independent "worker" shaped differential access of all citizens to new social
benefits offered 1930s and onward
○New Deal architects of federal social policy could escape through some
assumptions that privileged the male breadwinner and marginalized those
whose attachment to full-time work was insecure + whose work lives
depended on jobs in fields, kitchens, other jobs usually held by white
women or African Americans of both genders (96)
○Example of effects: unemployment insurance excluded 55 percent of all
African American workers and 80 percent of all women workers (96)
• Union commitment to equal treatment on job didn't do enough to level field
upon which women participated in the labor force
• Women's employment stability less than that of men—>women workers had
less seniority, lower pay, poorer pensions than that of male counterparts
• Quality of work site citizenship depended on larger economic and political
structures within which it was embedded
Lichtenstein, Ch. 2: Citizenship at Work
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
5:04 PM
Period in between Great Depression and WWII: lots of workers in unions + lots
of exposure in the press—>a lot of people thought US on way to solving labor
question
Showed that labor made claims that super important at ballot box, in
legislative chambers, and deliberations of highest court
○
•
Questions still remaining: To what extent did the new unionism and the New
Deal actually generate the industrial democracy, the social security, and the
standards of living so long sought by early twentieth-century reformers,
unionists, and radicals? To what extent had workers become full citizens at
work?
•
Labors greatest impact: democratic reform of way in which workers + managers
began to share governance of American workplace for CIO companies
People began to see this as a way of the future
○
Not hegemonic: resistance from American Federation of Labor
○
•
The Fruits of Industrial Unionism
Industrial unionism in mass production sectors of economy=testing ground for
New Deal answer to 20th century labor question
•
But then Great Depression/"Roosevelt Recession" (1937) brought organizing
drive to a halt
Corporations opposed this and would sometimes end in bloody
confrontations w/ company thugs and local polices
○
•
Post-1940s employment boom—>no one feared losing a paycheck if they
organized—>way more union participation—>certain stability
War Labor Board supported this—>managers forced to sign new contracts
adjudicated by this wartime agency
Saw institutionally secure trade unionism as essential to success of
war effort
§
○
Despite increasingly difficult legal and political environment, labor won
more NLRB elections than it lost
○
•
1950s less underconsumption + living standards went up
Economists debate how much unions themselves responsible for this but
unions still played major role: helped determine extent to which working
class would win its share of growth dividend + bargained for wage
increases + secured auto cost of living adjustments that protected real
wages from inflationary erosion
○
•
Leading up to Great Depression, lots of pay inequalities for workers doing the
same work
Some meant to keep workforce divided
○
Mirrored ethnic, racial, gender divisions in working population to reflect
segregation within this production hierarchy
○
•
Industrial unionism began to shrink wage inequalities
Uniform wages important to reinforce sense of solidarity within workforce
+ deprive managers of an incentive to shift work to low-paid regions,
factories, or departments
CIO unions pushed up wages of lowest-paid workers by negotiating
in cents per hour rather than in percentages—>really helped
§
○
•
Now companies within same industry would cease to compete for lower wages
+ wage differentials decline—>new blue-collar social structure
•
While decline of wage differentials, there was still a lot of discrimination in
many union and management practices
•
Shop Democracy
Industrial justice—>unions had to fight pervasive insecurity and arbitrary
discipline that so many workers though the essence of factory autocracy under
old regime
1930s and 1940s: supervisors, foremen, and straw bosses basically made
the lives of people under them hell—expected orders to be taken w/ no
questions asked
○
Union activists demanded a steward for every foreman + committeeman
for every department to try to solve this "dictatorship"
○
•
"collective bargaining" embodied wide range of tactics and practices that
defined relationship between workers and their employers
A lot of early union contract unclear—>few workers accepted distinction
between contract negotiation and contract administration—>lots of shop-
floor assemblies, slowdowns, stoppages
Direct shop floor activity legitimized union's presence for hesitant
workers + their job actions est. pattern of union influence and
authority (shop democracy)
§
○
•
Seniority idea: used to protect against incompetence and corruption
Was and is key facet in moral economy of American work life
○
Lots convinced that tenure gave them a kind of "property right" + first call
upon any better one that opened up
○
By eliminating deference and favoritism, seniority list generated new
realm of freedom and dignity
○
•
Lots of executives hated the new work rules + system of shop steward power
sustaining them—seemed to threaten flexibility managers thought necessary to
run workplace + how obedient workers would be to them
•
Whole situation still pretty unstable—shop traditions that disrupted production
subverted idea of collective-bargaining agreement—>grievance arbitration
Managers said that they violated contracts and robbed collective
bargaining of usefulness
○
Grievance arbitration: move grievances up through factory hierarchy—>
now couldn't just be discharged w/o just cause
Deprived managers of more unilateral power within enterprise
§
○
•
The AFL Worldview
CIO model of trying to put industrial democracy in workplace during New Deal
era never completely dominant
•
Trade unionists thought that "House of Labor" must be autonomous and
independent, whether organized or not
AFL a lot more skeptical about government power than CIO
○
•
AFL hated early NLRB—tended to marginalize craft-union claims; preferred CIO-
style bargaining units appealing to industrial democracy idea more—>joined w/
some of new unionism's most steadfast enemies to get NLRB to revise Wagner
Act
•
Eventually state officials and legislatures became increasingly hostile to CIO-
style industrial unionism + courts accommodated craft prerogatives while
narrowing capacity of industrial unions to organize against intransigent
employers
•
AFL vs. CIO—>split union mvt—>lots of conservative attacks
AFL objected to NLRB's statist presumptions: power to determine size +
makeup of union's bargaining unit + conduct election to find out wants of
workers in unit
○
AFL more concerned about mobilizing employers than workers
○
•
The Craft Alternative
AFL reaped a bunch of benefits from upsurge of worker militancy + industrial
unionization
CIO was working within what AFL defined—>workers that used to be
scorned by them were now mobilizing for both
Example: Teamsters union: mobilized a bunch of people (even those
whom the CIO had previously ignored)—>so much participation
Helped that they had innovative mobilization techniques□
These truckers began to blockade shipments from non-union
firms—>employers struggled
□
Able to unionize trucking barns of major cities □
§
○
•
Craft unionism/"occupational" model of trade unionism—successfully used by
waitresses and longshoremen
Got burst of health—defended work rights in fashion usually superior to
CIO
○
Goal: defend general "employment" security of members
Instead of "job" security of particular workers at specific work sites
§
○
Used "closed shop" + hiring halls to try to achieve this
"closed shop": workers had to join union before employed in their
trade/occupation
§
Hiring halls: if workers lost jobs, they just cycled back through hiring
call + found other jobs similar to what they had previously been
doing/suited their abilities
Sometimes gives workers control over when and how much
they work instead of employer having that power
□
Example: ILWU abolished shape-up along West Coast + used
this that decasualized work + gave "wharf-rats" high wages,
political clout, unprecedented control over their cargo-
handling work
□
§
○
•
Big craft unions + CIO-style industrial unions political conservative,
racially/sexually exclusive, ill-equipped to deal w/ technological change—>form
of unionism fell at midcentury
Trying to monopolize labor market—>excluded a lot of different
populations from membership
○
Craft unions also supported municipal + state politicians who stood
against New Deal + liberal-labor coalition that sought to perpetuate its
program
○
Labor unions tend to want to control certain tech niche—>if employer
wants a new work process/technique, their labor monopoly gets
disrupted or even eliminated
○
•
Breaching the Color Line
Most skilled building-construction crafts, didn't have any racial issues—so much
racial exclusion
•
Mass-production industries/unions that tried to reorder labor relations within
nation's factories, shipyards, mills had to deal with issues of race though
Heyday of CIO, demographic revolution—>agricultural laborers became
urban ones
○
•
If certain industries wanted to be organized, they would need the loyalty of
many racial minorities
Difficulties:
African Americans skeptical bystanders—to much racism and craft-
union exclusion already
§
African Americans usually brought in as strikebreakers
§
○
•
Herrenvolk Democracy
White working-class racism all up in American political culture during
midcentury decades
•
"whiteness" of immigrant Americans took on sharper, more well-defined
edge—>fraternal organizations of foreign born lost so many members 1930s
and 1940s
What caused this subordination of older ethnic identities within
transcendent sense of whiteness
New Deal + new unions—>sense of social entitlement
§
Entire male generation participating in segregated military
§
○
•
In steel mills, shipyards, and auto plants
New trade unionism—>segregated, hierarchical job structures originally
put in place by pre-union managerial practice + racially stratified labor
market frozen in place
○
•
White workers started seeing their committeemen and union seniority system
as protectors of new sort of property right to job
•
Segregation didn't just stop in the work place
While some of the union meetings were integrated, everything else for
social and residential life was segregated and the races kept to
themselves mostly
Northern white workers committed New Deal Democrats but still
defended residential apartheid (segregation based on race) through
1940s and 1950s
§
○
•
"Negro and White: Unite and Fight"
Ideology less significant than practice and rhetoric super important too even on
the left where color line had been in place for more than 3 generations
○Didn't help that Socialists argued that Asians, African Americans, other
nonwhite people were a stupid/uninterested in revolutionary
advancement, don't know about how to be in solidarity, eager to serve
capital—>subversive of white wages and living standards
•
• At leadership level, blatant racism rare in years after 1935
○Old racism still there though even within formal union ideology—until end
of 1930s, progressive labor leadership took inspiration from socialist
tradition
○African American liberation would be a product of labor's victory instead
of precondition before advancements
§This is pretty similar to main body of New Deal thought on race
question
□ But there was a problem: Rooseveltian liberals timid when it
came to making direct assault on Southern racial norms—
thought that economic transformation of South would
basically get rid of racialism there (as their solution to the
"Negro question")
• This "solution" was soon replaced by Communist slogan of "Negro and White:
Unite and Fight"
○ironic—thought of African Americans in US as "national" minority
○But this helped set standard by which American labor-liberalism would
come to measure racial progress
§They wanted militant racial equality
○But this slogan couldn't be taken at face value
• Crucial to this understanding was that African Americans needed own leaders,
stewards, campaigns, even own unions within labor movement to make sure
that their own "national" interests had a hearing
○Main goals: power, income, racial dignity
§It'd be cool if they got integration and desegregation out of this too
• Rise of CIO—>new opportunities for black empowerment (81)—>cohort of post-
WWII civil rights activists
○They realized that they had more power if they stuck together
Shop-Floor Citizenship
• In both North and South black America really pro-union
○In the South though, union consciousness kind of embarrassing to CIO
leaders who feared that white workers would reject any union or
organization seen as mostly black or black loving
• Union movement still most favorable terrain at this time for which racial
liberalism could flourish + African Americans could advance their interests
• New unionism brought semblance of citizenship rights to shop floor (83)
○New Deal gave African Americans so many more rights years before they
got rid of the poll tax, the white primary, and the segregated schools
• CIO presence made it so that people didn't have to be so worried about being
fired for dumb things like being too curt with their employer
• But the kind of uniform wage raises generated by New Deal + trade unions
disproportionately benefited African American workers (84)
• Union contracts which raised and rationalized wage standard which eliminated
a bunch of inequities boosted black pay more than white
• Although blacks and whites would remain socially segregated, racism still had its
limits—they had shared dependence on wage labor—>forced them to
cooperate and even formed "solidarity"
The Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC)
• For first time since Reconstruction, federal government put racial discrimination
on national policy agenda
• Had an interracial staff + expansive mandate—>legitimized black protests,
asserting new social right to fairness on job and at hiring gate
• Unlike NLRB, worked with and through individuals
○Took complaints of workers, investigating grievances, issuing directive
orders
○Endorsed industrial version of new social citizenship
• Broad mandate: no discrimination against blacks or Jews, Hispanics, other
minorities
○Didn't really include gender though
• As an admin entity, they were super weak—couldn't do anything to change
segregation in armed forces + Southern federal discrimination policy
• But it was still pretty important—controversies that swirled around it warned of
the race and rights discourse that would come up again after the Congress
passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act (86)
○FEPC dealt with discrimination on a case by case basis
§But they would also find that discriminatory intent was hard to
prove against particular employer
• Also it helped advance new sense of militant industrial citizenship (87)—>wave
of direct, forceful action by black workers + allies turned into action
○Remarkable how blacks stood its ground, found allies, fought back
§"hate" strikes didn't intimidate them
New Deal Masculinity
• New unionism + New Deal didn't do much against rigidly gendered structure of
work + welfare during midcentury decades (88)
○Not a lot of feminism
○More concerned about restoration of male dignity and livelihood
• New Deal programs put very few women to work—more focused on employing
men
• Women unionists usually found in garment and electrical products trades,
clerical and sales work, canning and tobacco progressing
• Usually male union activists didn't welcome female leadership
○Women who played important roles in labor movement usually atypical:
divorcees, widows, political radicals, members of intensely union-
conscious households
• In beginning stages of union-building, women played important roe of linking
labor movement's shop activism to larger community
• NLRB policy, union leadership, popular consciousness started defining
contractual relationship at work site—>women's participation in movement
narrowed
○Their role became defined as being more supportive/supplemental
§During 1930s, a lot of women had been excluded from whole
categories of employment on basis of either gender or marital
status
§Many trade unions endorsed discriminatory practices
Equal Pay for Equal Work
• Institutional sexism just wouldn't work for during the war—>women workers
took advantage of the labor shortage to fill hundreds of job categories once
considered entirely "male"—>union movement became supporter for "equal
pay for equal work"
○Men feared that managerial adversaries would use tide of cheap women
workers to erode male wage standards—>this slogan would help reduce
capital's incentive to substitute female workers for male
• But this slogan didn't actually relieve paternalism practiced by so many
employers and unions toward women workers + didn't stop division of all jobs
into those labeled for women or for men
• Most employers kept de facto set of sex discriminations by dividing work into
jobs labeled "light" and "heavy"
• Most women burdened by "double day" whose impact could be felt at every
stage of life cycle
• Women usually worked in low-wage, non-union industries
• Labor liberals opposed social inequity—>trade unions and social feminists
opposed congressional enactment of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
○Mandated formal equality for women—>eliminate "protective" labor
legislation passed on behalf of women workers during Progressive era
§All this legislation had been based on patriarchal definition of
woman's moral and physical capacity
• Social feminists hoped there would be protective legislation for all
workers—>1938 Fair Labor Standards Act
○Abolished most child labor, put floor under factory wages, introduced the
40 hour work week
○Unfortunately racial and gender assumptions of New Deal-era legislators,
unionists, policy makers made sure that social wage standards would
barely help the people who needed it the most
• There was the idea about extent to which wage earner a legitimate,
independent "worker" shaped differential access of all citizens to new social
benefits offered 1930s and onward
○New Deal architects of federal social policy could escape through some
assumptions that privileged the male breadwinner and marginalized those
whose attachment to full-time work was insecure + whose work lives
depended on jobs in fields, kitchens, other jobs usually held by white
women or African Americans of both genders (96)
○Example of effects: unemployment insurance excluded 55 percent of all
African American workers and 80 percent of all women workers (96)
• Union commitment to equal treatment on job didn't do enough to level field
upon which women participated in the labor force
• Women's employment stability less than that of men—>women workers had
less seniority, lower pay, poorer pensions than that of male counterparts
• Quality of work site citizenship depended on larger economic and political
structures within which it was embedded
Lichtenstein, Ch. 2: Citizenship at Work
Wednesday, April 11, 2018 5:04 PM
Period in between Great Depression and WWII: lots of workers in unions + lots
of exposure in the press—>a lot of people thought US on way to solving labor
question
Showed that labor made claims that super important at ballot box, in
legislative chambers, and deliberations of highest court
○
•
Questions still remaining: To what extent did the new unionism and the New
Deal actually generate the industrial democracy, the social security, and the
standards of living so long sought by early twentieth-century reformers,
unionists, and radicals? To what extent had workers become full citizens at
work?
•
Labors greatest impact: democratic reform of way in which workers + managers
began to share governance of American workplace for CIO companies
People began to see this as a way of the future
○
Not hegemonic: resistance from American Federation of Labor
○
•
The Fruits of Industrial Unionism
Industrial unionism in mass production sectors of economy=testing ground for
New Deal answer to 20th century labor question
•
But then Great Depression/"Roosevelt Recession" (1937) brought organizing
drive to a halt
Corporations opposed this and would sometimes end in bloody
confrontations w/ company thugs and local polices
○
•
Post-1940s employment boom—>no one feared losing a paycheck if they
organized—>way more union participation—>certain stability
War Labor Board supported this—>managers forced to sign new contracts
adjudicated by this wartime agency
Saw institutionally secure trade unionism as essential to success of
war effort
§
○
Despite increasingly difficult legal and political environment, labor won
more NLRB elections than it lost
○
•
1950s less underconsumption + living standards went up
Economists debate how much unions themselves responsible for this but
unions still played major role: helped determine extent to which working
class would win its share of growth dividend + bargained for wage
increases + secured auto cost of living adjustments that protected real
wages from inflationary erosion
○
•
Leading up to Great Depression, lots of pay inequalities for workers doing the
same work
Some meant to keep workforce divided
○
Mirrored ethnic, racial, gender divisions in working population to reflect
segregation within this production hierarchy
○
•
Industrial unionism began to shrink wage inequalities
Uniform wages important to reinforce sense of solidarity within workforce
+ deprive managers of an incentive to shift work to low-paid regions,
factories, or departments
CIO unions pushed up wages of lowest-paid workers by negotiating
in cents per hour rather than in percentages—>really helped
§
○
•
Now companies within same industry would cease to compete for lower wages
+ wage differentials decline—>new blue-collar social structure
•
While decline of wage differentials, there was still a lot of discrimination in
many union and management practices
•
Shop Democracy
Industrial justice—>unions had to fight pervasive insecurity and arbitrary
discipline that so many workers though the essence of factory autocracy under
old regime
1930s and 1940s: supervisors, foremen, and straw bosses basically made
the lives of people under them hell—expected orders to be taken w/ no
questions asked
○
Union activists demanded a steward for every foreman + committeeman
for every department to try to solve this "dictatorship"
○
•
"collective bargaining" embodied wide range of tactics and practices that
defined relationship between workers and their employers
A lot of early union contract unclear—>few workers accepted distinction
between contract negotiation and contract administration—>lots of shop-
floor assemblies, slowdowns, stoppages
Direct shop floor activity legitimized union's presence for hesitant
workers + their job actions est. pattern of union influence and
authority (shop democracy)
§
○
•
Seniority idea: used to protect against incompetence and corruption
Was and is key facet in moral economy of American work life
○
Lots convinced that tenure gave them a kind of "property right" + first call
upon any better one that opened up
○
By eliminating deference and favoritism, seniority list generated new
realm of freedom and dignity
○
•
Lots of executives hated the new work rules + system of shop steward power
sustaining them—seemed to threaten flexibility managers thought necessary to
run workplace + how obedient workers would be to them
•
Whole situation still pretty unstable—shop traditions that disrupted production
subverted idea of collective-bargaining agreement—>grievance arbitration
Managers said that they violated contracts and robbed collective
bargaining of usefulness
○
Grievance arbitration: move grievances up through factory hierarchy—>
now couldn't just be discharged w/o just cause
Deprived managers of more unilateral power within enterprise
§
○
•
The AFL Worldview
CIO model of trying to put industrial democracy in workplace during New Deal
era never completely dominant
•
Trade unionists thought that "House of Labor" must be autonomous and
independent, whether organized or not
AFL a lot more skeptical about government power than CIO
○
•
AFL hated early NLRB—tended to marginalize craft-union claims; preferred CIO-
style bargaining units appealing to industrial democracy idea more—>joined w/
some of new unionism's most steadfast enemies to get NLRB to revise Wagner
Act
•
Eventually state officials and legislatures became increasingly hostile to CIO-
style industrial unionism + courts accommodated craft prerogatives while
narrowing capacity of industrial unions to organize against intransigent
employers
•
AFL vs. CIO—>split union mvt—>lots of conservative attacks
AFL objected to NLRB's statist presumptions: power to determine size +
makeup of union's bargaining unit + conduct election to find out wants of
workers in unit
○
AFL more concerned about mobilizing employers than workers
○
•
The Craft Alternative
AFL reaped a bunch of benefits from upsurge of worker militancy + industrial
unionization
CIO was working within what AFL defined—>workers that used to be
scorned by them were now mobilizing for both
Example: Teamsters union: mobilized a bunch of people (even those
whom the CIO had previously ignored)—>so much participation
Helped that they had innovative mobilization techniques□
These truckers began to blockade shipments from non-union
firms—>employers struggled
□
Able to unionize trucking barns of major cities □
§
○
•
Craft unionism/"occupational" model of trade unionism—successfully used by
waitresses and longshoremen
Got burst of health—defended work rights in fashion usually superior to
CIO
○
Goal: defend general "employment" security of members
Instead of "job" security of particular workers at specific work sites
§
○
Used "closed shop" + hiring halls to try to achieve this
"closed shop": workers had to join union before employed in their
trade/occupation
§
Hiring halls: if workers lost jobs, they just cycled back through hiring
call + found other jobs similar to what they had previously been
doing/suited their abilities
Sometimes gives workers control over when and how much
they work instead of employer having that power
□
Example: ILWU abolished shape-up along West Coast + used
this that decasualized work + gave "wharf-rats" high wages,
political clout, unprecedented control over their cargo-
handling work
□
§
○
•
Big craft unions + CIO-style industrial unions political conservative,
racially/sexually exclusive, ill-equipped to deal w/ technological change—>form
of unionism fell at midcentury
Trying to monopolize labor market—>excluded a lot of different
populations from membership
○
Craft unions also supported municipal + state politicians who stood
against New Deal + liberal-labor coalition that sought to perpetuate its
program
○
Labor unions tend to want to control certain tech niche—>if employer
wants a new work process/technique, their labor monopoly gets
disrupted or even eliminated
○
•
Breaching the Color Line
Most skilled building-construction crafts, didn't have any racial issues—so much
racial exclusion
•
Mass-production industries/unions that tried to reorder labor relations within
nation's factories, shipyards, mills had to deal with issues of race though
Heyday of CIO, demographic revolution—>agricultural laborers became
urban ones
○
•
If certain industries wanted to be organized, they would need the loyalty of
many racial minorities
Difficulties:
African Americans skeptical bystanders—to much racism and craft-
union exclusion already
§
African Americans usually brought in as strikebreakers
§
○
•
Herrenvolk Democracy
White working-class racism all up in American political culture during
midcentury decades
•
"whiteness" of immigrant Americans took on sharper, more well-defined
edge—>fraternal organizations of foreign born lost so many members 1930s
and 1940s
What caused this subordination of older ethnic identities within
transcendent sense of whiteness
New Deal + new unions—>sense of social entitlement
§
Entire male generation participating in segregated military
§
○
•
In steel mills, shipyards, and auto plants
New trade unionism—>segregated, hierarchical job structures originally
put in place by pre-union managerial practice + racially stratified labor
market frozen in place
○
•
White workers started seeing their committeemen and union seniority system
as protectors of new sort of property right to job
•
Segregation didn't just stop in the work place
While some of the union meetings were integrated, everything else for
social and residential life was segregated and the races kept to
themselves mostly
Northern white workers committed New Deal Democrats but still
defended residential apartheid (segregation based on race) through
1940s and 1950s
§
○
•
"Negro and White: Unite and Fight"
Ideology less significant than practice and rhetoric super important too even on
the left where color line had been in place for more than 3 generations
○Didn't help that Socialists argued that Asians, African Americans, other
nonwhite people were a stupid/uninterested in revolutionary
advancement, don't know about how to be in solidarity, eager to serve
capital—>subversive of white wages and living standards
•
• At leadership level, blatant racism rare in years after 1935
○Old racism still there though even within formal union ideology—until end
of 1930s, progressive labor leadership took inspiration from socialist
tradition
○African American liberation would be a product of labor's victory instead
of precondition before advancements
§This is pretty similar to main body of New Deal thought on race
question
□ But there was a problem: Rooseveltian liberals timid when it
came to making direct assault on Southern racial norms—
thought that economic transformation of South would
basically get rid of racialism there (as their solution to the
"Negro question")
• This "solution" was soon replaced by Communist slogan of "Negro and White:
Unite and Fight"
○ironic—thought of African Americans in US as "national" minority
○But this helped set standard by which American labor-liberalism would
come to measure racial progress
§They wanted militant racial equality
○But this slogan couldn't be taken at face value
• Crucial to this understanding was that African Americans needed own leaders,
stewards, campaigns, even own unions within labor movement to make sure
that their own "national" interests had a hearing
○Main goals: power, income, racial dignity
§It'd be cool if they got integration and desegregation out of this too
• Rise of CIO—>new opportunities for black empowerment (81)—>cohort of post-
WWII civil rights activists
○They realized that they had more power if they stuck together
Shop-Floor Citizenship
• In both North and South black America really pro-union
○In the South though, union consciousness kind of embarrassing to CIO
leaders who feared that white workers would reject any union or
organization seen as mostly black or black loving
• Union movement still most favorable terrain at this time for which racial
liberalism could flourish + African Americans could advance their interests
• New unionism brought semblance of citizenship rights to shop floor (83)
○New Deal gave African Americans so many more rights years before they
got rid of the poll tax, the white primary, and the segregated schools
• CIO presence made it so that people didn't have to be so worried about being
fired for dumb things like being too curt with their employer
• But the kind of uniform wage raises generated by New Deal + trade unions
disproportionately benefited African American workers (84)
• Union contracts which raised and rationalized wage standard which eliminated
a bunch of inequities boosted black pay more than white
• Although blacks and whites would remain socially segregated, racism still had its
limits—they had shared dependence on wage labor—>forced them to
cooperate and even formed "solidarity"
The Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC)
• For first time since Reconstruction, federal government put racial discrimination
on national policy agenda
• Had an interracial staff + expansive mandate—>legitimized black protests,
asserting new social right to fairness on job and at hiring gate
• Unlike NLRB, worked with and through individuals
○Took complaints of workers, investigating grievances, issuing directive
orders
○Endorsed industrial version of new social citizenship
• Broad mandate: no discrimination against blacks or Jews, Hispanics, other
minorities
○Didn't really include gender though
• As an admin entity, they were super weak—couldn't do anything to change
segregation in armed forces + Southern federal discrimination policy
• But it was still pretty important—controversies that swirled around it warned of
the race and rights discourse that would come up again after the Congress
passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act (86)
○FEPC dealt with discrimination on a case by case basis
§But they would also find that discriminatory intent was hard to
prove against particular employer
• Also it helped advance new sense of militant industrial citizenship (87)—>wave
of direct, forceful action by black workers + allies turned into action
○Remarkable how blacks stood its ground, found allies, fought back
§"hate" strikes didn't intimidate them
New Deal Masculinity
• New unionism + New Deal didn't do much against rigidly gendered structure of
work + welfare during midcentury decades (88)
○Not a lot of feminism
○More concerned about restoration of male dignity and livelihood
• New Deal programs put very few women to work—more focused on employing
men
• Women unionists usually found in garment and electrical products trades,
clerical and sales work, canning and tobacco progressing
• Usually male union activists didn't welcome female leadership
○Women who played important roles in labor movement usually atypical:
divorcees, widows, political radicals, members of intensely union-
conscious households
• In beginning stages of union-building, women played important roe of linking
labor movement's shop activism to larger community
• NLRB policy, union leadership, popular consciousness started defining
contractual relationship at work site—>women's participation in movement
narrowed
○Their role became defined as being more supportive/supplemental
§During 1930s, a lot of women had been excluded from whole
categories of employment on basis of either gender or marital
status
§Many trade unions endorsed discriminatory practices
Equal Pay for Equal Work
• Institutional sexism just wouldn't work for during the war—>women workers
took advantage of the labor shortage to fill hundreds of job categories once
considered entirely "male"—>union movement became supporter for "equal
pay for equal work"
○Men feared that managerial adversaries would use tide of cheap women
workers to erode male wage standards—>this slogan would help reduce
capital's incentive to substitute female workers for male
• But this slogan didn't actually relieve paternalism practiced by so many
employers and unions toward women workers + didn't stop division of all jobs
into those labeled for women or for men
• Most employers kept de facto set of sex discriminations by dividing work into
jobs labeled "light" and "heavy"
• Most women burdened by "double day" whose impact could be felt at every
stage of life cycle
• Women usually worked in low-wage, non-union industries
• Labor liberals opposed social inequity—>trade unions and social feminists
opposed congressional enactment of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
○Mandated formal equality for women—>eliminate "protective" labor
legislation passed on behalf of women workers during Progressive era
§All this legislation had been based on patriarchal definition of
woman's moral and physical capacity
• Social feminists hoped there would be protective legislation for all
workers—>1938 Fair Labor Standards Act
○Abolished most child labor, put floor under factory wages, introduced the
40 hour work week
○Unfortunately racial and gender assumptions of New Deal-era legislators,
unionists, policy makers made sure that social wage standards would
barely help the people who needed it the most
• There was the idea about extent to which wage earner a legitimate,
independent "worker" shaped differential access of all citizens to new social
benefits offered 1930s and onward
○New Deal architects of federal social policy could escape through some
assumptions that privileged the male breadwinner and marginalized those
whose attachment to full-time work was insecure + whose work lives
depended on jobs in fields, kitchens, other jobs usually held by white
women or African Americans of both genders (96)
○Example of effects: unemployment insurance excluded 55 percent of all
African American workers and 80 percent of all women workers (96)
• Union commitment to equal treatment on job didn't do enough to level field
upon which women participated in the labor force
• Women's employment stability less than that of men—>women workers had
less seniority, lower pay, poorer pensions than that of male counterparts
• Quality of work site citizenship depended on larger economic and political
structures within which it was embedded
Lichtenstein, Ch. 2: Citizenship at Work
Wednesday, April 11, 2018 5:04 PM
