Labor in America: A History

Even since the last edition of this milestone text was released six years ago, unions have continued to shed members; union membership in the private sector of the economy has fallen to levels not seen since the nineteenth century; the forces of economic liberalisation (neo-liberalism), capital mobility, and globalisation have affected measurably the material standard of living enjoyed by workers in the United States and mass immigration from Latin America and Asia has continued to restructure the domestic labour force. Yet even in the face of an environment unfavourable to trade unionism and a decline in the number of organised workers, as well as the fear of stateless, if not faceless terrorism - the shadow of '911' in which we still live. Professor Dubofsky has in preparing this new edition of his classic text hewn to the lines laid out in the previous seven in seeking to encourage today's students of labour history to learn about those who built the United States and who will shape its future. In addition to taking the narrative right up to the present, a recent history that includes the election of 2008 as well as the tumultuous blow suffered by the U.S. and world economy in 2008-09, this eighth edition features an entirely new (fourth) bank of photographs and, in light of the avalanche of new scholarly work over the last decade, a complete overhauling of the book's extensive and critical Further Reading section in order to note the very best works from the profuse recent scholarship that explores the history of working people in all its diversity.

Table of Contents:
Preface ix 1. Colonial America 1 Life and Labor in the Colonies 6 Workers, Politics, and Revolution 15 2. The First Unions 20 Early Unions 23 Law vs. Labor 28 Growth of Labor Organization 30 3. The Workingmen s Parties 33 Leadership 37 Political Action 42 4. Labor Strength in the 1830s 48 Union Growth 49 A National Labor Movement? 53 An Urge to Strike 54 An Employer Counterattack 57 The National Trades Union 60 The Decline of Unionism 64 5. The Impact of Industrialism 66 Industrialism, Technological Change, and Reform 69 Rebuilding a Union Movement 79 6. Toward National Organization 85 The National Labor Union 90 The NLU and Social Reform 95 Depression and Union Decline 99 7. An Era of Upheaval 102 Unrest and Conflict 103 The Great Railroads Strikes 106 The Haymarket Riot 110 8. The Rise and Decline of the Knights of Labor 114 Origins of the Knights of Labor 116 The Rise of the Knights 125 The Decline of the Knights 131 9. The American Federation of Labor 135 Triumph of Business Unionism 136 Samuel Gompers and the New Unionism 138 Emergence of the AFL 141 AFL Principles and Policies 145 10. Homestead and Pullman 149 The Great Pullman Strike and Boycott 154 Labor, Populism, and Socialism 161 Labor in Ebb Tide 164 11. The Progressive Era 166 Employers and Unions: A New Understanding 168 The Anthracite Coal Strike, 1902 170 Employers Fight Back 175 AFL and Political Action 180 Organizing Immigrant Workers 185 12. Thunder on the Left 189 The Wobblies 190 The Spirit of the IWW 194 The Lawrence Strike 195 Repressing the IWW, 1913-1919 199 The Meaning of the IWW 202 13. The First World War and After 204 Postwar Labor Upheaval 209 Year of Strikes, 1919 219 Labor Militancy 218 14. Labor in Retreat 221 The American Plan and the Open Shop 225 Welfare Capitalism 229 Labor and Insurgent Politics 233 The AFL after Gompers 235 The Demoralization of Organized Labor 237 15. The New Deal 242 Section 7 (a) 243 A New Unionism and Its Limits 245 The Wagner Act 264 The New Deal Political Order 264 16. The Rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations 264 John L. Lewis and the CIO 268 The Impact of the CIO 281 17. Labor and Politics 286 War, Lewis, and the Election of 1940 292 18. The Second World War 303 The National War Labor Board 313 The 1945-1946 Strike Wave 317 A New Industrial Relations System 323 19. From Taft-Hartley to the Merger of the AFL and the CIO 325 AFL and the CIO 325 Labor, Taft-Hartley, and Politics 329 A United Labor Movement 337 AFL-CIO: A Sleepy Monopoly 342 20. Disappointed Hopes 344 Labor s Decline 345 Corruption, Politics, and Labor s Travail 348 Race, War, and Agricultural Workers 361 A Satisfied Labor Movement 364 21. Hard Times: Workers and Union, 1973-2000 365 An End to Economic Growth? 366 Restructuring the Labor Force 370 The Rise of Public Employee Unionism 374 Labor and Politics 377 The Crisis of Unionism 385 Lane Kirkland and Dashed Hopes 389 Union Troubles in Mass-Production Industries 392 Deregulation and Union Decline in Transportation 395 A Mixed Bag 397 A New Labor-Left Alliance 401 A Dim Future for Labor? 403 22. Hope and Despair: Workers and Unions Since 2000 405 Labor and Politics 405 A New Unionism 410 Hard and Dangerous Work 412 A New War Economy 414 Toward an Unequal Society 415 The Wal-Mart Effect 418 Labor s Travails Cause Dissension 420 Triumph and Tribulation 425 Whither Labor? 433 Further Reading 435 Index 463 Photos Following Pages 32, 188, 324, 364