Unions, Cartels, and the Political Economy of American Cities: the Chicago Flat Janitors\u27 Union in the Progressive Era and 1920s

In 1997, Ira Katznelson contributed to the ongoing discussion among social scientists and historians about how to analyze class formation and the development of the American state. He was particularly interested in tying this research to the history of liberalism in an effort to both historicize the generalizations of Louis Hartz and address the question of American exceptionalism. Evaluating the body of research, Katznelson argued that authors had too frequently abstracted the state from its context and then used it to explain the very phenomena that helped define the state\u27s character in the first place. In part to imbed the state more concretely in its environment, he suggested “a shift in angle of vision away from the state as such to the character of the rules and institutions that govern the transactions between the state and civil society.” This shift would also contribute to the study of America\u27s prevailing liberalism, which has shaped the environment of the working class and the state, even while its own particular character has been the subject of some of the most profound divisions in American public life. Using J. David Greenstone\u27s work, Katznelson defined liberalism as a “boundary condition,” that is, “‘a set of relatively permanent features of a particular context that affect causal relationships within it\u27 even as it remains subject to dispute.” In times of crisis, conflicts over liberalism\u27s “grammar of rules,” or it\u27s “bundle of institutions and norms,” spill across the line between state and civil society, because they involve redefining the relation between the two. 1 Footnotes 1 Ira Katznelson, “Working-Class Formation and American Exceptionalism, Yet Again,” in American Exceptionalism? US Working-Class Formation in an International Context, ed. Rick Halpern and Jonathan Morris (New York: St. Martin\u27s Press, 1997), 36–55, quotations on 40 and 42

Managing labour: UK and Australian employers in comparative perspective, 1900-50

The exceptionalism of Australian industrial relations has long been asserted. In particular, the Australian system of industrial arbitration has been argued to contrast markedly with other countries, such as Britain, which developed a more 'voluntarist' model of industrial regulation. However this distinction relies upon limited historical research of workplace-level developments. In this paper, we focus on a comparative analysis of employer practice in British and Australian workplaces during the first half of the twentieth century. While we find some differences in the nature and extent of management control between the British and Australian experience, what is more striking are the strong similarities in employer practice in work organisation, employment and industrial relations. While economic and institutional factors explain differences in employer practice, fundamental similarities appear to relate to the close economic and social linkages between British and Australian business

Protecting Fundamental Labor Rights: Lessons from Canada for the United States

This paper examines the decline in unionization in the United States that began to occur in about 1960. While various explanations have been put forward to explain this -- with many focusing on some form of structural changes to the economy or to the workforce, usually related to globalization or technological progress -- this paper focuses on the role that employer opposition to unions has played, together with relatively weak labor law. In order to fully flesh out the experience of the United States, it looks to the experience of Canada as the country most similar to it

A State’s Gendered Response to Political Instability: Gendering Labor Policy in Semi-Authoritarian El Salvador (1944-1972)

Unlike much of the gender and welfare literature, this study examines why a regime that constrains pressure from below would adopt gendered social policies. The Salvadoran case (1944-1972) suggests that political instability rather than societal pressures may prompt semi-authoritarian regimes to adopt gendered labor reforms. We extend the motivations for adopting gendered labor reforms to include co-opting labor by examining gendered labor reforms in the context of El Salvador’s historically contingent labor strategy. This gendered analysis helps explain how a semi-authoritarian regime secured political stability and reveals the special appeal gendered labor reforms may have to semi-authoritarian regimes

Subject: History

Compiled by Susan LaCette.History.pdf: 2571 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

American Labor History

To account for the persistent struggles of a working people that only episodically (and even then with hut a small minority) sought to transform democratic capitalism, and to do so without exaggerating the reality of employer or governmental opposition, will not produce an heroic synthesis of this country\u27s history, to be sure. But it could abet an even more serious appreciation of the highly complex social and political lives Americas working men and women

American Unionism and U.S. Immigration Policy

Throughout its lengthy history, few issues have caused the American labor movement more agony than immigration. It is ironic this should be the case as most adult immigrants directly enter the labor force. So eventually do most of their family members. But precisely because immigration affects the scale, geographical distribution, and skill composition of the labor force, it affects national, regional, and local labor market conditions. Hence, organized labor can never ignore immigration trends. Immigration has in the past and continues to affect the developmental course of American trade unionism. Labor\u27s responses, in turn, have significantly influenced the actual public policies that have shaped the size and character of immigrant entries