Year: 1988
Type: article
Abstract: sponsored by the Department of History and the Walter R Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University, was held in Detroit on October 22-24, 1987.Approximately 225 people participated in sixteen sessions.Average attendance at the sessions was about forty.Labor as an agent of protest and reform emerged as the theme of the first day.Two meetings explored the interplay of class, ethnicity, and race in fostering labor militancy.In "Irish Workers/Working Irish: Labor Protest in the West," chaired by JoEllen Vinyard (Eastern Michigan University), David Brundage (University of California, Santa Cruz) examined the influence of the Land League on a radical movement among Irish-Americans in Denver at the turn of the century.David Emmons (University of Montana) discussed the Irish component in the Butte copper strike of 1917.In "Maritime Workers and Labor Radicalism," Eric Arnesen (Harvard University) and Richard Boyden (University of California, Berkeley) analyzed class and racial unrest among New Orleans waterfront workers and shipyard workers in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, respectively.Bruce Nelson (Dartmouth University) contributed a paper on J. Vance Thompson, a seamen's union leader who moved from business unionism to syndicalism.Melvyn Dubofsky (SUNY, Binghamton) chaired the meeting.Another set of sessions, "Unionization in the South" and "Class Conflict in the Nineteenth Century," concentrated on immediate obstacles to effective organization.John Selby (Roanoke College) concluded that successful organizing drives in North Carolina were possible when the state could be neutralized.Daniel Clark (Duke University) described how workers used grievance procedures to frustrate management efforts to alter shop-floor practices.Gary M. Fink (Georgia State University) presided over the discussion.In the other session, Katherine G. Aiken (University of Idaho) and Peter Way (University of Maryland) highlighted the role of changing technology in mining and the peculiar financial demands of canal building in exacerbating employer-employee tensions in those industries.The other two sessions of the first day dealt with "Unions and Civil Rights in the 1960s" and "Labor and Early 20th Century Economic Perspectives."With John Bernard (Oakland University) as chair of the first session, Kevin Boyle (University of
Author: Stanley Shapiro
Institution: Wayne State University
Language: English
Topic: Labor Movements and Unions
Subfield: Public Administration
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2157608641