The Union Makes Us Strong
The Union Makes Us Strong
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American labour history is typically interpreted by scholars as a history of defeat. Hidden by this conventional wisdom are a handful of militant unions that did not follow the putative Congress of Industrial Organizations trajectory. Based on three years of ethnographic research, this book examines a union that organised itself to systematically challenge management's rule on the shopfloor: San Francisco's longshore union. American unionism looks quite different than conventional wisdom suggests when everyday union practices are observed. American labour's trajectory, this book argues, is neither inevitable nor determined; militant, democratic forms of unionism are possible in the United States; and collective bargaining does not automatically eliminate contests for workplace control. The contract is a bargain that reflects and reproduces fundamental disagreement; it states how production and conflict will proceed.
- Interesting examination of a vital area of US labour history
- Challenges the conventional notion that American labour history is a history of defeated militant unionism
- Based on three years of ethnographic research
Product details
December 1997Paperback
9780521629683
388 pages
228 × 152 × 26 mm
0.525kg
8 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Notes on unpublished sources
- Part I. Labour Radicalism Revisited:
- 1. Unsettling old scores: labour radicalism encounters conventional wisdom
- 2. Sealing the fate of radical labour theoretically
- 3. A framework for American unionism
- Part II. Local Community and 'Tumultuous' Democracy: the Socio-Cultural Foundations of Unionism on the San Francisco Waterfront:
- 4. Political community on the San Francisco waterfront
- 5. The structure of participationist politics
- 6. Being political in Local 10
- Part III. Unionism, Work and Technological Change:
- 7. Work, knowledge and control: conventional longshoring
- 8. Work, knowledge and control: containerised longshoring
- 9. 'Doing the right thing': working principles and codes of conduct
- Part IV. Waging the Battle for Workplace Control on Contractual Terrain:
- 10. Who decides how to work?
- 11. Which side's language shall govern?
- 12. By whose principles will merit be rewarded?
- Part V. Agreeing to Disagree: Being Defensibly Disobedient:
- 13. Translating troubles into grievable issues
- 14. 'We essentially have no contract with you': keeping the agreement
- 15. Constructing and maintaining the appearance of co-operation
- Conclusion: Trade union exceptionalism or prefigurative politics?
- Appendix: doing field research - an ethnographic account
- References
- Name index
- Subject index.
