Best of
Labor

1993

Workers


SebastiĆ£o Salgado - 1993
    Salgado defines his work as "militant photography" dedicated to "the best comprehension of man"; over the decades he has bestowed great dignity on the most isolated and neglected among us-- from famine-stricken refugees in the Sahel to the indigenous peoples of South America. With "Workers," Salgado brings us a global epic that transcends mere image making to become an affirmation of the enduring spirit of working men and women. In this volume, three hundred fifty duotone photographs form an archaeological perspective of the activities that have defined hard work from the Stone Age through the Industrial Revolution to the present. With images of the infernal landscape of an Indonesian sulfur mine, the drama of traditional Sicilian tuna fishing, and the staggering endurance of Brazilian gold miners, Salgado unearths layers of visual information to reveal the ceaseless human activity at the core of modern civilization. "Workers" presents its subjects on several interactive levels: Salgado's introductory text expands his passionate photographic iconography, and extended captions, also written by Salgado, provide a historical and factual framework. Evoking the monumentality of Baroque sculpture, images of oil-fire fighters extinguishing Kuwaiti wells are informed by data detailing this perilous venture. Heroic photographs of Cuban and Brazilian peasants harvesting sugarcane are enriched by an overview of the history of the sugar trade, which documents centuries of colonialist exploitation. On the eve of the millennium, "Workers" serves as anelegy for the passing of traditional methods of labor and production. Yet its ultimate message is one of endurance and hope: entire Indian families serve as construction crews to build a dam that will bring life to their land, and laborers using contemporary technology connect England and France through Eurotunnel. Honoring the timeless and indomitable spirit of the manual laborer, "Workers" renders the human condition with honesty and respect.

Confessions of a Union Buster


Martin Jay Levitt - 1993
    This book is the story of a man who has decided to come in out of the cold, to clear his conscience, and to share the hard lessons he has learned. Line drawings.

Persistent Inequalities: Wage Disparity Under Capitalist Competition


Howard Botwinick - 1993
    In contrast, this work uses a classical Marxist analysis of real capitalist competition to show that substantial patterns of wage disparity can persist despite high levels of competition and significant degrees of labor mobility. Indeed, Howard Botwinick argues in this provocative work that capitalist competition often militates against the equalization of wage rates.An analytical strength of this new approach is that critical institutionalist insights concerning the impact of unions and industry structure can now be rigorously incorporated within a highly competitive framework. Thus, this book provides unorthodox economists with a robust alternative to efficiency wage theories, which are once again suggesting that unions have little long-term effect on the inter-industry wage structure. In addition to providing the basis for a new explanation for the persistence of race and gender inequality, the work has important implications for effective trade union strategies in an increasingly competitive environment. Contrary to corporate calls for team production systems and other forms of labor-management cooperation, Botwinick argues that labor's most effective strategy is to build wider levels of militant union organization that can once again take wages and working conditions out of capitalist competition.

Weathering the Storm: Working-Class Families from the Industrial Revolution to the Fertility Decline


Wally Seccombe - 1993
    In this challenging sequel to A Millennium of Family Change Wally Seccombe examines in detail the ways in which large-scale economic changes shape the microcosm of personal life.Seccombe argues that what we think of as the modern nuclear family only took shape relatively recently: whereas at the beginning of the nineteenth century families tended to contain several earners, it was not until the time of the First World War that the male breadwinner had become the norm. He traces the effects on the family of increasingly centralized manufacture, the separation of workplaces from the home neighbourhood, and the changes in domestic labour brought about by urban housing. And he documents how the introduction of compulsory schooling and the rise of birth control contributed to changes in the dynamic of the working-class family, as children are differentiated from adults and conjugal rights and duties renegotiated.Combining empirical scope with conceptual clarity, Weathering the Storm makes a decisive contribution to the study of family history.

The People v. Clarence Darrow: The Bribery Trial of America's Greatest Lawyer


Geoffrey Cowan - 1993
    A revisionist biography and a rich courtroom drama, here is a fascinating look at L.A. law at the turn of the century and the corruption of justice by the wealthy and powerful. 8 pages of photos.

Solidarity and Survival: An Oral History of Iowa Labor in the Twentieth Century


Shelton Stromquist - 1993
    Drawing on nearly one thousand interviews collected over more than a decade by oral historians working for the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, Shelton Stromquist presents the resonant voices of the men and women who defined a new, prominent place for themselves in the lives of their communities and in the politics of their state. Told largely in their own restrained yet powerful words, this is a story direct from daily experiences in shop and mine, home and neighborhood. The locus of the story is Iowa, but in a larger sense the experiences of Iowa's workers offer a window on the national changes that American workers brought to their towns and workplaces. Their sit-downs to win recognition, their shopfloor struggles to give meaning to contracts with employers, their day-to-day fights for racial and gender equality are part of a larger story of American workers as agents of their own lives in this century. Their diversity - as women, African Americans, and other minorities, as immigrants and the children of immigrants farmers who left the land, and finally as heirs of a strong union tradition - mirrors the diversity of the American working class. The collective impact of these voices is as deep and rich as Iowa soil. These workers' cumulative experiences give a human face to the changes that swept across the economic landscape of Iowa and the nation in the twentieth century.

Radicals of the Worst Sort: Laboring Women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1860-1912


Ardis Cameron - 1993
    Using the neighborhood perspective to explore the role of women in worker militancy, Cameron reveals the importance of female networks and organizational life in working-class culture and politics. Unionized women were labeled "radicals of the worst sort" because, in fighting for equality, they also rebelled against traditional economic and sexual hierarchies. Oral histories and detailed maps illuminate the setting and the dramatic story behind the famous Bread and Roses strike of 1912.

Proletarians of the North: A History of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917-1933


Zaragosa Vargas - 1993
    Many found work in agriculture, but thousands more joined the growing ranks of the industrial proletariat. Throughout the northern Midwest, and especially in Detroit, Mexican workers entered steel mills, packing houses, and auto plants, becoming part of the modern American working class.Zaragosa Vargas's work focuses on this little-known feature in the history of Chicanos and American labor. In relating the experiences of Mexicans in workplace and neighborhood, and in showing the roles of Mexican women, the Catholic Church, and labor unions, Vargas enriches our knowledge of immigrant urban life. His is an important work that will be welcomed by historians of Chicano Studies and American labor.

Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic


Christopher L. Tomlins - 1993
    The book is the most detailed study yet available of the intellectual and institutional processes that created the foundation categories framing all the basic legal relationships involving working people at work. But it also brings out the political and social significance of those categories, and of law's role in their creation. Tomlins argues that it is impossible to understand outcomes in the interaction between law and labor during the early Republic unless one also understands the preeminence that legal discourse was assuming at the time in American society as a whole, and the particular social and political reasons for that preeminence. Because of the breadth and novelty of its interpretation this is a book not just for those interested in the history of law or the history of labor, but for anyone interested in the broad stream of American political and social history.