NLFXXX10.1177/1095796017745037New Labor ForumEidlin and Uetricht research-article7450372017

Is There Light at the End of the Tunnel? How Can Organized Labor Survive and Thrive in Dark Times

New Labor Forum 10–­1 The Problem of Workplace Copyright © 2017, The Murphy Institute, City University of New York Democracy Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/1095796017745037 10.1177/1095796017745037 journals.sagepub.com/home/nlf

Barry Eidlin1 and Micah Uetricht1

Keywords democracy, trade unions, labor, working class, workplace control

Most Americans believe in the idea of democ- activities, or limit their breaks, including where racy, however frustrated they may be by the gap and when they can use the bathroom. With few between the promise and reality. Some would exceptions, employers are under no compulsion argue that the current U.S. regime is closer to an to guarantee due process to those they employ. oligarchy or plutocracy than a democracy, but They can largely hire, fire, and discipline work- all save for a small fringe would agree that the ers at will. To the extent that employers treat United States should be a democracy—that “the their workers well, it is entirely at their discre- people” should rule. Likewise, most Americans tion, as revocable and subject to change without have a strong sense of having certain democratic notice as a king’s writ. rights—freedom of speech, freedom of assem- Even for the 10 percent of U.S. workers who bly, due process under the law, and freedom have a union, their scope of activity is usually from unlawful search and seizure. While the restricted by a more or less expansive “manage- ability to exercise these rights remains far too ment’s rights clause.” Today’s unions may dependent on skin color, zip code, and bank guarantee certain basic civil liberties in the account, the widespread sense of moral outrage workplace, but do little to challenge manage- when these rights are violated shows the extent ment’s sovereignty in the workplace. to which people believe in them. However, a vast majority of Americans live a Past generations of workers paradox: they check their deeply held demo- and policy makers drew much cratic rights at the door every day when they closer links between political and show up for work. That is because the rules and rights associated with democracy only apply to economic democracy. people’s relationship to their government, not their employer. Citizens in a democracy remain This sharp divide may not seem out of the subjects in the workplace—the place where most ordinary today, but this was not always the case. adults spend a large part of their waking hours. Past generations of workers and policy makers drew much closer links between political and Citizens in a democracy remain economic democracy. Understanding how and why those links frayed, then dissolved, can help subjects in the workplace—the explain the paradox of workplace democracy place where most adults spend a that most workers experience today—and sug- large part of their waking hours. gest possibilities for resolving that paradox.

Employers can limit what people can and cannot say at work, or where and when they assemble. They can intrude into people’s pri- 1McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada vate lives, monitoring their private correspon- Corresponding Author: dence and keeping tabs on their non-work Barry Eidlin, [email protected] 2 New Labor Forum 00(0)

The Labor Question and these groups of workers did not recognize a Labor Republicanism stark divide between political and economic democracy—and vigorously sought to exert The link between political and economic sovereign control in the workplace. democracy was strong following the Civil War, in which one of the central questions was the Scientific Management and compatibility of an economic system based on Workers’ Control unfree labor with a political system based on the idea of individual freedom. In the war’s While political democracy continued to evolve aftermath, the “labor question” emerged as one into the , workplace relations of the central economic and political problems. remained in a quasi-feudal state, taking for While the immediate labor question involved granted the employer’s sovereign control of the struggles over integrating the newly freed black workplace.9 population in the South via Reconstruction,1 it For their part, many workers did not readily spilled over to struggles in the North led by accept their corresponding role as servants in white workers who insisted that “social recon- the expanding industrial economy. In major struction be extended northward.”2 strike waves in the early 1900s, around World As mass industrialization escalated, the War I, and then the 1930s and 1940s, workers Civil War–era idea of “free labor” as a require- engaged in what David Montgomery called ment for democratic citizenship took on new “control strikes”—strikes not simply over meanings. Whereas President Lincoln and his wages but over issues that challenged employer contemporaries saw “free labor” for wages as a sovereignty such as “enforcement of work way station to self-reliance as a small employer, rules, union recognition, discharge of unpopu- for postbellum workers, reliance on wage labor lar foremen or retention of popular ones, regu- for survival would be more permanent.3 This lation of layoffs or dismissals, and actions of did not mean, however, that they accepted the sympathy with other groups of workers.”10 The premise of wage labor. Rather, groups like the ongoing conflict ensured that the “labor ques- Knights of Labor called for the abolition of the tion,” the question of the compatibility of wage system,4 recognizing, as organizer George industrial capitalism with political democracy, E. McNeill declared in 1877, “an inevitable and remained a pressing social issue; as Louis irresistible conflict between the wage-system of Brandeis put it, “the paramount economic ques- labor and the republican system of govern- tion in this country.”11 ment.”5 They saw a close link between eco- Employers responded with the standard rep- nomic and political democracy, and argued that ertoire of repression, to which they added tech- they could not be full citizens in a republic if nical, ideological, and organizational tools for they were wage slaves at work.6 reasserting management control. At the techni- This “labor republicanism” necessarily took cal level, increased mechanization appropriated both political and economic forms. Groups like workers’ knowledge of the production process the Knights, the National Labor Union, the and undermined their autonomy, while embed- Industrial Congress, and local trade assemblies ding management’s control in the regular, moved between political demands like the eight- relentless pace of the machines. At the ideologi- hour day and efforts to exercise citizenship in the cal and organizational levels, scientific man- workplace.7 They fought to maintain craft auton- agement and the parallel rise of human omy for skilled workers, lend mutual support resources management sought to supplant the through strike actions, and articulate and enforce idea of workplace democracy with that of man- work rules. Drawing a clear line between the agement as a progressive, rational, efficient rules governing their lives as citizens and those force that could address workers’ needs while governing their lives as workers, they referred to retaining its own control.12 Many employers these work rules as “legislation.”8 added to this a series of employee benefits Many of these efforts came up short, as pow- known as “welfare capitalism,” using material erful employers asserted their sovereignty over incentives to convince workers to cede work- the workplace. But what is important is that place sovereignty to management voluntarily.13 Eidlin and Uetricht 3

These management tools put a lid on conflict bring a measure of citizenship into the work- over workplace control after World War I, but place, what came to be known as “industrial the conflict flared up with renewed fervor in the democracy” focused on guaranteeing basic 1930s and 1940s, highlighting three key points civil rights like freedom of association and due related to workplace democracy. First, the core process. Questions of workplace sovereignty battles of the period were primarily over the and control were cast aside.21 question of workplace control—not pay and benefits. From the eruptions of 1934, to the “sit- The Limits of Industrial down fever” of 1936-1937, to the wave of World Democracy War II wildcats, workers were calling employ- ers’ sovereign control of the workplace into The separation between workplace civil rights question.14 Second, they were able to mount this and workplace sovereignty that characterized challenge to employer sovereignty thanks to postwar industrial democracy resulted from dense networks of formal and informal shop- three factors. First, employers who chafed at floor organization.15 Third, these networks were even the Wagner Act’s partial infringement on held together by a “militant minority,” a layer of their sovereignty launched a systematic cam- politically conscious, trained organizers from paign even before the war was over to “[put] various radical Left traditions. Many were businessmen back in a position of leadership in Communists, but they also included Trotskyists the national economy” and reassert their “right and other strains of socialists.16 to manage.”22 Second, judges and legislators The struggles of the 1930s and 1940s marked helped employers by “deradicalizing” the a decisive and contradictory shift in the fight Wagner Act via legal rulings and the 1947 Taft– over workplace democracy, establishing the Hartley Act.23 These took particular aim at the Wagner Act model as a basis for extending cer- forms of collective action that workers had used tain democratic rights into the workplace. In to assert workplace sovereignty, including sit- addition to marking a significant encroachment down strikes and solidarity actions.24 Third, on employer sovereignty, the Wagner Act and unions undermined their own capacity to assert other New Deal reforms sought to expand workplace sovereignty by expelling most of the notions of citizenship. Seeing economic secu- “militant minorities” of Communists and other rity as essential for full political citizenship, radical shop-floor leaders that had been at the New Deal policy and rhetoric, particularly forefront of union organizing up to that point.25 President Roosevelt’s idea of the “Four Freedoms,” echoed the old labor republican . . . [U]nions undermined their calls to link economic and political democ- 17 own capacity to assert workplace racy. As such, they succeeded in taking “the sovereignty by expelling most of labor question” off the table. There was now an answer to that question, and it could be summed the “militant minorities” of up in two words: collective bargaining.18 Communists and other radical However, if the New Deal expanded notions shop-floor leaders . . . of citizenship, it also limited them in crucial ways. In addition to reinforcing existing gender Instead, CIO leaders like Philip Murray and and racial inequalities, as many scholars have hoped to build labor’s postwar noted,19 the New Deal reoriented conceptions power and influence by deepening the tripartite of economic citizenship around guaranteeing forms of political bargaining that the Roosevelt an “American standard of living,” a level of administration had set up. Acutely aware of the material security that would allow (primarily need to secure management’s participation in white, male) workers to support their families their vision of “Industrial Peace for the Postwar and participate fully in society. It was a vision Period,” they proposed a deal: if management of economic citizenship aimed at workers’ lives would support the Wagner Act collective bar- as family members and consumers, not as gaining framework and commit to a high-wage, workers.20 While collective bargaining did high-employment postwar economy, unions 4 New Labor Forum 00(0) would defend “a system of private competitive Unionized workers may have enjoyed good pay capitalism,” which specifically included “the and benefits, but what they really wanted was inherent right and responsibility of manage- “to be treated like American workers, human ment to direct the operations of an enterprise.”26 beings, not as pieces of profit-making machin- However, they soon realized that such a grand ery,” as the bargaining committee at a striking bargain was not on offer. Not only could they auto plant in Lordstown, Ohio put it in 1972.32 not get management to agree to their terms, they could not even get management to agree to The Disappearance of participate in a tripartite bargaining structure. Workplace Democracy With their power and legitimacy restored after the war, management simply reasserted its As dehumanizing as the situation at Lordstown inherent right to manage. It did not need to and other unionized factories was in the early negotiate over the issue.27 1970s, at least those workers had unions to pro- vide organizational infrastructure for their pro- With tripartite grand bargains off test. But as union decline accelerated under President Reagan, the concept of industrial the table, postwar labor leaders democracy came to appear quaint. With unions settled for a more restricted form losing ground, helplessly watching factories of industrial democracy. shutter or negotiating over how deep conces- sions would go, a new discourse on redesigning With tripartite grand bargains off the table, workplaces for the modern era focused on postwar labor leaders settled for a more restricted union–management partnerships and the “team form of industrial democracy.28 The basic terms concept.” Management techniques like the were set out in the 1950 “Treaty of Detroit,” the Toyota Production System and the broader move five-year contract negotiated between Walter toward “lean production” became central to Reuther’s United Automobile Workers (UAW) management’s assertion of dominance over the and General Motors: union recognition and regu- shop floor. Rhetorically, these ideas emphasized lar wage and benefit increases in exchange for workers as agents; after all, entering into a “part- management’s control over production.29 This was nership” or choosing to be on a “team” with a deal that could promote economic citizenship management requires an active decision to col- defined as access to an “American standard of liv- laborate by workers. But as critics pointed out at ing.” But it rejected a vision of citizenship that the time, the partnership models quickly proved included the workplace. That would remain man- to be little more than schemes to force workers to agement’s sovereign domain, with certain civil set the terms of their own exploitation, covered 33 rights spelled out and enforced via a bureaucratic with a thin sheen of democratic participation. grievance procedure. What rights were not spelled out were reserved to management, as the soon-to- . . . [Union management] . . . be-ubiquitous “management rights clause” in partnership models quickly proved 30 nearly every union contract would stipulate. to be little more than schemes to This restricted industrial democracy did force workers to set the terms of raise living standards for workers overall in the postwar decades and continues to provide an their own exploitation, covered economic advantage for the small percentage of with a thin sheen of democratic U.S. workers who are union members today. participation. But the lack of workplace sovereignty or con- trol took its toll, manifesting as a wave of wild- As the new millennium began, and capital cat strikes in the late 1960s and early 1970s.31 continued to rack up wins in what former UAW While popular media accounts focused on President Douglas Fraser called a “one-sided generational shifts and individual worker alien- class war,”34 the rhetoric of union–management ation—the “blue collar blues”—the real prob- collaboration and partnership fell silent— lem was unchecked management authority. scarcely any unions were left to collaborate Eidlin and Uetricht 5 with. Those that remained had all but aban- team concept” in the 1980s, at least paid lip ser- doned the workplace as a terrain of struggle. vice to worker participation. Today’s popular The economic effects of that victory are well business books take management’s control of known: real wages stagnated as productivity the workplace as a given; workers should climbed, corporate profits constantly broke expect to do the work of two or three employ- new records, and economic inequality climbed ees, or be downsized or forced to switch careers to its highest level since the .35 every few years—and be grateful for the new But this weakening of worker power also made opportunities it produces.39 Although organized for a bleak landscape at the workplace level. labor has not been completely vanquished, its Unfettered by organized labor, companies campaigns have not focused on democracy or could do as they pleased in the workplace, from control of the shop floor. Living-wage cam- major decisions about opening and closing paigns have won some major pay raises for worksites to inflicting ever-accumulating, quo- non-union workers in cities like Baltimore, but tidian slights and indignities. Factories contin- have left control of the shop floor largely ued to be shuttered and moved overseas—or untouched. Likewise, the Fight for $15 cam- down the road to lower-paid, non-union plants; paign has not only set a bold standard for the white-collar workforces similarly saw mergers minimum pay workers deserve, but won tangi- and “downsizing.” In all sectors, workers saw ble victories establishing a $15 hourly wage whatever grip they had on their workplaces slip floor in cities like Seattle. Still, control of the away, as management demanded more respon- workplace—particularly despotic in the fast- sibilities, greater output, and longer hours. food industry—has mostly been off the table. In addition, management expanded more granular forms of control on the job. Employers Although organized labor has not vastly increased the use of non-compete been completely vanquished, clauses, forcing everyone from factory workers its campaigns have not focused to fast-food sandwich makers to sign agree- ments limiting workers’ freedom to leave a on democracy or control on the given workplace and find work in a similar shop floor. field. One industry estimate suggests that the use of such agreements has tripled since 2000.36 Labor scholar and strategist Jane McAlevey Employers continued to use technology to con- argues that “New Labor,” the progressive wing trol the workplace—and their workers. For of the labor movement clustered around the example, in West Hollywood, California, Hyatt SEIU and other reform-minded unions, has Hotel housekeeping workers reported being shifted away from workplace fights to focus on given iPods outfitted with a program in which tactics like “corporate campaigns,” which lever- they had to log the moment they started clean- age strategic research to pressure corporations, ing a room and the moment they finished.37 but leave little role for workers. This shift has Even keeping workers’ freedom over bodily furthered unions’ all but total disinterest in chal- functions was a losing battle. There was a con- lenging management’s sovereign control of the tinuous stream of lawsuits and public conflicts workplace. Even in labor’s progressive wing, the 40 over workers being permitted to use the bath- question of democracy at work has been ceded. room, such as the unionized Jim Beam distillery workers in Kentucky in 2002 who sued their Bringing Democracy Back to employer after they were disciplined for reliev- Work ing themselves outside of company-approved times, as well as forcing female workers to But not all unions have given up on the labor report the onset of their menstrual cycles.38 question. Some teachers, unions, such as those As management control over the workplace in Chicago and Washington State, have made consolidated, workplace democracy as an idea resisting what Shawn Gude has called “the evaporated. Business discussions of “industrial industrial classroom” central to their organiz- democracy” in the postwar period, and “the ing.41 This includes battles over large class 6 New Labor Forum 00(0) sizes, the overuse of standardized testing, unchecked employer sovereignty impeded excessive paperwork, and teacher evaluations workers’ ability to exercise their full citizenship pegged to student performance. Washington rights, posing a challenge for democracy. teachers engaged in a series of one-day strikes Today, with economic inequality and manage- in 2015 to demand reduced class sizes along- ment’s control of the workplace at levels not side hikes in compensation, and backed a bind- seen since that Gilded Age, the labor question ing ballot initiative to significantly reduce class has renewed relevance. sizes that eventually passed.42 The postwar Wagner Act model of industrial Nurses unions won a hard-fought battle in democracy was always an incomplete answer California in 2004 to establish a maximum nurse- to the labor question. But the employer offen- to-patient ratio in the state’s hospitals and have sive of the past three decades has left that model zealously defended the law—the only one of its in tatters. Finding an answer to today’s labor kind in the nation—from health care companies question involves figuring out a new model for looking to chip away at it. The law provides the exercising political and economic citizenship. basis for a modicum of control on the hospital Such a model requires three components: floor, allowing nurses to tend to fewer patients in civil rights, including due process and freedom a given shift. And the Fight for $15 has recently of speech and assembly, particularly the right to prioritized bringing an end to on-call scheduling strike43; economic security, including decent practices—in which workers are kept in the dark wages and benefits; and a degree of workplace about their work schedule until sometimes hours sovereignty. Updated forms of collective bar- before a shift begins, making impossible the gaining and government regulations can go a planning and living of a normal life. long way toward promoting the first two. The While most workers continue to check their third is more challenging, because it requires a democratic rights at the door of the warehouse, more direct confrontation with employers’ school, and hospital every day, these examples power. History suggests that employers can tol- suggest a hunger among workers for organizing erate having to pay more in wages and benefits, around issues of workplace democracy—and or even having to provide certain basic proce- point the way to developing a new model for dural rights. But challenges to their workplace exercising political and economic citizenship. sovereignty are a bridge too far. Even at times A century ago, many recognized that prob- of mass worker upsurge like the 1930s and lems of low pay, long or irregular hours, arbi- 1940s, employers clung tenaciously to their trary treatment, and other issues arising from “right to manage.” At a moment when they are

Working Conditions in the United States: Results of the 2015 American Working Conditions Survey in which 3,066 U.S. workers were polled by the RAND Corporation, Harvard Medical School, and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

•• While 80 percent of American workers have steady and predictable work through- out the year, more than 33 percent of American workers have no control over their work schedules and only 15 percent of workers can fully determine their own hours. •• While more than 80 percent of workers say they get to solve problems and try out their own ideas at work, only 57 percent of workers surveyed can take breaks when they want to and only 31 percent chose with whom they work. •• Nearly 55 percent of the workers surveyed face unpleasant and potentially hazard- ous working conditions. •• Nearly 20 percent of American workers are exposed to hostile or threatening social environments at work. Eidlin and Uetricht 7 reticent even to grant concessions on wages and online resources focused on building that mili- benefits, a fight for greater workplace control tant minority. Such programs connect workers will be daunting. and reform-focused union locals across differ- Compounding the problem of challenging ent cities, states, and countries, with a focus on employers’ sovereignty in the workplace is the practical organizing skills. These networks problem of defining the modern workplace and could play key roles in future efforts at organiz- identifying the employer. Fragmented forms of ing, articulating, and enforcing new concep- work organization and byzantine corporate own- tions of workplace democracy. They could train ership structures mean that the location of and mobilize shop-floor activists who could not employers’ power may be far removed from only serve in day-to-day battles over shop-floor where workers are working, both physically and grievances and contract campaigns, but in agi- legally.44 Establishing a clear understanding of tating their coworkers specifically around the who exactly is accountable for workplace condi- lack of full citizenship rights on the job. tions is essential to giving workers an opportu- nity to seek redress for everything from low pay Many union organizers today note to workplace despotism. When an Uber driver’s that even in low-wage workplaces, app is deactivated by the company, or a temp agency refuses to renew a worker’s contract, the issue that moves workers to workers have little recourse: there is no boss to action is not low wages—it is lack confront. If these workers are to exercise any of respect at work. level of democratic control of their work, they must be able to confront their boss as a boss. To In addition, even though today’s left pales in do so, the boss must be brought out from behind comparison with the left that built the veils of subcontracting and independent con- minority currents of the 1930s and 1940s, radical tracting that currently obfuscate what are funda- politics are again catching on. The Democratic mentally management–worker relationships. Socialists of America, for example, has seen an Strategic research is crucial for untangling explosion in membership in the past year and a structures of corporate ownership and control, half, growing from eight thousand members and exposing management’s game of “hide the before ’ presidential campaign to boss.” The core challenge is to find ways to thirty thousand today. If even a portion of that translate the leverage that strategic research membership dedicated itself to rank-and-file creates outside the workplace into power struggle, as Communist, Trotskyist, and other exerted at the workplace. That requires bring- leftist groups did in the past, and connected the ing workers themselves back into the picture. struggle for democracy at work to their concep- Voluntary agreements and government regula- tions of a just and democratic world, the labor tions can start shifting the balance of power at question could again be central to contemporary work, but without a mechanism for day-to-day worker struggles. enforcement, they will fall short.45 Democracy on the job is not merely a niche The specific forms this new workplace orga- issue primarily of interest to clueless intellectuals, nization may take are yet to be determined, but nor is it a nice “add-on” that must take a back previous efforts at expanding worker sovereignty seat to more pressing issues. It is an essential underline the importance of “militant minorities” part of any strategy for rebuilding working- in the workplace. Such currents within labor exist class power. Although they may not yet articu- today and could expand in the future. late it as such, workers experience the stark gap While currently not at the scale needed, between democratic citizenship rights in the some cross-union efforts suggest the kinds of broader society and rights on the job every time tools that could help rebuild this critical work- they are subject to arbitrary procedural changes place infrastructure. The Labor Notes project, on the job that they have no say in, or when a for example, holds local and national confer- boss refuses to let them use the bathroom. Many ences and distributes magazines, books, and union organizers today note that even in 8 New Labor Forum 00(0) low-wage workplaces, the issue that most 5. Quoted in Richard Oestreicher, “Urban moves workers to action is not low wages—it is Working-Class Political Behavior and Theories lack of respect at work. That lack of respect is of American Electoral Politics, 1870-1940,” intimately tied to a sense of powerless on the The Journal of American History 74, no. 4 job. Organizers and rank-and-file activists can (1988): 1259. 6. Alex Gourevitch, From Slavery to the help their coworkers connect the dots between Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and these daily petty indignities and the broader Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century regime of despotism they toil under, and articu- (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, late a compelling alternative vision of demo- 2014); Joseph Gerteis, Class and the Color cratically run workplaces. Line: Interracial Class Coalition in the Knights Such a vision could begin to provide an of Labor and the Populist Movement (Durham: answer to a labor question that remains as impor- Duke University Press, 2007); Montgomery, tant as ever, even though it has faded from view. “Labor and the Republic in Industrial America.” At a moment when the idea of democracy writ 7. Montgomery, Beyond Equality. large is under attack from demagogues and tech- 8. David Montgomery, Workers’ Control in nocrats alike, a renewed push to expand democ- America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). racy and citizenship into the workplace could 9. Karen Orren, Belated Feudalism: Labor, the offer a galvanizing framework for reaffirming Law, and Liberal Development in the United the fundamental idea that the people should rule. States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Acknowledgments 10. Montgomery, Workers’ Control in America, 98. Barry Eidlin would like to thank Pablo Gaston, Kim 11. Quoted in Steve Fraser, “The ‘Labor Question,’” Moody, and Kim Voss. Micah Uetricht would like to in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, thank Sam Lewis. 1930-1980, ed. Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), Declaration of Conflicting Interests 55; Rosanne Currarino, The Labor Question in America: Economic Democracy in the Gilded The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of inter- Age (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010). est with respect to the research, authorship, and/or 12. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly publication of this article. Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Funding Press, 1974); Montgomery, Workers’ Control The author(s) received no financial support for the in America; Chris Nyland and Kyle Bruce, research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. “Democracy or Seduction? The Demonization of Scientific Management and the Deification of Human Relations,” in The Right and Labor in Notes America, ed. Nelson Lichtenstein and Elizabeth 1. W. E. B. Dubois, Black Reconstruction in Tandy Shermer (Philadelphia: University of America (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1935); Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 42-76. Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of 13. Sanford M. Jacoby, Modern Manors: Welfare Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Capitalism since the New Deal (Princeton: Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901 (Cambridge: Princeton University Press, 1997). Harvard University Press, 2001). 14. For the 1930s, see Irving Bernstein, Turbulent 2. David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933- and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872: With 1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970); for the a Bibliographical Afterword (New York: Alfred wartime strike wave, see Nelson Lichtenstein, A. Knopf, 1967), ix. Labor’s War at Home: The CIO in World War II 3. Montgomery, Beyond Equality; Cedric de Leon, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). The Origins of Right to Work (Ithaca: Cornell 15. For examples, see Judith Stepan-Norris, “The University Press, 2015). Making of Union Democracy,” Social Forces 4. David Montgomery, “Labor and the Republic in 76, no. 2 (1997): 475-510; Rick Halpern, Down Industrial America: 1860-1920,” Le Mouvement on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers Social 111 (April 1980): 201-15. in Chicago’s Packinghouses, 1904-54 (Urbana: Eidlin and Uetricht 9

University of Illinois Press, 1997); Grace 1945), Box 842, Folder Public Relations Palladino, “Building a Union: The Early History Policy Committee May–June 1945; Howell of UE Local 610,” Western Pennsylvania John Harris, The Right to Manage: Industrial History 67, no. 1 (1984): 1-15; Montgomery, Relations Policies of American Business in Workers’ Control in America; David Brody, the 1940s (Madison: University of Wisconsin Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Press, 1982). Twentieth Century Struggle (Oxford: Oxford 23. Karl E. Klare, “Judicial Deradicalization of the University Press, 1980); Jim Pope, “Worker Wagner Act and the Origins of Modern Legal Lawmaking, Sit-Down Strikes, and the Shaping Consciousness, 1937-1941,” Minnesota Law of American Industrial Relations, 1935-1958,” Review 62 (1977): 265-339; Nelson Lichtenstein, Law and History Review 24, no. 1 (April 1, “Taft-Hartley: A Slave-Labor Law,” Catholic 2006): 45-113. University Law Review 47 (1997): 763. 16. David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of 24. Paul C. Mishler, “Trade Unions in the United Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American States and the Crisis in Values: Towards a New Labor Activism, 1865-1925 (Cambridge: Labor Movement,” Notre Dame Journal of Cambridge University Press, 1987); Rosemary Law, Ethics & Public Policy 20, no. 2 (2006): Feurer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 861-71. 1900-1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois 25. Stepan-Norris and Zeitlin, Left Out. Press, 2006); Judith Stepan-Norris and Maurice 26. Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Zeitlin, Left Out: Reds and America’s Industrial Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate Unions (Cambridge: Cambridge University of American Labor (New York: Basic Books, Press, 2003); Farrell Dobbs, Teamster Power 1995). (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973). 27. Harris, The Right to Manage; Barry Eidlin, 17. Currarino, The Labor Question in America; Labor and the Class Idea in the United Nelson Lichtenstein, State of the Union: States and Canada (Cambridge: Cambridge A Century of American Labor (Princeton: University Press, 2018). Princeton University Press, 2002). 28. Nelson Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to 18. Fraser, “The ‘Labor Question’”; Milton Derber, Collective Bargaining: Organized Labor and The American Idea of Industrial Democracy, the Eclipse of in the Postwar 1865-1965 (Urbana: University of Illinois Era,” in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Press, 1970). Order, 1930-1980, ed. Steve Fraser and Gary 19. Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Gerstle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic 1989), 122-52; David Brody, “Workplace Citizenship in 20th Century America (Oxford: Contractualism in Comparative Perspective,” Oxford University Press, 2001); Suzanne in Industrial Democracy in America: The Mettler, Dividing Citizens: Gender and Ambiguous Promise, ed. Nelson Lichtenstein, Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (Ithaca: Howell John Harris, and Lee H. Hamilton Cornell University Press, 1998); Paul Frymer, (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Press, 1993), 176-205. Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic 29. Mike Davis, “The Barren Marriage of American Party (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Labour and the Democratic Party,” 2007). Review 124, no. 1980 (November 1980): 43-84; 20. Meg Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Bruce Nissen, “A Post-World War II ‘Social Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America Accord’?” in U.S. Labor Relations, 1945- (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); 1989: Accommodation and Conflict, ed. Bruce Currarino, The Labor Question in America; Nissen (New York: Garland Publishing, 1990), Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial 173-208; Daniel Bell, “The Treaty of Detroit,” Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (Cambridge: Fortune 42, no. 1 (1950): 53-55. Cambridge University Press, 1990). 30. Harris, The Right to Manage. 21. Montgomery, Workers’ Control in America; 31. Kim Moody, “Understanding the Rank-and- Fraser, “The ‘Labor Question.’” File Rebellion in the Long 1970s,” in Rebel 22. NAM NIIC, “Public Relations Policy Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt Committee Memo, 5/11/45,” Hagley Library from below during the Long 1970s, ed. Aaron Accession 1411, Series III-National Industrial Brenner and Cal Winslow (New York: Verso, Information Committee Records (May 11, 2010), 104-46. 10 New Labor Forum 00(0)

32. Jefferson R. Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s 2012/09/lean-production-whats-really-hurting- and the Last Days of the Working Class (New public-education. York: New Press, 2010), 46. 42. Mario Vasquez, “30,000 Teachers Walk Out in 33. Mike Parker and Jane Slaughter, Working Smart: Protest of Big Class Sizes in Washington State,” A Union Guide to Participation Programs and In These Times, June 1, 2015, available at http:// Reengineering (Detroit: Labor Education & inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18004/wash- Research Project, 1994). ington_state_teachers_strike. The bill is cur- 34. Douglas Fraser, “Douglas Fraser’s Resignation rently paralyzed in the state legislature. Letter from the Labor-Management Group,” 43. In a promising development north of the border, July 17, 1978, available at http://www.historyis the Canadian Supreme Court reversed prec- aweapon.com/defcon1/fraserresign.html. edent in 2015 and ruled that the right to strike is 35. Jake Rosenfeld, What Unions No Longer Do a constitutionally protected form of freedom of (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014); assembly. See Eidlin, Labor and the Class Idea Josh Bivens et al., “How Today’s Unions Help in the United States and Canada, chap. 2. Working People: Giving Workers the Power to 44. David Weil, The Fissured Workplace: Why Improve Their Jobs and Unrig the Economy” Work Became So Bad for So Many and What (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, Can Be Done to Improve It (Cambridge: August 24, 2017). Harvard University Press, 2014); Kim Voss and 36. Conor Dougherty, “How Noncompete Clauses Pablo Gaston, “Been Down So Long, It Looks Keep Workers Locked In,” New York Times, Like Up to Me: Shifting Targets, Changing June 9, 2017, available at https://www.ny Repertoires, and Internal Democracy in the times.com/2017/05/13/business/noncomp U.S. Labor Movement,” unpublished manu- ete-clauses.html?mcubz=1; Dave Jamieson, script, Berkeley, 2016. “Jimmy John’s Makes Low-Wage Workers 45. While difficult, this challenge is not impos- Sign ‘Oppressive’ Noncompete Agreements,” sible, as shown by the initial Teamster orga- Huffington Post, October 13, 2014, avail- nizing drives in the freight industry, or film able at http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/ industry organizing, where workers overcame jimmy-johns-non-compete_n_5978180. these challenges. See Kerry Segrave, Film 37. Sarah Jaffe, “Hyatt Surveils Its Workers via Actors Organize: Union Formation Efforts in iPods,” In These Times, October 24, 2012, America, 1912-1937 (Jefferson: McFarland, available at http://inthesetimes.com/working/ 2009); Dobbs, Teamster Power. For more con- entry/14078/hyatt_monitors_workers_via_ temporary examples, Janice Fine’s work on ipods. the “co-production of enforcement” is help- 38. Associated Press, “Company to Pay $1.75 ful. See Janice Fine, “Strengthening Labor Million to Workers in Bathroom Break Lawsuit,” Standards Compliance through Co-production January 5, 2016, available at https://www. of Enforcement,” New Labor Forum 23, no. 2 csmonitor.com/Business/2016/0105/Company- (May 2014): 76-83. to-pay-1.75-million-to-workers-in-bathroom- break-lawsuit. Corey Robin, “Lavatory and Liberty: The Secret History of the Bathroom Author Biographies Break,” March 8, 2012, available at http://corey- Barry Eidlin is an assistant professor of sociology at robin.com/2012/03/08/lavatory-and-liberty-the- McGill University. He is a comparative historical secret-history-of-the-bathroom-break/. sociologist interested in the study of class, politics, 39. , Bright-Sided: How the social movements, and institutional change. His Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has book, Labor and the Class Idea in the United States Undermined America (New York: Metropolitan and Canada (Cambridge University Press), will be Books, 2009). published in 2018. 40. Jane F. McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age (Oxford: Micah Uetricht is currently pursuing an MA in soci- Oxford University Press, 2016), 16. ology at McGill University. He is an associate editor 41. Shawn Gude, “The Industrial Classroom,” at Jacobin, a contributing editor at In These Times, Jacobin, April 21, 2013, available at https:// and the author of Strike for America: Chicago jacobinmag.com/2013/04/the-industrial- Teachers against Austerity (Verso, 2014) and the co- classroom. See also Will Johnson, “Lean editor, with Chris Maisano, of Not Dead Yet: Jacobin Production,” Jacobin, September 12, 2012, Magazine on Reviving the Labor Movement available at https://www.jacobinmag.com/ (Haymarket, forthcoming).