LAWCHAThe Labor and Working-Class History Association INSIDE LABOR ACTIVISM AND MEMORY THE PROGRESSIVE QUANDRY LAWCHA AT THE AHA NEWSLETTER SPRING 2011 2010 Philip Taft Labor 2010 Herbert Gutman History Award Winner Award Winner LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT LAWCHA and the Battle for Labor Justice in the Twenty-First Century The Cornell University ILR School, in collaboration Named in honor of pioneering labor historian with LAWCHA, is pleased to announce the co- Herbert G. Gutman, the award comes with Kim Phillips, LAWCHA President winners of the 2010 Philip Taft Labor History Award a cash prize of $500 from LAWCHA and a for the best book in American labor and working- publishing contract with the University of s I write this short note, LAWCHA members have been pened to workers and their families in 1911, but the 100th class history published in 2008 Illinois Press. The prize is contingent upon the Avery busy with the efforts to support public union work- commemoration also includes numerous talks and events author¹s acceptance of the contract with the ers and workers’ collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin. that address the dangers and inequities that workers face in Our members have also organized in support of workers in the twenty-first century. The LAWCHA events will be held Seth Rockman, University of Illinois Press. Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Califor- throughout the three days, beginning with panels on March Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and nia. Governors and state legislatures in New York and else- 24th at the Murphy Center. LAWCHA will participate in the Survival in Early Baltimore Jessie B. Ramey, where plan to go after public employees. Everywhere, LAW- evening commemorations on the 24th and 25th. Finally, (Johns Hopkins University Press) CHA members are participating in living-wage campaigns on the all-day LAWCHA conference at the Fashion Institute of “A Childcare Crisis: Poor Black and their campuses and in their communities. Urgent in 2008, Technology on Saturday brings together historians, labor White Families and Orphanages in these struggles have become more so in 2011. Six months activists, and workers. The events are too numerous to list The Taft Prize comes with a cash award of $1,500. ago, the dominant explanation for the most devastating here and I urge you to see the full schedule on the LAWCHA It is named in honor of Professor Philip Taft, an Pittsburgh, 1878-1929,” recession since the 1930s was the unregulated and egregious website. The Triangle Program Committee included me, (Carnegie-Mellon University, 2009, eminent labor historian and economist, who made policies of banks and Wall Street. After the mid-term elec- Annelise Orleck, Eileen Boris, Jennifer Guglielmo, Franca Advisor: Tera Hunter) outstanding contributions to the field of labor and tion, the well-funded media has changed the story, and it’s Iacovetta, Laura Lovett, Dan Bender, Dan Katz, Laurie Green, working-class history during his lengthy career. The the “greedy public workers” and unions more generally who Rich Greenwald, and Jim Green. Second, LAWCHA’s annual caused the economic crisis. Of course this new explanation conference will take place in Atlanta, April 7-10, 2011. This prize competition is administered by the ILR School For information about applying for this year’s Gutman Prize, please see: does not include how the men and women who teach, put conference is a co-sponsor with the Southern Labor Studies at Cornell University and has been held annually out fires, take care of refuse, plow the roads, and serve in law Association (SLSA). since 1978. For more information, visit: enforcement have gone without raises—in some instance for http://www.lawcha.org/gutman.php half-a-decade. Finally, this newsletter is now under the stewardship of Rose- http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/taftaward mary Feurer and Steve Early. Over the past three years, Joe LAWCHA members have used the power of the pen, air- McCartin and Bob Bussel did an outstanding job of designing waves, and the internet to tell the story of workers and and editing the newsletter. I thank them for all of their hard unions. You will find links to all of these articles and radio work. Now, Rose and Steve have enthusiastically and ably Jefferson Cowie Wins 2011 OAH Merle Curti Award interviews on the LAWCHA website. Please take the time to assumed these duties. Their efforts will take a new form as we read these articles. If you write or speak, please forward the plan to go digital and create new features, including a wiki. Jefferson Cowie, Cornell University, has been selected by the Organization of American Historians (OAH) to links to me: [email protected]. As important, please let others receive the 2011 Merle Curti Award for his book Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class know about the LAWCHA site (www.lawcha.org). Peace and solidarity, (The New Press, 2010). The Curti Award is given annually by the OAH for the best book published in American social or American intellectual history in the previous year. For more information see: Two events are immediately on the calendar. First, LAWCHA Kim Phillips is one of the many co-sponsors of the 100th Anniversary of LAWCHA President the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City, March 24- http://www.oah.org/awards/awards.curti.index.html 26, 2011. The panels and events on the weekend’s schedule commemorate a horrific and unnecessary tragedy that hap- From the Cover Left: Women’s Auxiliary of the Progressive Miners of America protest the assault on civil liber- Save the Date! ties in the coal fields – Spring- field, IL – January, 1933. Credit: Greg Boozell Collection, http:// LAWCHA Annual Meeting, 2012: www.minwar.org/ April 19-22, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Right: Public workers and their allies protest at Madison, Wis- Co-sponsored by the Organization of American Historians consin, February, 2011. Credit: Rosemary Feurer 1 2 Labor Activism and Memory Labor Activism and Memory Rosemary Feurer, Northern Illinois University he last LAWCHA newsletter highlighted the political more successfully against this existential threat than they did Tand economic threat to public sector unionism. After to the 1981 crisis. the November 2010 elections, emboldened right-wing forces unleashed an attack that exploited a purported fiscal crisis to The touchstone of that battle for labor renewal centers on challenge workers’ rights and public goods. Part of a world- Madison, Wisconsin, where workers and their allies were wide austerity campaign, the right’s agenda is far reaching. stirred by the immediate threats to collective bargaining, and In Wisconsin, for example, the legislation is wide-ranging: the global inspiration of the Egyptian protests. In Madison to not only to end collective bargaining but to deny provi- community solidarities had been better nurtured in the labor sion of care to the poor and medically needy, to privatize council than in many other areas. Spurred by the bold actions the state owned power companies, and many other items. of students and teaching assistants union activists, Madi- Behind this legislation is the American Legislative Exchange son’s Capitol provided the space for engagement and dem- Council (ALEC), funded by corporate sponsors and right- onstration, the kind of space denied to many private sector wing foundations such as the Koch Brothers and the Bradley battles of recent years (the only equivalent being the Chicago Solidarity cows show support. Credit: Rosemary Feurer Foundation. ALEC is the same organization that wrote the UE/Republic Window and Door occupation of 2008). The Arizona “breathing while brown” anti-immigration bill, with Capitol protests’ contestation and revisioning has inspired union members and the public. The Wisconsin Labor History the Corrections Corporation of America, which conveniently everyone who has witnessed it. For example, walking through Society (WLHS) has cultivated an on-the-ground interaction profits from its implementation. Thus while the media has the Capitol in late February, I encountered a gentleman in his between trade union activists and historians since the 1980s, focused on the costs of public sector pensions and the elimi- fifties from Rockford, Illinois carrying a poster he had made one that has built understanding of the past to inform the nation of collective bargaining rights in the public sector, from the Egyptian worker expression of solidarity with Madi- present. A few years ago, I attended their annual meeting, this campaign is more a general assault on the very notion son “One World, One Pain”. I asked him if he was in one of where shop stewards, local officials, students and activists of a public sector. Indeed in the now-famous call that Gov- the unions, and he replied he had “never even thought about engaged in genuine dialogue about the meaning of the past. ernor Walker had with the gonzo journalist pretending to be unions before.” Now, he said, he wished he belonged to a James Lorence, one of these historians, noted that the WLHS David Koch, Walker suggested a vision of a new world that union and he felt that that “maybe a new world was possible.” “provided a way for academics to help to redefine the move- he might inaugurate to match that associated with Reagan’s ment to include a broader spectrum of people, including his- firing of air traffic controllers. It remains to be seen whether Can this movement transcend the divisions that are domi- torians,” and emphasizes that labor historians have a “role to a reformulated labor movement and their allies will respond nating the public discourse of the moment? Will the fight be play in the process” of building an engaged labor movement. Credit: Rosemary Feurer effective if it focuses on the rights of collective bargaining for one set of workers, but leaves another without them? Unions This issue of the newsletter offers fuel for thought about tion (co-sponsored by LAWCHA) elaborates on the themes of have been engaged in a rearguard action for years.