Labor History

1. Labor History Overview

2. Labor History • Labor history is a broad field of study concerned with the development of the labor movement and the working class. • The central concerns of labor historians include the development of labor unions, strikes, lockouts and protest movements, industrial relations, and the progress of working class and socialist political parties, as well as the social and cultural development of working people. • Labor historians may also concern themselves with issues of gender, race, ethnicity and other factors besides class.

3. Labor and Working-Class History Association • Home of LAWCHA     • Duke University • Address: • LAWCHA    226 Carr Building (East Campus)    Box 90719    Durham, NC 27708-0719 • Email: lawcha@duke.edu. • Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA) is a non-profit association of academics, educators, students, and labor movement and other activists that promotes research into and publication of materials on the history of the labor movement in North and South America.

4. President LAWCHH. Shelton Stromquist • Professor • American, Social, and Labor History • Office:  162 Schaeffer Hall • Office Hours:  T/TH 2:00-3:00 & W 5:00-5:30 or by appointment • Phone Number:  (319) 335-2301 • Email:shelton-stromquist@uiowa.edu

5. Labor and Working-Class History Association • Professor Stromquist teaches undergraduate courses on the history of the American working class, the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras, and the history of U.S. immigration. • His graduate courses generally in the area of U.S. social and labor history and recently, comparative labor history. • Professor Stromquist teaches undergraduate courses on the history of the American working class, the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras, and the history of U.S. immigration. • His graduate courses are generally in the area of U.S. social and labor history and recently, comparative labor history.

6. LAWCHA Journal • Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas • Debate on neoliberalism, growing inequality, and the collapse of the Euro-American Left in recent decades centered around Tony Judt’s posthumous book, Ill Fares the Land. • Jenny Carson and Nell Geiser, “‘The Democratic Initiative’: The Promises and Limitations of Industrial Unionism for New York City’s Laundry Workers, 1930-1950″ • Tami J. Friedman, “‘Acute Depression … in … the Age of Plenty’: Capital Migration, Economic Dislocation, and the Missing “Social Contract” of the 1950s”

7. Study Group on International Labor and Working-Class History (SGILWCH) • Managing Editor, International Labor and Working-Class History:Dorothy Sue Cobble ILWCHRutgers UniversitySchool of Management and Labor Relations 50 Labor Center WayNew Brunswick, New Jersey 08901-8553Email: ilwch@smlr.rutgers.edu • Statement of Purpose: • To encourage and facilitate interaction between scholars interested in the various aspects of labor and working-class history. Subscription to the publication carries with it membership in the study group.

8. International Labor and Working Class History • ILWCH has an international reputation for scholarly innovation and quality. It explores diverse topics from globalization and workers'  rights to class and consumption, labor movements, class identities and cultures, unions, and working-class politics. • ILWCH publishes original research, review essays, conference reports from around the world, and an acclaimed scholarly controversy section. • Comparative and cross-disciplinary, the journal is of interest to scholars in history, sociology, political science, labor studies, global studies, and a wide range of other fields and disciplines. This website has been created for those who wish to learn more about our journal.

9. International Labor and Working Class History • "The Army is a Service, Not a Job": Unionization, Employment, and the Meaning of Military Service in the Late-Twentieth Century United States Jennifer Mittelstadt, Rutgers University This article tells the story of an often-forgotten attempt to unionize the United States armed forces in the 1970s, The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), an AFL-CIO-affiliated union representing federal employees, voted to allow military personnel to join its union in 1976. Military personnel proved far more open to the bid than expected. Nursing grievances from threatened congressional cuts to their institutional benefits, between one-third and one-half welcomed the union. Though a worried Congress, a powerful military leadership, and skeptical public opinion quashed unionization within the year, the brief episode nevertheless left an influential legacy. Coming just after the difficult transition from the draft to the volunteer force, the union bid forced military leaders, soldiers, and supporters in Congress to defend both military service and military benefits from encroachments of an "occupational" model symbolized by unionization. Their successful distinction between military service and employment elevated the former as uniquely honorable and arduous-and thus deserving of unwavering congressional support. Public unions, the embodiment of the occupational threat to military service, emerged bruised by the comparisons to vaunted military service and endured a decades-long decline in membership and congressional protection.

10. International Labor and Working Class History • Associate Professor • Ph.D., Univ of Michigan • At Rutgers since 2010 • 223A Van Dyck Hall848-932-8258jmittel@rci.rutgers.edu • Jennifer Mittelstadt, Rutgers University

11. Jennifer Mittelstadt, Rutgers University • I am a political historian of the United States writing about women and gender, race, and the state. • I specialize in the twentieth century, especially post-World War II, and my interests in politics are quite broad.  • They include social policy and social politics; liberalism; second-wave feminism; and most recently, the military and militarization.  • I have published articles and opinion pieces in the Journal of Policy History, International Labor and Working Class History, the Journal of Women’s History, Social Politics, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. • I am currently writing a book on the United States Army, social welfare, and politics in the late twentieth century. • RECENT COURSES • Undergraduate • The History of Poverty and Economic Crisis in the United States • The 1960s • United States History since 1865 • U.S. Women's History • From Welfare to Workfare, the Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1965, (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 2005). • Welfare in the United States: A History with Documents, co-authored and edited with PremillaNadasen and Marisa Chappell (New York:  Routledge, 2009.)

12. Historians of American Communism (HOAC) • Statement of Purpose: • To promote sharing of information among scholars interested in the history of American communism, American anti-communism, and related topics, and to promote historical research in these issues. http://www.h-net.org/~hoac/

13. HOAC: American Communist History • Orwell & Marxism: The Political and Cultural Thinking of George Orwell • American Communist History

14. HOAC: American Communist History • Editorial Advisory Board: • Wlodzimierz Jan Batog - Pedagogical Academy, Kielce, PolandBernhard H. Bayerlein - University of Mannheim and University of Cologne, Germany Phillip Deery- Victoria University, AustraliaThomas W. Devine - California State University, USAMelvyn Dubofsky - State University of New York at Binghamton, USANorbert Finsch - University of Cologne, GermanyPeter Graham - Syracuse University, USAJohn Earl Haynes - Library of Congress, USA Walter T. Howard- Bloomsburg State UniversityMaurice Isserman - Hamilton College, USAEdward P. Johanningsmeier - University of Delaware and Temple University, USAHarvey Klehr - Emory University, USAAlex Lichtenstein - Florida International University, USAJames J. Lorence -  University of Wisconsin, USAVernon L. Pederson - Montana State University, USARichard Gid Powers - College of Staten Island, City University of New York, USARoy Rosenzweig - George Mason University, USASteve Rosswurm - Lake Forest College, USAJames G. Ryan - Texas A&M University at Galveston, USA Randi Storch- SUNY, USAStephen Whitfield - Brandeis University, USARobert Zieger - University of Florida, USA

15. Who is this Howard Guy?

16. Working Class and Race

17. Old vs New Historians • Their efforts prompted extensive discussions about the means and ends of historical analysis, and produced a major reorientation within the profession.

18. The New Faces of the Historical Profession

19. Professor Matt Clavin: UWF • Education: • Ph.D., History, American University, 2005 • M.A., History and Public Policy, George Washington University, 1999 • B.A., History, Bloomsburg University, 1994.

20. Cliometrics: Robert Fogel • Fogel and his fellow "cliometricians" developed a "new" economic history that adopted complex mathematical models and counter-factual questions from economics, and applied them in statistical analyses of serial data. • Time on the Cross: The Economics of Negro Slavery (1974), Fogel and Stanley Engerman demonstrate that slavery was a profitable and efficient system of labor.

21. Social Mobility: Myth or Reality • Stephan Thernstrom, in Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (1964) • Sampled city directories, and censuses in order to determine rates of occupational mobility in Newburyport, MA. • Social mobility, he discovered, was a far less common phenomenon than was assumed by scholars or celebrated in popular culture.

22. Subject Matter of Social History • Recovering the histories of workers, women, immigrants, and minorities was a central concern for social historians.

23. New Left Historians • To many aligned with the New Left, writing social history was both a professional and a political activity. • Staughton Lynd: Yale historian and activist.

24. Marxist Social Historians • Historian Sean Wilentz discovered class conflict and the development of an oppositional working class culture. • Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (1984)