Organizing the Unemployed: Community and Union Activists in the Industrial HeartlandSUNY Press, 3. juuli 1996 - 407 pages Focusing on Michigan during the Great Depression, this book highlights the efforts of community organizers and activists in the United Automobile Workers (UAW) to mobilize the jobless for mass action. In doing so, it demonstrates the relationship between unemployed activism and the rise of industrial unionism. Moreover, by discussing Communist and Socialist initiatives on behalf of displaced workers, the book illuminates the impact of radicalism on social change and shows how political claims influenced the cultural discourse of the 1930s. The book not only helps fill a void in our knowledge of community activism, worker culture, and labor history in the 1930s but also sheds light on the New Deal's domestication of American labor and the channeling of mass protest toward politically and socially acceptable goals. The UAW acceptance of responsibility for the underclass of the 1930s raises pertinent questions for labor in the 1990s. |
Contents
The Residue of a Failed Economy | 1 |
Radical Politics and Worker Response Solidarity and Revolution 19291933 | 15 |
Beyond the Core Outstate Reactions to Economic Crisis 19291933 | 55 |
New Leadership and New Opportunity Organizing for Action 19331935 | 81 |
Finding a Place The New Unemployed Movement and the Rise of UAW 19361937 | 125 |
The Union Militant UAW and the Organized Unemployed 19371938 | 159 |
The Other Activists Alternative Approaches to Unemployed Organizing 19371938 | 191 |
Other editions - View all
Organizing the Unemployed: Community and Union Activists in the Industrial ... James J. Lorence No preview available - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
activists administration Alliance's American April Archives of Labor August auto workers Benjamin Brown Papers Communist Communist Party cooperation Daily Worker December demonstration Detroit economic efforts endorsed Executive Board February Federation Finnish Flint Ford Frank Frankensteen George Edwards Jr Germer Gogebic County Grand Rapids Homer Martin industrial unionism interview Iron River January jobless July June Keeran Lansing Lasser layoffs leaders League Lewis Martin ment Metro Detroit Michigan militant Murphy Non-Partisan League November October organizational Pagano ployed political project workers protest radical reel relief Report Reuther Roosevelt Savola September social Socialist solidarity strike struggle tion UAW Welfare UAW WPA UAW's unem Unemployed Councils unemployed movement unemployed organizing unemployed workers unemployment insurance unionists United Automobile Worker Unity Victor Reuther wage Wayne County Wayne State University Workers Alliance Workers Union WPA Auxiliary WPA Central Files WPA Welfare Department WPA workers