Against Labor: How U.S. Employers Organized to Defeat Union Activism

by Rosemary Feurer (Editor), Chad Pearson (Editor), Michael Dennis (Contribution by), Elizabeth Esch (Contribution by), Rosemary Feurer (Contribution by)

Overview

Against Labor highlights the tenacious efforts by employers to organize themselves as a class to contest labor. Ranging across a spectrum of understudied issues, essayists explore employer anti-labor strategies and offer incisive portraits of people and organizations that aggressively opposed unions. Other contributors examine the anti-labor movement against a backdrop of larger forces, such as the intersection of race and ethnicity with anti-labor activity, and anti-unionism in the context of neoliberalism. Timely and revealing, Against Labor deepens our understanding of management history and employer activism and their metamorphic effects on workplace and society. Contributors: Michael Dennis, Elizabeth Esch, Rosemary Feurer, Dolores E. Janiewski, Thomas A. Klug, Chad Pearson, Peter Rachleff, David Roediger, Howard Stanger, and Robert Woodrum.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252099311
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	03/21/2017
Series:	Working Class in American History
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Rosemary Feurer is an associate professor of history at Northern Illinois University. She is the author of Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950. Chad Pearson teaches history at Collin College. He is the author of Reform or Repression: Organizing America's Anti-Union Movement.

Table of Contents

Title Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Against Labor / Rosemary Feurer and Chad Pearson 1. Scientific Management, Racist Science, and Race Management / Elizabeth Esch and David Roediger 2. “Free Shops for Free Men”? : The Challenges of Strikebreaking and Union-Busting in the Progressive Era / Chad Pearson 3. Employers’ Path to the Open Shop in Detroit, 1903–7 / Thomas A. Klug 4. Race, Unionism, and the Open-Shop Movement along the Waterfront in Mobile, Alabama / Robert H. Woodrum 5. Through a Glass, Darkly: The NLRB, Employer Counteroffensives, Investigative Committees, and the CIO / Dolores E. Janiewski 6. The Strange Career of A. A. Ahner: Reconsidering Blackjacks and Briefcases / Rosemary Feurer 7. A Moderate Employers’ Association in a “House Divided”: The Case of the Employing Printers of Columbus, Ohio, 1887 - 1987 / Howard R. Stanger 8. Litigating for Profit: Business, Law, and Labor in the New Economy South / Michael Dennis 9. Capital and Labor in the 21st Century: The End of History? / Peter Rachleff Glossary Contributors Index

Editorial Reviews

"Boldly challenges the scholarship that considers employers as a malleable force that often compromises when social movements forge political environments that are inimical to their interests. Contributes enormously to our understanding of business tactics and strategy."—Immanuel Ness, author of Guest Workers and Resistance to U.S. Corporate Despotism


"At a time when public sector unions are under renewed attack and private-sector union membership hovers near levels not seen since the early twentieth century, Against Labor offers a potent, powerful reminder that, as Feurer and Pearson put it, 'People, not faceless markets, shaped this story.'" —The Journal of Southern History


"An excellent volume. The standard of scholarship and writing is very high, and the editors have worked hard to produce a cohesive collection of essays that shed much light on a still-understudied phenomenon in US and labor history more broadly."—Australasian Journal of American Studies

"These essays make one thing quite clear: the existential threat that US unions currently face has been building for decades"—Social History

"Recommended."—Choice

"The respective chapters make for interesting reading. They raise fundamental issues concerning the long arc of industrial relations or labour history in America; of the long, unrelenting class-based campaign of employers and the various strategies and methods they have used to keep unions at bay and counter their attempts to improve the wages and working conditions of American workers."—Labour History

"The decline of organized labor in recent decades is often attributed to globalization, financialization, and right-wing politics. But the compelling essays in this important volume show that the limits to workers’ collective power stem more basically from the concerted anti-union efforts of their employers dating back to the nineteenth century. Chronicling how capitalists have effectively forged a class-conscious social movement 'against labor,' these critical case studies make a vital contribution to the history of capitalism while illuminating the challenges facing workers today."—Jeffrey Sklansky, author of The Soul's Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820-1920

From the Publisher