State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America) [Paperback]

Nelson Lichtenstein (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691116547 | ISBN-13: 978-0691116549 | Publication Date: August 28, 2003

In a fresh and timely reinterpretation, Nelson Lichtenstein examines how trade unionism has waxed and waned in the nation's political and moral imagination, among both devoted partisans and intransigent foes. From the steel foundry to the burger-grill, from Woodrow Wilson to John Sweeney, from Homestead to Pittston, Lichtenstein weaves together a compelling matrix of ideas, stories, strikes, laws, and people in a streamlined narrative of work and labor in the twentieth century.

The "labor question" became a burning issue during the Progressive Era because its solution seemed essential to the survival of American democracy itself. Beginning there, Lichtenstein takes us all the way to the organizing fever of contemporary Los Angeles, where the labor movement stands at the center of the effort to transform millions of new immigrants into alert citizen unionists. He offers an expansive survey of labor's upsurge during the 1930s, when the New Deal put a white, male version of industrial democracy at the heart of U.S. political culture. He debunks the myth of a postwar "management-labor accord" by showing that there was (at most) a limited, unstable truce.

Lichtenstein argues that the ideas that had once sustained solidarity and citizenship in the world of work underwent a radical transformation when the rights-centered social movements of the 1960s and 1970s captured the nation's moral imagination. The labor movement was therefore tragically unprepared for the years of Reagan and Clinton: although technological change and a new era of global economics battered the unions, their real failure was one of ideas and political will. Throughout, Lichtenstein argues that labor's most important function, in theory if not always in practice, has been the vitalization of a democratic ethos, at work and in the larger society. To the extent that the unions fuse their purpose with that impulse, they can once again become central to the fate of the republic. State of the Union is an incisive history that tells the story of one of America's defining aspirations.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Does anyone still look for the union label? Apparently not, to gauge historian Nelson Lichtenstein's history of the rise, heyday, and long decline of labor unions in America.

In the Progressive era, Lichtenstein writes, the "labor question" lay at the heart of a whole complex of political ideas governing the social betterment of working people and the development of a more equitable society. These ideas flourished through the course of the early twentieth century, as unions attained more and more influence and as Keynesian notions of organized labor being "essential to boost mass purchasing power and thereby sustain economic growth" became established. After World War II, however, unionism began a slow collapse, helped along by the rise of conservative, antilabor politics. Although ideas of workplace justice and the extension of civil rights into the private sector remain strong, organized labor has not--with the result, Lichtenstein argues, that many American workers are worse off today than they were a quarter of a century ago. Lichtenstein's narrative capably summarizes trends in modern labor history, and it provides much fuel for activists seeking renewed labor-based politics. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Lichtenstein (history, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit) presents a history of American unionism in the 20th century and argues convincingly that a thriving labor movement is an essential safeguard of American democracy. He chronicles the struggle for economic citizenship and security that led to the burst of organizing during the Depression and World War II. After the war, even as unions reached new highs in membership and political activity, their strength was sapped by corporate resistance, their own bureaucratization, legal restrictions, and ideological attacks from the Right by anti-Communist conservatives and from the Left by disenchanted intellectuals. Throughout, Lichtenstein examines both the positive and the negative sides of American labor unions have been champions of civil rights and equal pay and racially exclusive and economically self-interested clubs. But, Lichtenstein argues, as the only organized counterweight to the power of rapacious corporations, unions play an essential role in preserving American ideals. Today, the labor movement faces political, economic, and organizational problems, but it has overcome equally large challenges in the past and remains a vital force for social progress in the United States. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. Duncan Stewart, State Historical Soc. of Iowa Lib., Iowa City
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (August 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691116547
• ISBN-13: 978-0691116549
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #133,434 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fine study of the crisis of American labor, July 23, 2002

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[e-mail] (Edmonton, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America) (Hardcover)

Nelson Lichtenstein's Sate of the Union is a superb study of the current crisis of American labor. If it is not as finely researched or as densely rewarding as his biography of Walter Reuther or Steve Fraser's biography of Sidney Hillman, it is an excellent introduction to the problem and to possible solutions. Lichtenstein demonstrates the vital necessity of trade unions. The average wage of American young families stands at only two-thirds of the their counterparts in 1973, "even though their total working hours were longer and the educational level of the head of th ehousehold higher than a generation before. In the first years of the new century median wages and family incomes were still below their 1989 level." In the decline of civic committment and political life, the untramelled sway of corporate hegemony, the failure to confront health insurance, public transportation, and childcare in the United States and basic civil liberties in much of our brave new globalized world, the decline of American trade unionism truly is an injury to all.

Lichtenstein, notwithstanding his title, starts with the thirties. He tells the story of how mass industrial unionism boomed during that decade. The story he tells is not particularly new, concentrating on the famous struggles, as well as the fatal limitations of the CIO on race and gender. But he also goes on to point out that the partial welfare state, far from creating the dreaded dependence of conservative rhetoric, actually gave millions of workers the opportunity to exert civil rights and real power that they did not under the mythology of a producer's republic. Although he is scathing abou the flaws of the AFL's short sighted and often openly racist stratgey he duly notes that their craft unionism did have some advantages in some places.

The next two-thirds of the book are much more interesting. Lichtenstein denies that there was ever a "Labor-Management Accord," the belief that labour problems were essentially solved held in the sixties by complacent liberals and confused leftists. Lichtenstein points out the exceptional qualities of American management that differed them from their European counterparts and made them less amenable to compromise. He points out the continent wide nature of their businesses, the absence of cartelization and self-regulation, the increased power of big businesses, who were not tained with collaborationism, and the increasing stress placed on smaller companies which made them blame the federal state. He points out the dead weight southern segregation had on trade unionism and other liberal hopes, He notes how Taft-Hartley legalized right to work laws, as well as banning supervisory unioism making the unionization of many service industries like insurance or engineering "virtually impossible."

Lichtenstein goes on to discuss the increasing complacency of the AFL-CIO, under its spectacularly unimaginative leader George Meaney, as well as the calcification of the grievance system, the dissipation of shop-floor pressure, and the strategic disaster of supporting a private welfare state via union contract. This would not stand the ruptures of the eighties and which dissipated efforts to create a national social wage for all. He also reminds us that Kennedy's Keynesianism was the most conservative form on tap, while LBJ's war on poverty failed to confront the structural roots of poverty and thought that if could be fought on the cheap with training programs.

Lichtenstein then goes on to discuss the decline of the union ideal among liberal and leftist thinkers, and notes how even the Warren Court hampered trade unions. Lichtenstein is most helpful in discussing the limits of "rights consciousness." He is unflinching on the complacency and bigotry of many trade unionists that made this necessary. But he quite properly notes that it cannot be a substitute for trade unionism. First off, the legal-regulatory system is not self-supporting and it needs a coherent voice from workers themselves--ie a strong trade union, to support them. Secondly, rights discourse puts the emphasis on regulators as opposed to the workers themsleves, an unhealthy sign. Thirdly, rights consciousness does nothing to change or alter managerial authority. Finally, rights discourse by itself cannot solve the structural crisis that confronts American society. Lichtenstein provides the example of the steel workers where African-Americans challenged and beat Jim Crow, only to end up with fewer steelworkers as the industry collapsed.

Lichtenstein's book is concise and well documented, if largely based on secondary sources, and it contains useful apercus about globalization, the disaster of concession bargaining, the fraud of "quality of life" initiatives, and about the folly of the construction workers. Tthey supported Nixon, beat up anti-war protesters, but were still shafted by him anyway). He also discusses the health insurance debacle, and notes some promising signs of renewal in the last few years, especailly among Hispanic Americans. One might feel he is trying too hard to end on a positive note, but one can only agree when he says that "At Stake is not just an effort to resolve America's labor question but the revitalization of democratic society itself."

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars solidarity forever, April 3, 2002

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David C N Swanson (Charlottesville VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America) (Hardcover)

Nelson Lichtenstein's new book, "The State of the Union," gives a history of labor unions in the United States by way of arguing for the need to restrengthen them, and I think the case is very persuasive.

Lichtenstein weaves together a number of themes to explain the decline in union membership and power. One is increased reliance on individual rights and legal protections. Federal laws ban all sorts of discrimination, endangerment, and abuse, but the federal government does not do an effective job of protecting workers from retaliation for asserting their rights and almost nothing to maintain other important elements of the workplace, such as wage levels or the prevention of mass layoffs.

We have learned to think of ourselves as individuals protected by laws, rather than brotherhoods and sisterhoods protected by our strength in numbers. We have a long list of rights, including - most notoriously - the "right to work." So called Right to Work laws clearly hurt unions but are not too far afield from modes of thought that labor supporters have engaged in themselves.

Unions are now seen as ways to protect individual jobs and proper grievance procedures following individual wrongs, not as cross-company efforts to lift the wages and benefits of entire industries. If the purpose of a union is simply to protect me from specific injustices, surely I ought also to respect my coworker's right to not be coerced to join, right?

But if the purpose of a union is to change society and improve the lot of all workers, then clearly the "right" of my coworker to be a freeloader and drag us all down is not to be respected.

The case Lichtenstein makes is that in the process of making fantastic gains in the Civil Rights, Feminist, and other movements, leftists unwittingly sacrificed a conception of the labor union that is badly needed today. No doubt, this analysis will annoy some people, but it ought to be taken as encouraging. The right didn't defeat us; we beat ourselves. Therefore, a reconstituted labor left can successfully fight back.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do unions have a future?, August 14, 2002

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J. Grattan "Ideas can move the world" (Lawrenceville, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America) (Hardcover)

The backdrop for "State of the Union" is the "labor question" that the author finds Progressive Era reformers confronting. They regarded the disproportionate power that corporate capitalism wielded relative to citizens and workers as unjustifiable in a democratic society. Changes in workplaces were most troublesome. Skilled workers were bypassed by work-simplifying machinery, an autocratic foreman system enforced Taylorism, or speed-up, and wages hovered at subsistence levels. But American workers, drawing upon a republican legacy, seized upon the WWI rallying cry of making the world safe for democracy to insist that industrial democracy be established within workplaces. Even President Woodrow Wilson recognized "the right of those who work, in whatever rank, to participate in some organic way in every decision which directly affects their welfare." Interestingly, the author does not take note of the fact that Wilson's call for workers' participation did not mention unions. But it is the relationship of unions to this "labor question" and to the notion of industrial democracy that most concerns Lichtenstein.

The lack of a legal and institutional basis for industrial democracy virtually ensured that industrial democracy would fizzle in the post-WWI era. But the major slip-up of American capitalism in the 20th century, that is, the Great Depression, opened the door for a tremendous, pent-up surge of American worker activism. In the Wagner Act, the most significant piece of New Deal legislation, workers were given the right and even encouraged to self-organize or select a representative to bargain with employers. In unionized workplaces, vibrant shop-floor steward systems ensured that workers' concerns received an expeditious hearing. Many labor activists from the Progressive Era were in the forefront of this politicized offensive to push for legalized industrial democracy. In addition, some of the Progressive social-democratic platform such as unemployment insurance, social security, and fair labor standards were part of the New Deal package.

The backlash against this resurgence of worker empowerment began immediately. Conservative justices, hostile corporate managements, racist Southern oligarchs, and anti-statist AFL unions - all opposed state intervention in the private domain of workplaces. But with the onset of WWII, the labor movement was drawn even more tightly into the state web as a participant in peak-level bargaining with the War Labor Board and industry leaders for the purpose of stabilizing industrial relations. For example, to curtail the spontaneous and disruptive strikes that were a part of the self-help tradition on the shop floor, multi-level grievance arbitration systems became standard sections in most bargaining agreements. But that tripartite bargaining did not extend beyond WWII. Some of the agreed to provisions proved to be more debilitating than helpful to trade unions and workers in later years.

With the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, conservatives were finally able to accomplish the dilution of the Wagner Act. Unions suffered major setbacks in that legislation. Communists and radicals were purged from union rolls, "right to work" laws were enacted in some states; employers could now denounce unions in organizing drives; and secondary boycotts were mostly prohibited. The author refers to the exclusion of supervisors and the subsequent exclusion of tens of millions of professional and technical workers in today's workforce as the "ghettoization" of the union movement.

As the author indicates, Taft-Hartley guaranteed that collective bargaining would be both limited and firm-based. A variety of barriers and penalties now existed to derail broader, classwide mobilizations. Negotiated contracts did not venture outside "mandatory" subjects of wages, hours, and working conditions. The prerogative of management to make virtually all corporate decisions regardless of any impact on workforces was a privileged topic. Industrial democracy received scant consideration as the courts generally held that a grievance clause in a contract overrode the statutory right of workers to strike.

The author takes particular care to debunk the widely held notion that the post-Taft-Hartley industrial relations era through the 1970s was a time of labor-management accord. A companion idea was that collective bargaining represented "industrial pluralism" in action. But classes with opposed interests and distinct ideologies could no longer exist; society now was defined to consist of competing interest groups who engaged in "non-ideological conflict." It was a theory that eschewed the idea that "alert citizen-workers" were the basic political actors of society. Industrial pluralism required that "competing elites bargain, compromise, and govern." Labor unions were only fulfilling their legitimate role when led by unassailable officers of long tenure. In addition, capitalism was now a benign force; it had been transformed into a rational planner for industrial society.

Global economic forces beginning in the 1970s undermined this supposed labor-management accord. Increased global competition, OPEC, inflation, and reduced corporate profits triggered new assaults by businessmen, conservatives, and various pundits on unions, casting them as "self-aggrandizing interest groups." Meanwhile a new rights consciousness, fueled by the civil rights movement, coupled with a loss of credibility and trust for unions persuaded workers to look to state regulatory legislation for workplace protections. But it was a pursuit for protection of individual rights based on gender, race, age, etc and not collective rights to industrial democracy. It was a focus that left unchanged the basic power structures in workplaces. Worker solidarity and workplace democracy no longer resonated with workers.

The author clearly regards the collective bargaining regime of American industrial relations, as it has evolved, to be a "product of defeat, not victory." Obviously material gains were made by many through collective bargaining, but the trade union movement has mostly failed in facilitating the democratic voice for all of the American working class.

What does the author suggest? It is a simple list: militancy, internal union democracy, and politics. There really is no assessment of the feasibility of the labor movement solving the labor question and establishing industrial democracy. Unlike the 1930s, there is no pent-up demand for workplace democracy. Consumerism seems to be the operant ideology of the American working class. This is an important book that leaves little doubt as to the state of unions. One is left wondering about the future of trade unions in the U.S.