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 "Click for larger image")
Union-Free America
Workers and Antiunion Culture
Lawrence Richards
Cloth978-0-252-03271-4
$40.00
| Pub Date: | 2008 |
| Pages: | 264 pages |
| Dimensions: | 6 x 9 in. |
| Illustrations: | 7 black & white photographs |
A stimulating study of how antiunionism has shaped the hearts and minds of American workers
Union-Free America: Workers and Antiunion Culture confronts one of the most vexing questions with which labor activists and labor academics struggle: why is there so much opposition to organized labor in the United States? Scholars often point to powerful obstacles from employers or governmental policies, but Lawrence Richards offers a more complete picture of the causes for union decline in the postwar period by examining the attitudes of the workers themselves. Large numbers of American workers in the 1970s and 1980s told pollsters that they would vote against a union if an election were held at their place of employment, and Richards provides a provocative explanation for this hostility: a pervasive strain of antiunionism in American culture that has made many workers distrustful of organized labor.
Weighing the arguments of previous historians and sociologists, Richards posits that this underlying antiunion culture in America has been remarkably consistent over the course of half a century. Assessing organizing efforts among blue-collar, white-collar, and pink-collar workers, Richards examines the tactics and countertactics of company and union representatives who sought to either exploit or neutralize workers' popular negative stereotypes of organized labor's insidious control over workers' autonomy. The book considers a number of case studies of organizing drives throughout recent history, from the failed attempt by District 65 to organize clerical workers at New York University in 1970, to a similarly fruitless drive by the Textile Workers Union in 1980 at a textile factory in Charlottesville, Virginia. In both of these particular cases and in many more, antiunion culture has operated to hinder unions' efforts to organize the unorganized. By examining the manifestations and motivations of antiunion culture in the United States, Richards helps explain why so many American workers seem to vote against their own self-interest and declare themselves "Union Free and Proud."
"Lawrence Richards has written a challenging and important book that should be read by all interested in the American labor movement. More, it should be read by all interested in the evolution of America a a culture and a democratic society, by all of us."--EH.NET
"This work should help reorient the scholarship in a field that has been adrift. Recommended."--Choice
“This is obviously an important and thought-provoking book. . . . I recommend it highly.”--Labor Studies Journal
"A stimulating book packed full of rich details and colorful evidence. In examining groups that have been neglected by historians--particularly clerical employees, teachers, and other white-collar workers--Richards provides vivid insight into antiunion attitudes and overcomes historians' tendency to focus on union supporters."--Timothy Minchin, author of Fighting Against the Odds: A History of Southern Labor since World War II
"An outstanding contribution to our understanding of the lives of working people, past and present. Lawrence Richards's careful examination of workers' resistance to union appeals breaks new ground, while his case studies of failed organizing campaigns illuminate workers' ambivalent and often hostile views of organized labor. This account of men and women who are usually neglected by celebrants of unionism enriches the historical narrative and reminds us of the cultural and ideological obstacles that labor activists have faced and continue to confront."--Robert H. Zieger, Distinguished Professor of History, University of Florida
Lawrence Richards holds a Ph.D. in U.S. history from the University of Virginia.
Series:
The Working Class in American History
Subjects:
Labor Studies / History, Am.: 20th C.
