Title: Sunshine was never enough : Los Angeles workers, 1880-2010 /
Authors: Laslett, John H. M.
Publisher: University of California Press,
Year: 2012
Subjects: Working class California Los Angeles History.; Labor California Los Angeles History.; Labor movement California Los Angeles History.
Abstract: Delving beneath Southern California's popular image as a sunny frontier of leisure and ease, this book tells the dynamic story of the life and labor of Los Angeles's large working class. In a sweeping narrative that takes into account more than a century of labor history, John H.M. Laslett acknowledges the advantages Southern California's climate, open spaces, and bucolic character offered to generations of newcomers. At the same time, he demonstrates that--in terms of wages, hours, and conditions of work--L.A. differed very little from America's other industrial cities. Laslett shows how labor in all its guises--blue and white collar, industrial, agricultural, and high tech--shaped the neighborhoods, economic policies, racial attitudes, and class perceptions of the City of Angels.--From publisher description.
Contents: pt. 1: Under the thumb of the open shop. Myth versus reality in the making of the Southern California working class, 1880-1903 ; "It's class war, without a doubt" : The open shop battle intensifies, 1904-1916 ; Grassroots insurgencies and the impact of World War I, 1905-1924 ; Moving to the "industrial suburbs" : from Hollywood to South Gate, and from Signal Hill to the Citrus Belt, 1919-1929 -- pt. 2: Organized labor comes into its own. Unemployment, Upton Sinclair's EPIC campaign, and the search for a New Deal political coalition, 1929-1941 ; Raising consciousness at the workplace : Anglos, Mexicans, and the founding of the Los Angeles CIO, 1933-1938 ; Battle royal : AFL versus CIO, and the decline of the open shop, 1936-1941 ; "Two steps forward, one step back"? : L.A. workers in World War II, 1941-1945 -- pt. #: Cultural change and the emergence of a new industrial order. "Caught between consumption and the Cold War" : rebuilding working-class politics, 1945-1968 ; Employment, housing, and the struggle for equality in the era of civil rights, 1965-1980 ; Globalization, labor's decline, and the coming of a service and high-tech economy, 1970-1994 ; False dawn? : L.A.'s labor-Latino alliance takes center stage, 1990-2010.