Laboring for freedom
Subtitle: a new look at the history of labor in America
By: Daniel Jacoby.
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Armonk, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 209
Subjects: Labor -- United States -- History.; Labor movement -- United States -- History.; Labor policy -- United States -- History.; Labor laws and legislation -- United States -- History.
Description: This text offers interpretation of American labor history that makes workers' unquenchable thirst for freedom its central theme. In doing so, it breaks free from standard treatises in which the issues of class conflict and American "exceptionalism" have been dominant.

This interdisciplinary narrative fleshes out the conditions under which workers have lived and labored. The author contends that labor protests against these conditions flow from an American tradition invoking the primacy of inalienable rights and that these protests clash with the equally American traditions asserting a nearly absolute liberty of individual contract.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-193) and index.