A renegade union
Subtitle: interracial organizing and labor radicalism
By: Lisa Phillips
Series: The working class in American history
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Urbana, Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 231
ISBN-13: 9780252037320; 9780252094507
Subjects: African Americans; Labor unions; Discrimination in employment; African American labor union members; History; Employment; Minorities
Description: Dedicated to organizing workers from diverse racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, many of whom were considered "unorganizable" by other unions, the progressive New York City-based labour union District 65 counted among its 30,000 members retail clerks, office workers, warehouse workers, and wholesale workers. Lisa Phillips presents a distinctive study of District 65 and its efforts to secure economic equality for minority workers in sales and processing jobs in small, low-end shops and warehouses throughout the city. Phillips shows how organizers fought tirelessly to achieve better hours and higher wages for "unskilled," unrepresented workers and to re-value their work, the result of an economy inclining toward fewer manufacturing jobs and more low wage service and processing jobs.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Community-based, "catch-all" organizing on New York's Lower East side; title: Getting beyond racial, ethnic, religious, and skill-based divisions; title: "Like a scab over an infected sore": full and fair employment during and after World War II; title: Attacked from the left and the right: community-organizing, civic unionism during the early years of the Cold War; title: A third Labor Federation? The Distributive, Processing, and Office Workers of America (DPO); title: Community organizing under the AFL-CIO umbrella.