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                           LABOR MOVEMENTS & CULTURE

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Labor movements in the US and around the world have been at the center of progressive social change for many generations. In the US, without labor union struggles we would have no child labor laws, no worker safety and worker compensation laws, no unemployment insurance, no social security, no Medicare, and far less social justice across an array of issues.

Labor played a key role in the Ciivil Rights and Chicano/a movements, the Coalition of Labor Union Women has fought for decades for women's rights in and beyond the workplace, and unions have been important to most other progressive movements of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

The links below tell some of the history of labor movement in the US, both historically and as an ongoing, newly energized, ethnically and gender diverse movement. In terms of culture and the art of protest, the labor movement has long provided a key soundtrack in the song form, from old Irish and Scottish ballads to the parody songs of the IWW to the folk revival of the 1960s and on to today. 

New technologies, poor management, corruption and right-wing attacks have weakened the labor movement over the last few decades, and allowed the rise of working class resentment preyed upon by opportunistic conservatives like Trump with no real interest in working people. A resurgent labor movement will be one key to widening the agenda of progressive change for decades to come, as it rejects this new right-wing pseudo-populism. 

 

CURRENT STRUGGLE: US Teacher Strikes

"Arts Organizing Lifts Oakland Teachers Strike" Essay by David Solnit on "Common Dreams" site.

More on the movement: LA Art Build to Win the Schools Students Deserve 

and

Fighting for to Keep Teachers in Oakland. Videos on the recent art-infused movement in California

The 2018 [and 2019] Wave of Teacher Strikes Essay by Sam Karp and Adam Sanchez in "Re-Thinking Schools"

Featured Sites

Labor Culture. Fine site from Lincoln Cushing, especially strong on posters and other visual culture documents from labor history.

Labor history poster

Center for Working Class Studies. Excellent resource on history and present of labor and working class issues and movements.

Historical & Contemporary Labor Culture Sites and Documents

Selected Contemporary Labor Organizations & Labor Culture Sites

Labor Unions around the Globel Links worldwide to labor unions and worker rights organizations.

Selected Labor History & Working Class Culture Books & Articles

  • Aronowitz, Stanley. How Class Works: Power and Social Movement. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
  • Brody, David. Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth Century Struggle.
  • DeMott, Benjamin. The Imperial Middle: Why Americans Can’t Think Straight about Class. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.  Especially good on popular culture and the obscuring of class.
  • Dubofsky, Melvyn, and Foster Rhea Dulles. Labor in America: A History (8th ed. 2010).
  • Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. New York: Metropolitan, 2001.
  • Fantasia, Rick. Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action and Contemporary Workers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Looks at how the subcultures created by workers in unions, on the shop-floor and outside the job shaped union possibilities and limits.
  • Faue, Elizabeth. Rethinking the American Labor Movement (2017).
  • Fink, Gary M., ed. Labor Unions. Greenwood Press, 1977
  • Foner, Philip. Women and the American Labor Movement from World War I to the Present.
  • Frymer, Paul. Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party. Princeton University Press, 2008.
  • Gutman, Herbert. Power and Culture: Essays on the American Working Class (New Press, 1992). 
  • Kingsolver, Anne, ed. More than Class: Studying Power in US Workplaces. NY: SUNY, 1998. Interesting collection of cultural context that shape working class relations.
  • Lauter, Paul, and Ann Fitzgerald, editors. Literature, Class, and Culture. Longmans, 2001. Excellent, comprehensive collection.
  • Levine, Lawrence W. Highbrow Lowbrow, The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. Harvard University Press, 1990.  On how culture helped create class division in early 20th century.
  • Lichtenstein, Nelson. State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (2003).
  • Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (2013). Brilliant study of how race trumped class as whiteness became a social identity ending black-white solidarity.
  • Moss, Kirby. The Color of Class: Poor Whites and the Paradox of Privilege. University of Pensylvania Press, 2003.  A reflection by an African American author on the class and racial tensions between poor whites and upwardly mobile blacks; very relevant to the current political scene.
  • Rabinowitz, Paula. Labor and Desire: Women's Revolutionary Fiction in Depression America. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1991.
  • Roediger, David. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, NY: Basic Books, 1991. Key book on how stirring up racial tensions damaged the white working class.
  • Roediger, David. Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White. The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs. New York: Basic Books. 2005.
  • Rothenberg, Paula.  Invisible Privilege; A Memoir about Race, Class, and Gender. University Press of Kansas, 2000.
  • Salerno, Salvatore. Red November, Black November: Culture & Community in the Industrial Workers of the World. NY: SUNY Press, 1989. Best study of IWW songs, poems, cartoons & general culture. 
  • Sennett, Richard and Jonathan Cobb. The Hidden Injuries of Class. New York: Knopf/Vintage Books, 1972. Classic text even more relevant than when it was written.
  • Tea, Michelle, ed. Without A Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2003.
  • Wray, Matt and Newitz, Annalee, ed. White Trash: Race and Class in America. New York: Routledge, 1996.  Collection exploring stereotypes about US poor whites.
  • Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise of the American Working class, 1788-1850 (1984).
  • Zandy, Janet, ed. Calling Home: Working Class Women’s Writings: An Anthology. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990.

Selected List of Novels About Labor & US Working-Class Life

  • Arnow, Harriet. The Dollmaker  (1954, reprint 1990)
  • Attaway, William. Blood on the Forge (1941; reprint, 1987)
  • Bell, Thomas.  Out of the Furnace.  (1941)
  • Cantwell, Robert. Land of Plenty (1934; reprint 2016)
  • Conroy, Jack. The Disinherited.
  • Denby, Charles. Indignant Heart (1978)  
  • Di Donato, Pietro, Christ in Concrete (1939) 
  • Farrell, James T. he Studs Lonigan Trilolgy (1932-35)
  • Hamper, Ben. Rivethead
  • Salute to Spring (1940),>
  • London, Jack. Martin Eden (1909)
  • McKenney, Ruth. Industrial Valley  (reprint, 1993)
  • Miner, Valerie. A Walking Fire (1994)
  • Morrison, Toni. Tar Baby
  • Olsen, Tille. Yonnondio
  • Roth, Henry. Call it Sleep (1934)
  • Sanford, John. The People From Heaven(1943)
  • Steinbeck, John. In Dubious Battle/em>
  • Steinbeck John. The Grapes of Wrath
  • Traven, B. The Death Ship
  • Wright, Richard. Black Boy  (1945)
  • Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle
  • Sinclair, Upton. The Flivver King (1937, reprint 1993)
  • Smedley, Agnes. Daughter of the Earth (1943)
  • Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers (1925)

Additional Works of Working Class Fiction & Poetry from Rebel Graphics

Films about Labor & the Working Class annotated list from Rebel Graphics

Fair Labor Consumer Sites