American Workers, American Unions: The Twentieth Century (The American Moment) - Softcover

Zieger, Robert H.; Gall, Gilbert J.

3.7

37 ratings by Goodreads

9780801870781: American Workers, American Unions: The Twentieth Century (The American Moment)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080187078X ISBN 13: 9780801870781

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002

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Highly acclaimed and widely read, American Workers, American Unions (first published in 1986, revised ed. 1994) provides a concise and compelling history of American workers and their unions in twentieth-century America. This new edition features new chapters on the pre–1920 period, as well as an entirely new final chapter that covers developments of the 1980s and 1990s in detail. There the authors explore how economic change, union stagnation, and antilabor policies have combined to erode workers' standards and labor's influence in the political arena over the last two decades. They review current "alternatives to unionism" as means of achieving fair workplace representations but insist that strong unions remain essential in a democratic society. They argue that labor's new responsiveness to the concerns of women, minority groups, and low-wage workers, as well as its resurgent political activism, offer new hope for trade unionism. Also included in this third edition is new bibliographical material and a regularly updated on-line link to an extended bibliographical essay.

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About the Author:

Robert H. Zieger is a professor of history at the University of Florida. Gilbert J. Gall is currently a service representative of health care employees for Health Care-PSEA, and is the author of The Politics of Right to Work and Pursuing Justice: Lee Pressman, The New Deal, and the CIO.

Review:

What this little book does, and does engagingly and perceptively, is to analyze the cyclical fortunes of organized labor... Eminently successful.

(Peter J. Coleman History)

An excellent supplementary text for undergraduate courses in industrial relations and labor economics.

(Harry P. Cohany Monthly Labor Review)

A helping of sober truth about the American labor movement and its politics... Zieger is fair and objective, and writes in a style that can be read with pleasure and understanding by both academics and truck drivers.

(John C. Cort New Oxford Review)

A balanced, intelligent introduction to the historic themes of modern American labor relations.

(John Hennen Labor Studies Journal)

We can thank Zieger for giving us a strong and often moving account of what he calls the most important period in American working-class history.

(Richard Boyden Journal of American History)

Zieger provides a broad overview of organized labor since 1920. His book, virtually the only available survey that includes the years after World War II, is highly readable and surprisingly concise.

(Darryl Holter Journal of Social History)

There is much to recommend American Workers, American Unions. It is a valuable, comprehensive, and peerless survey of modern American labor history. Zieger deftly parses such complex subjects as the origin and role of the National Labor Relations Board, the expulsion of the so-called communist-dominated unions from the CIO, and the evolution of the 'workplace rule of law.' The book also is, if not the only, then certainly the best treatment of the post-1950 decades.

(Nancy F. Gabin Labor History)

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