Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950 Paperback / softback

by Rosemary Feurer

Part of the Working Class in American History series

Paperback / softback

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Description

District 8 of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) developed a style of unionism designed to confront corporate power but also act as a force for social transformation in their community and nation.

Rosemary Feurer examines the fierce battles between these Midwestern electrical workers and the bitterly anti-union electrical and metal industry, Exploring the role of radicals in local movement formation, Feurer reveals a "civic" unionism that could connect community and union concerns to build solidarity and contest the political economy.

District 8's spirited unionism included plant occupations in St.

Louis and Iowa; campaigns to democratize economic planning; and strategies for national bargaining that elected officials inevitably branded as part of a communist conspiracy.

Though destroyed by reactionaries and an anticommunist backlash, District 8 molded a story that tells another side of the labor movement's formation in the 1930s and 1940s, and can inform current struggles against corporate power in the modern global economy.