Labor's time: shorter hours, the UAW, and the struggle for American unionism

"The movement for a shorter workweek that once defined the labor movement in the United States was largely displaced by the new corporatist structure of organized labor in the post-New Deal era. "Labor's Time" examines the changes that occurred within organized labor and traces t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cutler, Jonathan
Institution:ETUI-European Trade Union Institute
Format: TEXT
Language:English
Published: Philadelphia 2004
Temple University Press
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.labourline.org/KENTIKA-19137938124919551109-Labor-s-time-shorter-hours,-th.htm
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author Cutler, Jonathan
author_facet Cutler, Jonathan
collection Library items
description "The movement for a shorter workweek that once defined the labor movement in the United States was largely displaced by the new corporatist structure of organized labor in the post-New Deal era. "Labor's Time" examines the changes that occurred within organized labor and traces their influence on the decline of the shorter hour's movement. Focusing on the internal union politics of the influential United Automobile Workers and Local 600, its chapter at Henry Ford's massive River Rouge factory, Jonathan Cutler demonstrates how an all-but-forgotten interracial movement for a shorter workweek during the 1950s and 1960s became a casualty of an increasingly top-heavy union bureaucracy that lost touch with the desires, fears, and aspirations of rank and file workers and dug its own grave in the process. Jonathan Cutler examines the political context in which the shorter hour's movement emerged within Local 600 in the 1940s, then chronicles the attempts by Walter Reuther, the head of the UAW, to suppress it. Cutler also reviews the role the Communist Party played in the controversy. Finally, he documents the UAW response to rank and file pressure for a shorter workweek, and how the local's own organizational flaws allowed Reuther and the national union to wrest control from the dissidents. Fresh and boldly written, "Labor's Time" recreates a moment when unions as a movement, not as an amalgam of leaders could have transformed the landscape of work in the United States. Author note: Jonathan Cutler is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Wesleyan University and co-editor of Post-Work."
format TEXT
geographic USA
id 19137938124919551109_37305a7072594ad2a772027f6412828f
institution ETUI-European Trade Union Institute
is_hierarchy_id 19137938124919551109_37305a7072594ad2a772027f6412828f
is_hierarchy_title Labor's time: shorter hours, the UAW, and the struggle for American unionism
language English
physical 236 p.
Paper
publishDate 2004
publisher Philadelphia
Temple University Press
spellingShingle Cutler, Jonathan
automobile industry
reduction of working time
trade union role
Labor's time: shorter hours, the UAW, and the struggle for American unionism
title Labor's time: shorter hours, the UAW, and the struggle for American unionism
topic automobile industry
reduction of working time
trade union role
url https://www.labourline.org/KENTIKA-19137938124919551109-Labor-s-time-shorter-hours,-th.htm