"Negro and White, Unite and Fight!": A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking, 1930-90 (Working Class in American History) - Softcover

Horowitz, Roger

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252066219 ISBN 13: 9780252066214

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 1997

Synopsis

      This pathbreaking study traces the rise--and subsequent fall--of the
        United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA). Roger Horowitz emphasizes
        local leaders and meatpacking workers in Chicago, Kansas City, Sioux City,
        and Austin, Minnesota, and closely examines the unionizing of the workplace
        and the prominent role of black workers and women in UPWA.
      In clear, anecdotal style, Horowitz shows how three major firms in U.S.
        meat production and distribution became dominant by virtually eliminating
        union power. The union's decline, he argues, reflected massive pressure
        by capital for lower labor costs and greater control over the work process.
        In the end, the victorious firms were those that had been most successful
        at increasing the rate of exploitation of their workers, who now labor
        in conditions as bad as those of a century ago.
      "The definitive study of unionism in the meatpacking industry for
        the period since the 1920's." -- James R. Barrett, author of Work
        and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922
      A volume in the series The Working Class in American History, edited
        by David Brody, Alice Kessler-Harris, David Montgomery, and Sean Wilentz
      Supported by the Illinois Labor History Society
 
 

About this title

From Booklist:

Horowitz, coauthor (with Rick Halpern) of an oral history of African Americans in this industry (Meatpackers ), is currently associate director of Hagley Museum and Library's Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society in Delaware. The United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) is notable among U.S. unions for democracy, diversity, and a strong commitment to civil rights. Although African American workers often entered the industry as "scabs," company brutality convinced blacks and whites they needed to work together. Horowitz traces the roots of the UPWA; the struggle to form an international union; tactics adopted by UPWA on both shop floors and city streets; and the decline of the UPWA since the '50s and the consequences of that decline for the workers who put meat on our tables. Where labor history holds more than a tiny fraction of the shelf space devoted to business history, this cogent study of unionism in meatpacking from the Depression to the '90s is worth considering. Mary Carroll

Review:

"The definitive stury." -- James Barrett, author of Work and Community in the Jungle

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0252066219
• ISBN 13: 9780252066214
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 408