LABOR AND DEMOCRACY: A PLAN OF ACTION TO SAFEGUARD THE AMERICAN WAY [INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR]

Green, William

Published by Princeton University, Princeton, N. J., 1939

1st edition, original publisher's cloth in dust jacket, 194 pages. Inscribed by William Green on front endpaper "With the compliments of the Author/Wm. Green President/ American Federation of Labor." "William Green was the second long-term president of the American Federation of Labor, serving from 1924 until his death in 1952. An advocate of labor-management cooperation, legislated wage and benefit protections and industrial unionism, he continued the federation's evolution (begun under its first president, Samuel Gompers) away from the â pure and simple unionism' of its origins and toward the more politically involved â social reform unionism' characteristic of mid-century. Born in Coshocton, Ohio, in 1873, into an English and Welsh immigrant coal-mining family, Green began working as an underground coal miner when he was 16.Green was elected secretary of the Coshocton Progressive Miners Union in 1891, which later became a local of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). He went on to serve as subdistrict president of the UMWA in 1900 and president of the Ohio district of the UMWA in 1906. In 1910, Green campaigned successfully for a seat in the Ohio Senate, where he served as both Senate president pro tempore and Democratic floor leader. He was re-elected to a second term in 1912. As a state senator, Green wrote and won passage in 1911 of a model Workmen's Compensation Act. He also secured bills to limit the hours of women wage earners, establish a 1 percent income tax, elect Ohio's U.S. senators by popular vote and hold judicial elections on a nonpartisan basis. Green's successes helped ensure his appointment as international statistician for the UMWA in 1911 and as UMWA international secretary-treasurer in 1913. He was named to the AFL Executive Council in 1914 as the UMWA representative and became the federation's secretary-treasurer in 1916. Green served as one of five labor delegates to the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I. Upon the death of Samuel Gompers in 1924, Green was the consensus choice for president of the AFL, a post he would hold for the next 28 turbulent years. Under Green, the AFL in the 1920s shifted its strategy from confrontation to cooperation. Gompers generally had charted an independent, confrontational course for the federation during his years as its president, despite his membership in the National Civic Federation and his close association with the Wilson administration. Green preferred a more cooperative approach. Green preached union-management cooperation in the day-to-day operation of the workplace. He also advocated a reduction in the hours of labor, which he believed would increase the living standards of workers and create greater opportunities for civic participation. Finally, Green promoted a productivity-wage bargain (or voluntary incomes policy) between labor and management, tying higher wages for workers to productivity increases.Each of these initiatives, he argued, would benefit both workers and employersâ "but few were listening in the 1920s. Nevertheless, something very much like his proposals was embraced by a new generation of labor and business leaders as the basis of post-World War II prosperity. Green was an advocate of legislative action to secure workers' rights and benefits, and he helped ensure federation support for such legislation in the 1930s. Green's backing was crucial to winning passage of the 1932 Norris-La Guardia Act, which severely limited the use of injunctions in labor disputes and abolished so-called â yellow dog contracts' that required workers to agree not to join a union as a condition of employment. That same year, Green gained federation endorsement for a national unemployment insurance system funded primarily by employer contributions. He later helped pass the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which strengthened workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the first federal law. Seller Inventory # 42824

Bibliographic Details

Title: LABOR AND DEMOCRACY: A PLAN OF ACTION TO ...
Publisher: Princeton University, Princeton, N. J.
Publication Date: 1939
Binding: Hardcover
Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
Edition: 1st Edition