Labor History
This guide will assist Wayne State students and faculty in navigating both library resources and free online resources. This includes not only resources offered through the Wayne State library system but those offered by other libraries and independent organizations. Happy researching!
Databases
- America: history and life This link opens in a new windowThis Ebsco database is particularly unique for its option of letting the user set the date range covered by the results in addition to setting a date range for publishing date.
- HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window'HathiTrust was conceived as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the University of California system to establish a repository for these universities to archive and share their digitized collections. Access is provided to many open access works from libraries around the country. Not all works are fully viewable.
- Independent Voices This link opens in a new windowIndependent Voices is a digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowProvides image and full-text online access to back issues of selected scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, demography, mathematics, and other fields of the humanities and social sciences. WSU has perpetual access to the Arts and Sciences I-XV, Hebrew Journals and Sustainability Collections.
- Kanopy Streaming This link opens in a new windowKanopy is an on-demand streaming video service for educational institutions that provides access to more than 26,000 films. Kanopy works directly with filmmakers and film distribution companies to offer award-winning collections including titles from PBS, BBC, Criterion Collection, Media Education Foundation and more.
- Left index. This link opens in a new windowThe Left Index is a complete guide to the diverse literature of the left, with an emphasis on political, economic, social and culturally engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. It is a good place to find significant but little known sources of news and ideas. Historically significant early Left publications such as The People (est. NY 1891), and The Class Struggle (1931-1937) along with classic texts by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and others, are also covered.
- Project Muse This link opens in a new windowA searchable database that provides access to the full text of journals published by Johns Hopkins University Press and other university presses.
Online Resources
- IRL Labor Action TrackerThis website hosted by Cornell University allows you to track ongoing labor disputes. Advanced search options will let you filter results based on size, duration, industry, location, and more.
- Labor's Turning Point
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This film discusses one of the most important labor actions in American history, the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike. Available through a YouTube channel belonging to a school of the University of Minnesota. - Working Class History PodcastA podcast that takes a global view of labor history, chronicling various social movements against racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ bigotry, and economic exploitation all over the world.
- Digital TamimentExplore the digital collection of the NYU Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, including posters, film, and oral histories.
Books and Ebooks
Brewing a Boycott by ISBN: 9781469661025Publication Date: 2021-05-10In the late twentieth century, nothing united union members, progressive students, Black and Chicano activists, Native Americans, feminists, and members of the LGBTQ+ community quite as well as Coors beer. They came together not in praise of the ice cold beverage but rather to fight a common enemy: the Colorado-based Coors Brewing Company. Wielding the consumer boycott as their weapon of choice, activists targeted Coors for allegations of antiunionism, discrimination, and conservative political ties. Over decades of organizing and coalition-building from the 1950s to the 1990s, anti-Coors activists molded the boycott into a powerful means of political protest.
Rethinking U. S. Labor History by ISBN: 9780826401984Publication Date: 2010-10-21This collection of essays seeks to provide an account of labor history that has accounted for major developments in the field of labor that have occurred since the 1980s, such as the rise of the neoliberal tide under Reagen and how labor has responded to the 2008 Recession.
Stronger Together by ISBN: 9780578054612Publication Date: 2010-06-01Stronger Together: The Story of SEIU describes how the Service Employees International Union grew to 2.2 million members in an era when most unions suffered major declines.SEIU, founded by a small group of Chicago janitors in 1921, is a bargaining and political powerhouse today and has won big economic gains for janitors, healthcare workers, and public employees-many of whom are women, immigrants, and people of color. An inspiring account of a union that changed the face of the labor movement.
Rethinking the American Labor Movement by ISBN: 9781136175503Publication Date: 2017-04-28Rethinking the American Labor Movement tells the story of the various groups and incidents that make up what we think of as the "labor movement." While the efforts of the American labor force towards greater wealth parity have been rife with contention, the struggle has embraced a broad vision of a more equitable distribution of the nation's wealth and a desire for workers to have greater control over their own lives. In this succinct and authoritative volume, Elizabeth Faue reconsiders the varied strains of the labor movement, situating them within the context of rapidly transforming twentieth-century American society to show how these efforts have formed a political and social movement that has shaped the trajectory of American life. Rethinking the American Labor Movement is indispensable reading for scholars and students interested in American labor in the twentieth century and in the interplay between labor, wealth, and power.
Solidarity Stories by ISBN: 9780295988832Publication Date: 2009-06-01The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, born out of the 1934 West Coast maritime and San Francisco general strikes, has been known from the start for its strong commitment to democracy, solidarity, and social justice. In this collection of firsthand narratives, union leaders and rank-and-file workers talk about their lives at work, on the picket line, and in the union. Their stories testify to the union's impact on the lives of its members and also to its role in larger events, ranging from civil rights battles at home to the fights against fascism and apartheid abroad. Solidarity Stories is a unique contribution to the literature on unions. The book will appeal to students and scholars of labor history, social and economic history, and social change, as well as trade unionists and anyone interested in labor politics and history.
Battling for American Labor by ISBN: 0520218337Publication Date: 1999-12-01Howard Kimeldorf challenges received thinking about rank-and-file workers and the character of their unions. Battling for American Labor answers the question of how, while mounting some of the most aggressive challenges to employing classes anywhere in the world, organized labor in the United States has warmly embraced the capitalist system of which they are a part. Rejecting conventional understandings of American unionism, Kimeldorf argues that what has long been the hallmark of organized labor in the United States?its distinctive reliance on worker self-organization and direct economic action?can be seen as a particular kind of syndicalism. Kimeldorf brings this syndicalism to life through two rich and compelling case studies of unionization efforts by Philadelphia longshoremen and New York City culinary workers during the opening decades of the twentieth century. This book offers insights not only into how the American labor movement got to where it is today, but how it might possibly reinvent itself in the years ahead.
If the Workers Took a Notion by Call Number: HD 8072.5 .L357 2005ISBN: 080144327XPublication Date: 2005-09-22Once a fundamental civic right, strikes are now constrained and contested. In an unusual and thought-provoking history, Josiah Bartlett Lambert shows how the ability to strike was transformed from a fundamental right that made the citizenship of working people possible into a conditional and commercialized function. Arguing that the executive branch, rather than the judicial branch, was initially responsible for the shift in attitudes about the necessity for strikes and that the rise of liberalism has contributed to the erosion of strikers' rights, Lambert analyzes this transformation in relation to American political thought. His narrative begins before the Civil War and takes the reader through the permanent striker replacement issue and the alienation of workplace-based collective action from community-based collective action during the 1960s. "If the Workers Took a Notion" maps the connections among American political development, labor politics, and citizenship to support the claim that the right to strike ought to be a citizenship right and once was regarded as such. Lambert argues throughout that the right to strike must be protected. He challenges the current "law turn" in labor scholarship and takes into account the role of party alliances, administrative agencies, the military, and the rise of modern presidential powers.
Beyond Marx by ISBN: 9789004231344Publication Date: 2013-11-25Capitalism has proven much more resilient than Marx anticipated, and the working class has, until now, hardly lived up to his hopes. The Marxian concept of class rests on exclusion. Only the 'pure' doubly-free wage-workers are able to create value; from a strategic perspective, all other parts of the world's working populations are secondary. But global labour history suggests, that slaves and other unfree workers are an essential component of the capitalist economy. What might a critique of the political economy of labour look like that critically reviews the experiences of the past five hundred years while moving beyond Eurocentrism?
Reconsidering Southern Labor History by ISBN: 9780813056975Publication Date: 2018-07-10This volume shows that many of the difficulties facing workers today have deep roots in the history of the exploitation of labor in the South. Contributors make the case that the problems that have long beset southern labor, including the legacy of slavery, low wages, lack of collective bargaining rights, and repression of organized unions, have become the problems of workers across the country. Presenting the latest trends in the study of the working-class South by a new generation of scholars, this volume is a surprising revelation of the historical forces behind the labor inequalities inherent today.
Labor's War at Home by ISBN: 9781439904237Publication Date: 2010-06-25Labor's War at Home examines a critical period in American politics and labor history, beginning with the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 through the wave of major industrial strikes that followed the war and accompanied the reconversion to a peacetime economy. Nelson Lichtenstein is concerned both with the internal organizations and social dynamics of the labor movement--especially the Congress of Industrial Organizations--and with the relationship between the CIO, as well as other bodies of organized labor, and the Roosevelt administration. He argues that tensions within the labor movement and within the ranks of American business profoundly affected government policy during the war and the nature of organized labor's political relations with Roosevelt and the Democratic Party. Moreover, the political arrangements worked out during the war established the foundations of social stability and labor politics that came to characterize the postwar world.
Working Detroit: The Making of a Union Town by ISBN: 9780814345092Publication Date: 1984Babson recounts Detroit's odyssey from a bulwark of the "open shop" to the nation's foremost "union town." Through words and pictures, Working Detroit documents the events in the city's ongoing struggle to build an industrial society that is both prosperous and humane. This sweeping account covers the history of labor in Detroit, from the beginning of industrialization in the city in 1848 to the state of labor in the late twentieth century.
Labor under Fire by ISBN: 9781469632995Publication Date: 2017-03-08From the Reagan years to the present, the labor movement has faced a profoundly hostile climate. As America's largest labor federation, the AFL-CIO was forced to reckon with severe political and economic headwinds. Yet the AFL-CIO survived, consistently fighting for programs that benefited millions of Americans, including social security, unemployment insurance, the minimum wage, and universal health care.
Periodicals
Here you can find some of the collections of periodicals offered by unions or other organizations concerned with labor issues and workers' rights.
- The Detroit Sunday Journal. The Detroit Sunday Journal was a weekly paper, published by striking union workers from the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press. The strike began in July, 1995; spanning four years and just over 200 editions, the Sunday Journal was published from November 19, 1995, through November 21, 1999. The newspaper strike formally ended in February, 1997 and the dispute continued until 2000. This collection includes the full run of the paper, which was published for the duration of the strike.
- Bulletin - Society for the Study of Labor History.
An interdisciplinary tool of the trade for study of British and other labour or social movements and working class history.
- Industrial Worker - A database of periodicals produced by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). This collection includes publications dating from 1999 to the present day.
- The Agitator - A monthly socialist magazine, part of the Purdy/Kressge Library's microfiche collection. Explore the microfiche collection yourself to find resources that haven't been digitized yet.
- Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas - This academic journal provides a labor focused perspective on history.
- Industrial and Labor Relations Review - This journal tackles issues of labor and workplace relations from a legalistic perspective.
Librarian
Welcome!
Welcome to the Wayne State University labor history libguide!
I hope you will find this page to be a helpful starting point to your research on the history of organized labor and workers' rights movements. On this page you will find highlighted resources belonging to the Wayne State University library system as well as free online resources. This page is an ongoing process to make research easier for both students and faculty and is a collaborative effort that will change and grow in order to accomplish that.
Feel free to reach out if you need assistance or have a question.
Brian Will
MA/MLIS Student