out of the jungle: jimmy hoffa and the remaking of the working class

BOOK REVIEWS

Lipset, Seymour Martin and Noah M. Meltz, with Raphael Gomez, John W. Kluge, and ThomasA. Kochan. The Paradox of American Unionism: Why Americans Like Unions More Than CanadiansDo But Join Much Less. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. 208 pp. $32.50 (paperback).

Many scholars, observers, and activists familiar with North American laborunionism are well aware of the fact that union density (i.e., the fraction of theworkforce that belongs to or is represented by a union) is much higher inCanada than in the United States—on the order of 30 percent to 14 percent.Much less well-known is that Americans approve of unions at least as much asCanadians. Moreover, the fraction of workers in the United States who say theywould vote for a union in their workplace is at least as high as in Canada, andyet U.S. union membership remains quite low. Seymour Martin Lipset andNoah Meltz label these puzzling contrasts the “paradox of American unionism.”After convincingly documenting these paradoxes, these two intellectual giantsunravel the mystery to reveal why Americans like unions more than Canadiansdo, but join much less.

Through a comparative review of union density across advanced Westerncountries, Lipset and Meltz show that union density is strongly correlated withsocial democratic values and political orientation. The authors then provide theevidence to confirm what many suspect—that Canadian sociopolitical values aremore social democratic than sociopolitical values in the United States whichtend to favor free markets and individualism. As a result, Canada has a signifi-cant number of government-owned companies (crown corporations), socializedhealth care, strong social safety nets, and laws and government agencies that aremore supportive of labor unions than in the United States. To Lipset and Meltz,this also means that the time period between 1937 and 1956 in which uniondensity was higher in the United States than in Canada was an anomaly. Thisis not an encouraging conclusion for anyone who values a strong U.S. labormovement, but through their careful analyses, this is a conclusion that Lipsetand Meltz make it hard to argue with.

WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society · 1089-7011 · Volume 8 · March 2005 · pp. 363–375© 2005 Immanuel Ness and Blackwell Publishing Inc.

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364 WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society

This material lays the foundation for the heart of the book, which tacklesthe paradoxes. Against this backdrop of low U.S. union density and weak socialdemocratic values, Lipset and Meltz show that in diverse surveys, including anoriginal survey administered in Canada and the United States specifically forthis book, Americans express more favorable attitudes toward unions than doCanadians. The resolution to this paradox is that union approval is inverselyrelated to union strength. In other words, Canadians express less approval forunions because they are more fearful that unions are too powerful. With littlefear that unions are too strong, Americans have fewer reservations aboutexpressing approval of unions in general.

This leads into the second paradox—why is U.S. union density low relativeto Canada (and nearly every other industrialized country) when 55 percent ofall U.S. workers in the Lipset–Meltz survey indicated that they would vote fora union in their workplace? This paradox is critically important for both schol-ars and activists and has been the subject of much research and debate. Manyin fact believe that the answer to this paradox is that managerial opposition tounions is higher in the United States. In what is likely to be a controversialstance, Lipset and Meltz, relying on their original survey evidence, concludethat managerial attitudes toward unions are no more hostile in the United Statesthan in Canada. In fact, perhaps because unions are weaker in the United States,managerial attitudes toward unions in the Lipset–Meltz survey are more hostilein Canada than in the United States (just as approval rates of Canadian unionsin the general populace are lower because unions are stronger).

Rather than blaming managerial hostility for low U.S. union density andhigh frustrated demand for unionization, the authors point to the importanceof each country’s underlying sociopolitical values. In short, Canada’s richersocial democratic fabric results in governments (especially at the provinciallevel) that are supportive of labor unions. Laws and other forms of governmentalsupport (such as extensive and speedy enforcement of labor laws) are thereforemore protective of unions in Canada. By implication, it is deep-seated valuesrather than shorter-term attitudes that explain the paradoxes of Americanunionism.

By highlighting the importance of national values, Lipset and Meltz forceus to blame more than business for labor’s fortunes, but the authors let businessoff the hook too quickly. Because U.S. managers say that they are no less hostiletoward unions than Canadian managers, the authors attribute low U.S. uniondensity to a lack of protective government structures rather than managerialattitudes. In short, “U.S. managers do not need to be as hostile as Canadianmanagers in order to thwart a unionization drive” because “legal differencesbetween the two countries make it easier for U.S. opposition to translate intoeffective anti-union outcomes” (p. 86). Setting aside difficult issues of howsincere we believe managers are when responding to attitudinal surveys aboutunions, the need for protective government structures stems from the realitiesof managerial opposition to unionization. If managerial attitudes are trulybenign, then there is no need for protective labor laws and labor boards. Thisis a paradox of American unionism that is overlooked by the authors.

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Nevertheless, the rich tapestry of results generated by this new Lipset–Meltzsurvey combined with extensive comparative and historical data provide fertileground for reflecting upon important paradoxes of American unionism, and thisbook will undoubtedly shape scholarship and debate for years to come. With aneye toward the future of the U.S. and Canadian labor movements, the authorsalso present a number of thought-provoking results on the nature of profes-sional associations and nonunion representation in the two countries. The inter-section of political values, social ideals, demographic trends, legal structures,and economic pressures highlighted in this book further reminds us thatemployment issues cannot be fully understood through narrow disciplinary ordogmatic perspectives. As such, this book has much to offer anyone interestedin labor and employment issues in North America, and by extension in thetwenty-first-century global economy with its free-market ethos.

Raphael Gomez and Ivan Katchanovski deserve our thanks for stepping inwith obvious dedication and skillful assistance to complete this important bookwhen the declining health of the lead authors prevented them from devotingthe energy they must have wanted to give to this project. Sadly, Noah Meltzpassed away before this book could be completed, and he will be missed greatlyby the field of industrial relations not only in North America, but throughoutthe world. We all have much we can continue to learn from the scholarship ofLipset and Meltz and this book will undoubtedly be a lasting tribute to theirlegacy.

John W. Budd, Industrial Relations Center, University of Minnesota

Pratt, Geraldine. Working Feminism. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2004. 224 pp.$21.95 (paperback).

In this highly interesting book, Pratt responds to several oft-cited criticismsof (especially poststructural) feminist theory: most notably, that it is too culturaland discursive, thus ignoring material bodies, economics, and real-life struggles,and that it excludes multiculturalism and transnational issues because of itsimplicit Western focus. Through a rich empirical and theoretical analysis of theconcrete struggles of Filipina domestic workers in Canada, Pratt attends to thesecriticisms. In doing so, she both extends the potentials of feminist theory andproblematizes the theoretical/empirical divide.

The case of domestic workers is ideal for these tasks, Pratt argues, for severalreasons. First, because of the laborious nature of the work and the workers’ eco-nomic struggles, a materialist analysis is a necessity, thus providing an excellentopportunity to stretch discursive feminist theory. Second, a focus on migrantFilipina workers forces feminist theory to consider those people with non-Western origins and to grapple with issues of colonialism, imperialism, and theincreasing interconnectedness of the world. Third, as a feminist geographer,Pratt is especially interested in the ways in which this case allows us to explore


the spatiality of feminist theory. The juxtaposition of the workers’ long-rangemobility from the Philippines, with their physical, social, and economic immo-bility in Canada, allows for a case study which encourages thinking throughproblems of scale. And finally, the author’s collaboration with a grassrootsactivist group highlights the need for specificity and concrete theorization.

The book alternates between theoretical and empirical chapters. In the firsttheoretical chapter, Pratt focuses on the thinking of Michel Foucault and JudithButler to lay the groundwork and theoretical framework for the rest of the book.She first offers excellent, lucid reviews of the major ideas of both theorists asthey have been used by feminists and evaluated by critics. Using both empiri-cal and theoretical works that build on Butler and/or Foucault, she shows thattheir theories have potential for a much greater materiality with the incorpora-tion of geography and spatiality into their works, and that a poststructural fem-inism that engages real situations and moves beyond the West is not onlypossible, but desirable as well.

The remaining theoretical chapters are equally rich and engaging, if a littlelong and dense at times. Chapter 4 considers spatiality as it relates to univer-salism, rights discourse, and the public/private divide within both liberal polit-ical theory and feminist theory. Pratt argues for the importance of emphasizingspatial, historical, and cultural context when framing or analyzing universalnorms. Chapters 6 and 7 similarly consider spatiality in the context of otherdebates within feminism, such as difference and multiculturalism as they relateto race, sexuality, and gender identity. Chapter 6 is a blended chapter that isboth theoretical and empirical. In addition to theorizing multiculturalism, theauthor also considers the idea that empirical objects are in part producedthrough theory through an analysis of the meanings and identifications withvarious ideas of home. What is particularly interesting about the book is the wayin which the ideas presented in the theoretical chapters are then explored morefully in the rich empirical chapters.

For example, in the first empirical chapter, the author examines the mar-ginalization and occupational ghettoization of the Filipina domestic workers.How is it, Pratt asks, that women, who in the Philippines had been registerednurses, teachers, and midwives, became—and remained—deskilled housekeep-ers and domestic workers in Canada? Based on a variety of rich data, includinginterviews with employment agencies, domestic workers, and employers ofdomestic workers, Pratt finds three primary ways in which Filipina domesticworkers are separated and marginalized from other workers. First is that theyare legally and physically separated from other workers. Most come to Canadaon a work visa that does not provide them Canadian or immigrant status, leadingto confusion about their rights as employees. Moreover, as part of this program,they are not allowed further educational training, the effect of which isdeskilling. Second, Filipina workers are socially separated from other domesticworkers defined as “European” (which includes workers from Australia and NewZealand). Filipina workers are seen by employers and employment agencies asuncivilized and as having different values from Canadians, while European

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workers are seen as ideal caretakers of children. Thus, Filipinas become “house-keepers” while Europeans are the more esteemed “nannies.” Finally, they arealso socially separated from other Filipinos by the Filipino community itselfthrough class, gender, and sexual stereotypes.

Pratt ends the book with a self-reflexive chapter on her own social locationthroughout the research process and collaboration with Filipina grassrootsactivists, and the various challenges and opportunities such a standpoint offeredher.

I particularly appreciated the attempt at bringing abstract poststructuralfeminist theory to bear on concrete, real-life material problems. Pratt does anexcellent job of delineating the critiques of feminist theory, and addressing eachin terms of the potentials of feminist geography. However, the payoff was notalways clear to me. Pratt has definitely made much-needed contributions topoststructural feminist theory. Yet given the richness of Pratt’s data (which Iwish we read more of), it appeared that her data and perspective had much moreto offer poststructuralism than poststructuralism had to offer her and her casestudy.

Mary Nell Trautner is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology,University of Arizona.

Russell, Thaddeus. Out of the Jungle: Jimmy Hoffa and the Remaking of the Working Class. Philadel-phia: Temple University Press, 2001. 272 pp. $19.95 (paperback).

Thaddeus Russell’s Out of the Jungle is now entering its fourth year on laborhistory shelves around the country. It has already been reviewed by eminent his-torians, one of whom—and I am not certain if this is generous from an eminenthistorian or not—concluded that “[f]lawed as it is, Out of the Jungle asks readersto re-examine their own understanding of these important matters.”1 I am notnearly as capable when it comes to preserving an air of authority while dolingout targeted praise, nor is this review as timely. But I do believe that Russell’shistory of the Teamsters under Jimmy Hoffa has, strangely, become even morerelevant in recent years. The book’s central and most controversial observationsdirectly address what has become the most debated issue in the contemporarylabor movement: the issue of union competition and the restructuring of labororganizations.

The current debate surrounding the “New Unity Partnership”2 (NUP) wasfirst discussed in earnest when Stephen Lerner, Director of Building Servicesfor SEIU and respected architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign, submit-ted a paper to Labor Notes for discussion titled “Three Steps to Reorganizingand Rebuilding the Labor Movement.” Lerner argued there that Americanlabor is drifting toward general unionism: that a small number of huge unionswere organizing and representing workers in a whole range of unrelated indus-tries, putting them in competition with other large unions. The results, he


claimed, were that unions were targeting the easy to organize “hot shops”instead of running industry-wide campaigns, and that general unionism was alsopreventing single unions from building the density necessary to fight and winaggressive contract campaigns in any given industry.3 I think it is fair to say that,beginning with this article, every time Lerner has appeared in print, a veritablepig-pile of progressive unionists and academics have followed: density is not theonly important thing, larger unions will not necessarily help, what about uniondemocracy and rank-and-file militancy, this is a top-down proposal bred fromthe den of bureaucratic iniquity, and so forth. Although initially Lerner had pro-posed only modest steps in the direction of union restructuring—throughmember and local swapping—the NUP is now running a platform of structuralreorganization in a bid for the leadership of the American Federation ofLabor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO), its top spokespeoplehave indicated a willingness to split the labor movement if this is what it takes,and the International Association of Machinists recently at its last national con-vention pledged to leave the Federation if the NUP attempts to implement itsplan.

There is room for important comparative research here, as Australianunions essentially did implement a dramatic NUP-style reorganization and con-solidation of the labor movement in the 1990s, although this does not seem tohave helped them in reversing union decline. But there is also an important rolefor history: enter Out of the Jungle. There are two historical problems withclaims that jurisdictional overlap and general unionism are at the heart of Amer-ican union woes, and these are problems addressed at length in Russell’s book.The first is that the heyday of American unions, from the early 1930s throughthe late 1950s, was a period during which union competition was not justintense, but perhaps the defining feature of the labor movement. The secondproblem is that, although industrial rationalization is essentially an appeal to the CIO tradition—and a strong tradition of progressive CIO historiographyhas led us to associate CIO tactics with the success of early-century labor—thevast bulk of membership growth during this earlier period was among AFLunions. And none grew faster or larger than the Teamsters, which, in additionto its organizational dynamism, rapidly evolved into just the sort of generalunion condemned by advocates of industrial rationalization, as Hoffa and theInternational Brotherhood of Teamsters used their strength among drivers tomove into workplaces up and downstream from trucking operations. Here is the nub. Here is the difficulty posed by Russell’s book: it is a history of how the American labor movement grew and grew strong, and it is also a history ofcompetitive general unionism.

Russell draws on private correspondence, union files, and local newspapersto show in case after case that the threat of CIO competition drove Hoffa’sTeamsters to organize new members and drive up wages and benefits in mili-tant and violent campaigns. Although we tend to associate this type of unioncompetition with the brokering of “sweetheart deals,” Russell goes out of hisway to show that Teamsters organizers did not consider employer acquiescencesufficient to keep workers out of CIO clutches—what was needed was to deliver

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better wages, better working conditions and hours, and to dramatically raiseliving standards. It is hard to argue with the results, which lifted most Teamstermembers into and then above even the ranks of auto workers and comparablesemiskilled manufacturing work. Moreover, Russell tries to show that it is onlywhere labor corporatists succeeded in “rationalizing” union structure, allowingTeamster monopolies to develop, that militancy died and helped to eliminate “avital source of democracy for truck drivers in the Midwest—the ability to choosetheir bargaining representative.” We might otherwise forget that choice ofunion is incompatible with industrial unionism, and that the only defense ofunion choice implies jurisdictional competition. But according to Russell’s nar-rative, it was labor peace and the sanctification of jurisdictional boundaries thatfacilitated unions’ stagnation and decline.

It is difficult to see union competition as a good thing—and today it is justas ugly, if not quite as violent as it was in Hoffa’s day. But when we step back,the record is not all that clear. Some of labor’s greatest gains today have beenin health care, a sector with intense union competition, as was public employ-ment in the recent past. On the other hand, some of the industries facing theworst union decline, such as in traditional manufacturing, or those facing con-cession bargaining in the face of strong non-union competitors like food retail-ing, are already effectively monopolized by one union, but this has not beenenough to win industry power. And I do not suppose that any NUP proponentswould argue that it is enough. They have often emphasized that industrialunions need to be held accountable, but it is just as unclear how this accounta-bility will be imposed without the threat of competition as it is how unwillingunions can be restructured.

Many of the hopes and expectations expressed today regarding industrialrestructuring are similar to the hopes and expectations of the original AFL–CIOmerger of 1955. It is reasonable to say that these hopes were disappointed fol-lowing 1955. Although it would be a mistake to consider all competition goodcompetition, just as it would be to consider all union monopoly good monop-oly, Out of the Jungle does lead one to wonder whether rationalization will notleave us disappointed again.

Benjamin Day is a doctoral student in Collective Bargaining, Labor Law, andLabor History at the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relationsat Cornell University.

Notes

1. Robert H. Zieger, “Out of the Jungle: Jimmy Hoffa and the Remaking of the American Working Class,”Labor History 43 (2002): 554–55.

2. See Richard Hurd, “The Failure of Organizing, The New Unity Partnership, and the Future of the LaborMovement,” Working USA 8 (2004): 5–25.

3. Lerner’s original paper is accessible online at http://www.labornotes.org/archives/2002/12/e.html. Asimilar article published after the NUP went public is Stephen Lerner, “No Density, No Power,” NewLabor Forum, 12 (2003): 89–93.

http://www.labornotes.org/archives/2002/12/e.html


Cutler, Jonathan. Labor’s Time: Shorter Hours, the UAW, and the Struggle for American Unionism.Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004. 236 pp. $19.95 (paperback).

What makes the “American Dream” of a house, family, cars, college, andcontinuous upward mobility possible? The work ethic—the other side of thecoin of our realm. Hard work, loyalty to the company, and personal self-sufficiency, so it is said, make the Dream a possibility. If worldly success is nolonger an automatic sign of God’s favor, pace Weber, it is still an indication that,in America, effort pays. Those who do not “make it” must not have made therequisite effort—a key tenet of Republican neopopulism.

On the other side of every uplifting dream is a lurking nightmare. For manyworkers, the work ethic is a company-sponsored and imposed value. In a termotherwise associated with the positive aspects of hospitality in New Orleans—lagniappe—workers are called upon to throw in “something extra” to everythingthat they do. And Wal-Mart workers know it well as they are called upon reg-ularly to do a lot of that “something extra”—the off-the-clock work that maskspersistent understaffing and stubborn corporate refusal to grant overtime payto those who pick up the slack.

By many accounts, the U.S. workforce is entering its fourth decade of suc-cessful corporate efforts to instill the idea and the practice of cut-backs, give-backs, and continuous improvement in union concessions. The trinity of morework, less pay, and reduced benefits are the core doctrines of the new gospel ofU.S. theocapitalism. The work ethic is alive and well in the U.S. and workersare paying for it, although not getting paid for it. As the State of Working America2002/2003 attests, “Families are spending more time than ever at work. Overthe last 30 years, workers in middle-income, married-couple families with chil-dren have added an average of 20 more weeks at work, the equivalent of fivemore months” (p. 16). In 2000, the U.S. led nations in the Organization forEconomic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1,887 hours in averageannual work.

Looking Back at UAW Local 600

Current struggles leave precious little time for reflection on past travails.Yet such reflection yields a vision of what might have been. It is this past thatCutler vividly recreates for the reader who wishes to revisit a little-known strug-gle over the currently unimaginable possibility that workers be paid the sameamount of money for substantially less work. Such was the promise of the 30hours’ movement (for 40 hours’ pay!) in Walter Reuther’s United Auto Workers(UAW) during the 1950s and early 1960s. Based in Ford Local 600, the largestUAW local with over 60,000 members, the “30–40 movement” attracted AfricanAmerican, Irish, Italian, and Polish tradesmen who joined with semiskilledworkers to demand an answer to the questions raised by automation and tech-nological innovation. Cutler asserts plainly, “This book is a study of that move-

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ment” (p. 6). Yes, it is such a study. And this study is also his opportunity toargue that the failure to fight for and institute this dramatic change in workhours has led to the demise of organized labor. Even more profoundly, thehistory of forgetting or ignoring that this struggle ever existed robs the labormovement of historical imagination which makes future struggles for similargoals so much more difficult. According to Cutler, this amnesia set in earlyduring the Kennedy administration and particularly during Johnson’s War onPoverty. “Nobody today remembers what the War on Poverty was not; but inthe early 1960s Kennedy and Johnson were crystal clear that it was not a shorterworkweek. At the start of the Great Society debates, the War on Poverty was astate-sponsored alternative to a labor-led shorter-hours initiative. Four decadeslater, the War on Poverty has many critics and defenders, but no major com-petitors—least of all the forgotten short hours movement” (p. 2). This book isa meticulously researched and well-documented reminder that this movementdid exist, it did matter, and that its failure, no matter who remembers it or not,bedevils the labor movement to this very day.

Cutler is an expert guide as he leads the reader through the labyrinthinewarrens of Local 600 and its amazing diversity of perspectives including theCommunist Party, Socialists, anti-Communists in the Association of CatholicTrade Unionists (ACTU), as well as Trotskyites in the Socialist Workers Partyand the Workers Party (WP). In a time when even the word “liberal” is tanta-mount to scandal, it is hard to imagine a time when the available ideologicaloptions varied so greatly. Indeed, the bellows that nurtured these diverse fireswere quickly snatched away as Cutler amply documents. Cutler’s attention tothe various “lefts” is not a paean to sectarian in-fighting but is necessary ground-work to raise larger questions about Reuther’s standing as a key member of thepost-World War II labor pantheon. As it pertains to the radical demand for athirty-hour workweek, Reuther’s reputation, ruefully, crumbles. “One unalter-able fact at the core of this book must be made explicit from the start: WalterReuther opposed the movement for a shorter work-week. He did not simplyneglect the movement.”

“As president of the UAW, Reuther used every weapon at his disposal tosubvert the movement for a shorter workweek throughout the 1950s and early1960s” (p. 3). For Cutler, this marks Reuther’s “break with the syndicalist tra-dition in the American labor movement and the development of his own brandof union corporatism” (p. 11). The irony is that it was George Meany’s publicagitation in the early 1960s on precisely this issue that forced the Kennedyadministration to personally respond to this demand (pp. 3–4). Yet even as weare treated to the sorry spectacle of Reuther’s overall stand against the 30–40movement, Cutler reveals those other moments in the struggle when Reutherseems to relent and support the effort. But it was an illusion in the end asReuther spent the 1950s perfecting the twin arts of lip service and delay thatpassively and aggressively thwarted the movement. These are the moments inthe story when one is brought face to face with a key question about historicalprocess—is historical change primarily about the “great leaders” or about the


popular movements that shape and move and shake leadership into new posi-tions and novel courses of action?

Cutler keeps his eyes on both sides of this question as he ponders the workof Local 600’s rank and file and the labors of another important character in thisstory—former machine setter at Ford’s River Rouge, Carl Stellato. Alternatingbetween outright opposition to Reuther and accommodation to him, Stellatocarved out for himself, in Cutler’s interpretation, a significant niche in UAWhistory. But Local 600, however much it may have seemed to those who strug-gled within it, was not a world unto itself. The larger context of the Cold War,anti-Communism, McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Commit-tee also falls within Cutler’s purview as he traces the history of Local 600 andhow the 30–40 movement could not disentangle itself from those larger forces.

Work and Commodities

Cutler’s enormous research into the intricacies of the internecine battleswithin the UAW over the thirty-hour workweek is important in its own right.His insightful and deeply researched study into these struggles compose themajority of his book. While the Kennedy and particularly the Johnson admin-istration must be held accountable for the ways that they did not support thisradical movement, the painful part of this history is what the union movementitself could not agree upon this radical step themselves. Reuther was not onlyspeaking for himself when he declared that, “Our basic fight is to get the pur-chasing power to buy the things we make. Not to make less things, but to makemore things and to get more money to buy the more things we make . . . Wedon’t want more leisure. We want more goods, and when we have enough goods,then we will fight for more leisure” (p. 37). Reuther’s words, a half century later,have a poignancy about them. To highlight the attainment of “goods” andneglect the means by which these goods are attained is a divorce of the mosthellish quality.

What good are the goods if one is too busy or not around to enjoy them?“Leisure” is a faint chant for a life well lived if work itself dominates and threat-ens to consume more of those who do it. Perhaps what Local 600, and theUnited States in general, lost is the opportunity to articulate and to practice analternative vision of a common life. True, the spectre of the Depression erascarcity haunted the labor movement—but the grasping reach for goods, as nowknown, has yielded evermore work chasing less and less purchasing power.Cutler shows a side of the labor movement that mistook the means for the end.

Labor’s Future

While Cutler offers a richly detailed narrative of an extraordinary group ofworkers in Local 600 who maintained a determined challenge to the manage-rial work ethic, Cutler also offers what this reviewer considers a key point ofany “labor ethic”—a remembering and a recovery of one’s history wherebyworkers wrestle with their own stories to stoke the possibility of even more

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effective struggles in the future. Ideally, workers can learn more about wherethey have come from and are reinvigorated in the quest for where they wish tobe. Cutler’s sustained activity of historical recovery, in effect, does the work thatthe unions themselves should be doing. This recovery is the signal achievementof this book.

The conclusion makes this clear when Cutler declares that, “Today, almostfifty years after the merger of the AFL and CIO, organized labor in the UnitedStates is so unresponsive to its own rank and file and so removed from its ownhistory of struggle that labor leaders are no longer even compelled to venturea position on the hours question. There is no hours question. The discourse ofshorter hours—the vision of less work and more pay—has vanished from thehorizon of possibility” (p. 181). This silence coming from the increasinglyempty house of labor has dire consequences, “The twentieth century ended withorganized labor in the United States flat on its back” (p. 181).

It is typical to trace the decline of the U.S. labor movement from the timeof its apogee in the 1950s and blame organized labor for its post-World War II“business union” accommodation to big business. Some historians of thisdecline point to the 1950 “Treaty of Detroit” (between General Motors and theUAW), which guaranteed a modicum of labor peace in exchange for job secu-rity and predictable increases in wages and benefits as a characteristic moment.Cutler offers his readers a thorough description of over a decade of dreamsdeferred on the 30–40 movement. By so doing, a full image of a neglecteddimension/aspect of labor’s capitulation and eventual “ultimate demise” appears.He is able to bring to the surface a whole new aspect of the meaning and theresults of a corporate approach to labor relations. This is not a book that onereads for pleasure; but to neglect its themes and its warnings promises evenmore trouble ahead.

While one may despair over labor’s impotence, the failure of its immenseinvestment of over $150 million to dislodge the current administration, and itsinability or refusal to remember its past—still, the ideas that inspire do not diecompletely. Just as the Industrial Workers of the World proposed a four-hourday (which just might have been in someone’s living memory in 1950s FordRiver Rouge), even today, despite ever-lengthening work hours, the banner ofless work is still held aloft. “6 Hour Day” (http://www.6HourDay.org) calls forworkers to unite for the 24-hour workweek, with six weeks paid vacation “allwith no reduction in pay or benefits.” It calls upon citizens of the world tosubmit petitions for this effort to the United Nations by May 2006.

Cutler performs a valuable service for us all. If for no other reason than toexercise the neglected muscle of historical imagination, one should read thisbook—even if one questions the thesis that the roots of labor’s demise can befound in the dirt of the failure of the 30–40 movement. Readers who are curiousabout the current institutional possibilities for the revival of labor’s efforts onthis matter will look through this book in vain. Alas, such is not the purpose ofthis book. His next one?

The book ends on a depressing note. Cutler cites Federal Reserve Chair-man Alan Greenspan’s remarks in 1996 about workers who forego wage

http://www.6HourDay.org


increases in favor of job security—a development that has led to a period of“extraordinary labor peace.” Cutler does not directly call for it, but implies, thatlabor must seize for itself a new militancy that has the capacity to project a futureof freedom and abundance (p. 183). If there is to be any future for labor, it mustsimultaneously take stock of its past and step forward or, better, march into thefuture. There must not be any peace if it is losing the class war it should bewaging.

Ken Estey is a labor researcher for Brooklyn College’s Graduate Center forWorker Education, serves on the editorial collective for Grassroots EconomicOrganizing Newsletter, and is author of A New Protestant Labor Ethic At Work(Pilgrim Press, 2002).

Bender, Daniel E. and Richard A. Greenwald, eds. Sweatshop USA: The American Sweatshop in His-torical and Global Perspective. New York: Routledge, 2003. 240 pp. $26.95 (paperback).

In the popular consciousness, at least, the sweatshop worker seemed con-signed to another historical era by the last decades of the twentieth century. Onewould sooner have expected a long-lost immigrant worker from The Jungle oran erstwhile juvenile coal miner from a Louis Hine photograph to jump fromthe front pages of a late-1990s tabloid than a contemporary young womanworking under grossly exploitative conditions in the garment industry. In a col-lection of thirteen essays, Sweatshop USA: The American Sweatshop in Historicaland Global Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2003), edited by Daniel E. Benderand Richard A. Greenwald, authors from several disciplines show us just howsuch scenario came to be. Although the primary audience will be academic, thevolume will also be a valuable source book for labor organizers, grassrootsactivists, and anyone interested in labor relations and social conditions in theUS and abroad.

Outlining a historical understanding of sweatshops and reactions to themby government, labor, and other reforming agencies over the past century, thecollective impact of the volume leaves the reader with a vastly better under-standing of the continuous presence of sweatshops in American life. Focusingon the garment trades, the authors show how economic uncertainties in theindustry—particularly seasonal fluctuations associated with changing demandsfor different kinds and styles of clothing—combined with a reliance on the sub-contracting system, low-skilled labor, and an ever-present requirement for flex-ibility on the part of subcontractors to produce the sweatshop. Surprisingly,these conditions have remained remarkably permanent in the garment indus-try. As several of the authors note, it has only been through a strong labor move-ment and state agencies willing to enforce labor laws that conditions in thesweatshops have been ameliorated, although never entirely erased. As KennethC. Wolensky notes in his essay “An Industry on Wheels: The Migration ofPennsylvania’s Garment Factories,” a sweatshop culture could even be sup-

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planted by a community organized around the labor movement, although suchgains lasted, in hindsight, for only a generation or two.

Indeed, by the 1980s and 1990s, it seemed that sweatshops were allowed toflourish, given labor’s drastic decline during the Reagan years and the ever-present economic pressures of the industry. In contrast to the contented, con-ventional wisdom of the millennium, in which the New Economy banishedsweatshop labor to history’s dust bin, the truth was that “without unionizationand state guaranteed workers rights, the sweatshop has reigned” as a dominantfigure on the American landscape, as Eileen Boris notes in her concise overviewof such trends in “Consumers of the World Unite!: Campaigns Against Sweat-ing, Past and Present” (p. 204). Even the rise of Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, anda host of other mega retailers—often cited as examples of the consumer-driven,service-sector economy—has only anchored the sweatshop more firmly in theAmerican economy, despite popular perceptions. In one telling quote, offeredin the collaborative essay “Offshore Production,” an executive of one brand-name apparel line for the chain stores provides a succinct summary of his business’s profile in the global economy. “We see ourselves as merchandise man-agers,” said the chief production planner, “Rather than manufacturers.” Giventhe company’s contracts with over seven hundred factories around the world atthe time, the executive’s remark was more than a little disingenuous.

If only the reality of the sweatshop was so easily belied. In one of the out-standing essays of the collection, “Sweatshops in Sunset Park: A Variation ofthe Late-Twentieth-Century Chinese Garment Shops in New York City,”Xiaolin Bao shows just how complex the sweatshop experience is for workers,managers, reformers, and regulators. Echoing conditions of a century past, Baodescribes a gender hierarchy as central to a coethnic culture in the sweatshop,albeit one rife with ethnic tensions among the immigrant work force. Likesweatshops of long ago, safety and health violations, along with the use of child labor and coercive methods, have remained hallmarks of the modern-daysweatshop.

There are no easy answers, then, for combating the transnational globalforces that produce sweatshops. Although the concluding essays leave a some-what optimistic impression based on the students-against-sweatshops movementthat touched many campuses in the late 1990s, one can only wonder if effortsthat largely end at America’s borders can be effective in remaking the transna-tional economy. With the bulk of domestically retailed apparel coming fromoverseas, it would seem that grassroots reform efforts would have to take holdin those nations before the “American sweatshop” really does become a thingof the past. In this series of concise, mostly jargon-free articles, however, theauthors have at least given us a better understanding of the challenges we face.

Timothy G. Borden completed his doctorate in history at Indiana University(1999). He is now employed in the public sector and is a member of AmericanFederation of Government Employees Local #46, Detroit, Michigan.

out of the jungle: jimmy hoffa and the remaking of the working class

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