Black Americans and Organized Labor: A New History
Posted by Editor on June 24, 2010 · 4 Comments
By Paul Moreno [Learn more at Amazon.com]
From the Publisher
In Black Americans and Organized Labor, Paul D. Moreno offers a bold reinterpretation of the role of race and racial discrimination in the American labor movement. Moreno applies insights of the law-and-economics movement to formulate a powerfully compelling labor-race theorem of elegant simplicity: White unionists found that race was a convenient basis on which to do what unions do–control the labor supply. Not racism pure and simple but “the economics of discrimination” explains historic black absence and under-representation in unions.
Moreno’s sweeping reexamination stretches from the antebellum period to the present, integrating principal figures such as Frederick Douglass and Samuel Gompers, Isaac Myers and Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. Du Bois and A. Philip Randolph. He traces changing attitudes and practices during the simultaneous black migration to the North and consolidation of organized labor’s power, through the confusing and conflicted post-World War II period, during the course of the civil rights movement, and into the era of affirmative action. Maneuvering across a wide span of time and a broad array of issues, Moreno brings remarkable clarity to the question of the importance of race in unions. He impressively weaves together labor, policy, and African American history into a cogent, persuasive revisionist study that cannot be ignored.
About the Author
Paul D. Moreno, Grewcock Professor of History at Hillsdale College in Michigan, is a member of the James Madison Society of the Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University and the author of From Direct Action to Affirmative Action: Fair Employment Law and Policy in America, 1933-1972.
I recently read an article in Bloomberg Businessweek June 28th 2010 issue. In this article it stated that Chrysler was spending $550 million, Ford $3 billion and GM $3.67 billion, all of the money is being spent in Mexico. It seems that Union workers have become to expensive for the Big Three. It cost auto makers about $55.00 and hour, ( That includes benefits), to use union labor here in the U.S… In Mexico it cost 340 pesos for each worker. Thats about $26.40 a day U.S.,( less then $4.00 an hour) Good Job Unions. Keep making unresonable demands on the Auto Companys, untill there are no more Auto Companys left in the U.S….
I personally don’t see the pendulums swinging the other way. The problem as I see it is that there is no balance, what balance is equality. What you give to one, or where you draw the line everyone gets to be there.
Thats balance!!! We all exault competition, allah heath care debate, Companies face it daily, unions never have, companies do not get to get labor bids, Imagine SEIU against UAW who provides labor to the car companies!! After all Companies have this comp. every day wheres the balance?? Its allright for the Greedy Companies to hyave to fight every day but not us! PS I’m a Union member>
we have all
I’m not sure I understand your post Gofstopper, so I’m not sure if I disagree with you or not.
Labor unions allow a group of employees with bargain collectively and exert some influence over their pay and working conditions rather than as powerless individuals. Dictatorships do that. But certainly no one is saying the United States of America would deny the right of individuals to work together to improve their lives? Why is it so fashionably patriotic for people to band together to oppose this administration, and yet demonize those who would band together bargain as a unit with their employer?
I’ll give you an opinion but feel free to disagree. Big companies want you to believe they love you and are looking out for your best interest, and further that collective bargaining works AGAINST the interest of employees. If you believe that, well, I don’t know what to say. Companies are in the business of maximizing profits, not loving and taking care of their employees.
Yeah, I wasn’t so impressed with the union I once was in. And I know some unions in the past have been corrupt and led by people who were motivated to increase their own profits, not those of union members they represented.
I’m lucky. I work for a medium sizes, international company that values loyalty and skill and compensating people according there value as individuals in the marketplace. We don’t need a union.
I guess this book has just come out, because there’s not much on the internet about it, and what reviews there are seem remarkably similar, even using some of the same wording.
The Founders conception of government, as I understand it, was one with “checks and balances” designed to prevent the Executive, Legislative or Judicial arms of government from becoming too powerful. The Founders were wise and wrote the Constitution is such a way that allowed the United States to become the longest lived Democracy on Earth.
Whatever you think about unions now, they led to a better work environment and better pay for the average American, a legacy Unions still own. Before unions, large companies could pay workers the absolute minimum the market would bear (which was very small, less than enough to buy food for a family), and have no safety standards. That’s American history, for reference read “The Grapes of Wrath.” By organizing workers distinctly a American way, they gave companies the choice of firing skilled workers, or improving working conditions and pay. Checks and balances.
Unions did become too powerful and put a lot of companies out business. So, as the system of checks and balances always solves (as our Founders foresaw), unions have become less powerful. The pendulum has swung the other way.
But the legacy is that most working Americans are making $10 or $15 an hour and aren’t taking their lives in their own hands every day when they report to work.