Early in the 1980s the news media began to devote an unusual amount of attention to the issue of working-class consciousness. Two compelling, yet contrasting, developments fascinated the press. The first was the extraordinary labor upheaval in Poland, which appeared to shake a social order many had thought immutable. Forged out of the solidarity displayed in general strikes and buttressed by the threat of still more general strikes, the “class consciousness” of Polish workers riveted the attention of the Western press for months. The second development was the American labor movement’s seeming unresponsiveness toward President Reagan’s brazen assault on the...

Chapter 1 introduced the concept of “cultures of solidarity” as a social encasement for the expression of working-class solidarity, an emergent cultural form embodying the values, practices, and institutional manifestations of mutuality. I described certain elements of a mass strike during the 1930s in Minneapolis in order to outline the contours of such solidarity, not because that decade represents the exclusive historical domain of solidarity, but because its depth and scope then were of such proportions as to exemplify class consciousness in an almost ideal-typical way. Although the task of illustration is thus made simpler, and the “compelling myth” has...

In the previous chapter, I indicated in a general sense how the Taft-Hartley Act and the postwar social contract have molded the bureaucratic character of contemporary American unionism, limiting the open expression of militancy and solidarity. In this case study, I will examine the impact of this legacy on grievance resolution in a steel-casting factory, showing how rank-and-file union members sometimes circumvent the bureaucratic channels established to curtail open conflict by engaging in wildcat strikes that represent an implicit break in the social contract. An examination of the anatomy of two wildcat strikes raises significant questions about spontaneity, rationality, and...

As chapter 3 indicated, the legacy of the post-Taft-Hartley social contract weighs heavily on the structures and practices of contemporary trade unionism, which might serve as a pivotal basis for industrial action. But collective action is also often a crucial component of union formation, especially in the face of sharp employer resistance. This chapter examines the process of union organization by a group of women hospital workers. In this case, as in earlier periods of history, managerial counterstrategies combined paternalism and repression in an attempt to defeat the workers’ efforts, highlighting the jaggedness of the terrain that is the field...

It has been argued in different forums and in different ways that contemporary American society is immune to the open class warfare that once punctuated its history and that conflict, if it is expressed, remains contained within the workplace. This is certainly the case for the most part and reflects an important reality, as the previous accounts demonstrate. But as the third study in this book will indicate, the tenor of recent conflict sometimes recalls the battles of an earlier era in many important respects, though there are crucial differences.

As pointed out previously, strikebreaking has a rich history in...

On 13 December 1981 a tiny (one square inch) news item appeared in theNew York Times. Datelined Brindisi, Italy, the item read in full:

Workers protesting the layoff of 25,000 employees by Italy’s ailing chemical giant, Montedison, briefly closed down this southern industrial city today. The police said that the workers occupied the airport, sealed the main railroad station, blocked major highways and took over the Montedison plant. They left peacefully in the afternoon.

That was all. Apparently noTimesreporter was on the scene (the story was taken from the AP wire), and there were no follow-up stories...