"Stalin over Wisconsin" : the making and unmaking of militant unionism, 1900-1950
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
"Stalin over Wisconsin" : the making and unmaking of militant unionism, 1900-1950
(Class and culture)
Rutgers University Press, c1992
Available at 8 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 233-256) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
During the first half of this century, Allis-Chalmers was Wisconsin's largest employer. The firm hired a variety of workers, including the native-born, immigrants, the skilled, the unskilled, and eventually women and a small number of blacks. Stephen Meyer presents a history of the Allis-Chalmers workers, and of the growth and destruction of the militant, left-wing union they built. The story of these workers and their union serves as a microcosm of the history of American labor in the twentieth century.
Meyer describes how skilled workers, fearful of mechanization, worked to develop a robust union in the 1930s. He details the battle for unionization among the more militant CIO, the conservative AFL, Communists, and Allis-Chalmers management officials. Meyer tells us about several of the key players in this battle--Harold Story, the Allis-Chalmers vice president and chief labor strategist, and Harold Christoffel, the electrical worker who became the powerful first president of the union.
Meyer also analyzes the technical and social transition from batch to mass production, the social and cultural world of the ordinary workers at the workplace, and the factional struggles on the shop floor and picket line. He concludes by examining the CIO's entry into Wisconsin politics, the subsequent campaign against union leftists, the rise of Joseph McCarthy, the consolidation of Walter Reuther's position as UAW president, and the passage of the Taft-Hartley law.
by "Nielsen BookData"