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9780252065477 Academic Inspection Copy

"We Are All Leaders"

The Alternative Unionism of the Early 1930s
  • ISBN-13: 9780252065477
  • Publisher: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
    Imprint: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
  • Edited by Staughton Lynd
  • Price: AUD $54.99
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 15/03/1996
  • Format: Paperback 360 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: History [HB]
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We Are All Leaders'' describes a kind of union qualitatively different from the bureaucratic business unions that make up the AFL-CIO today. From African American nutpickers in St. Louis, chemical and rubber workers in Akron, textile workers in the South, and bootleg miners in Pennsylvania to tenant farmers in the Mississippi Delta, packinghouse and garment workers in Minnesota, seamen in San Francisco, and labor party campaigns throughout the country, workers in the 1930s were experimenting with community-based unionism.Contributors to this volume draw on interviews with participants in the events described, first-person narratives, trade union documents, and other primary sources to tell what workers of the 1930s did. The alternative unionism of the 1930s was democratic, deeply rooted in mutual aid among workers in different crafts and work sites, and politically independent. The key to it was a value system based on egalitarianism. The cry, ''We are all leaders!'' resonated among rank-and-file activists. Their struggle, often ignored by historians, has much to teach us today about union organizing.
''An important anthology... Brings to life workers' struggles of the 1930s, using a style of historical investigation previously applied most widely in studies of the nineteenth century.'' -- David Montgomery, author of Citizen Worker: The Experience of Workers in the United States with Democracy and the Free Market During the Ninenteenth Century
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