Abstract
In the 1950s and early 1960s organized labour in the United States enjoyed its most prosperous and effective years. All the many strands of development since the New Deal came together in that decade and a half to form one powerful thread which ran right through the central pattern of the nation’s life. The eruption of unions during the Depression, their co-option after into the controlling industrial bureaucracy in wartime, and the outcome of the great wave of strikes which occurred after victory had combined to determine labour’s new status. Links with the Democratic Party were now powerful and influential. Equally, labour’s activities took place within a transformed economic climate. Keynesian notions about demand management, government’s role in the economy, and the importance of rising profits, wages and employment helped ensure there was no return to the Depression years, which most had feared would happen once the war ended.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
Robert H. Zieger, ‘George Meany: Labor’s Organisation Man’ in Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, Labor Leaders in America (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987) p. 324.
Quoted in F. R. Dulles and Melvyn Dubofsky, Labor in America (Arlington Heights: Harlan Davidson, 1984) p. 350. This book contains an excellent brief summary of the disputes involving Taft-Hartley, pp. 348–52, on which my text rests heavily.
Nelson Lichtenstein, ‘Walter Reuther and the Rise of Labor-Liberalism’ in Dubofsky and Van Tine, Labor Leaders, p. 293.
Ibid., pp. 293–4.
Ibid., p. 294.
UAW Local 887 Collection, Series IV, Box 10, 4137, WPR contains 9 folders of verbatim reports.
UAW Local 887 Collection, Series IV, Box 11, File 1, p. 1069, WPR.
Ibid., File 5.
Ibid., File 1.
Ibid., Box 15, File 2.
UAW Local 887 Collection, Series 1, Grievances, File 5, Minutes of Meetings, WPR. This contains an intriguing series of handwritten pencil notes made by a union delegate at meetings between union and management between 1950 and 1952. Though not easy to decipher, the series continues until 1965.
UAW Local 887 Collection, Series 1, Grievances, File 5, Minutes of Meetings, WPR.
UAW Local 887 Collection, Series V, Box 15, File 2, WPR.
Ibid., Series IV, Box 15, File 1.
Ibid., Series V, Box 15, File 1.
UAW Washington Office, Jacobs and Shifton, Box 57, File 21, WPR and Wall Street Journal, 8 April 1954.
UAW Washington Office, Jacobs and Shifton, Box 57, File 21, WPR.
Ibid., Box 55, File 2.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., Box 57, File 16 (capitals and italics in original).
Ibid., Box 55, File 2.
Ibid., File 7.
Ibid., Box 57, File 17.
Ibid, Box 55, File 7.
Leo Fenster Collection, Box 2, File 25, WPR. For the practice of isolating one car company, see Walter P. Reuther, UAW President’s Office, Box 102, File 8, WPR.
The Worker, 18 January 1958; New York Times, 1 April, 13 May and 15 May 1958: in UAW Washington Office, Jacobs and Shifton, Box 55, File 5, WPR.
Address to 3rd Convention AFL-CIO, San Francisco, reprinted in UD Digest, Fall 1989, pp. 22–9, in W. P. Reuther, UAW President’s Office, Series X, Box 567, File 5, WPR. Steel profits for 1959 are discussed in UAW Washington Office, Jacobs and Shifton, Box 57, File 19, WPR.
Lichtenstein, ‘Walter Reuther’, in Dubofsky and Van Tine, Labor Leaders, pp. 294–5.
Fred Thompson interview in Studs Terkel, ed. Hard Times (Chicago: Avon Books paperback, 1971) p. 357 (italics in original).
Lichtenstein, ‘Walter Reuther’, in Dubofsky and Van Tine, Labor Leaders, p. 295.
Ibid., pp. 291–2.
Reuther used the phrase ‘organic unity’ in a speech to the UAW-CIO convention on 22 March 1953. See W. P. Reuther, UAW President’s Office, Series VIII, Box 298, File 8, WPR.
Ibid., File 17, WPR.
AFL News Reporter, 4 June 1953 (capitals in original).
Speech to UAW-CIO Convention, 22 March 1953 in W. P. Reuther, UAW President’s Office, Series VIII, Box 298, File 8, WPR.
W. P. Reuther, UAW President’s Office, Series VIII, Box 298, File 10, WPR.
See ‘The AFL will absorb the CIO when...’, Colliers magazine, 15 September 1951, and ‘Dave Beck, Strikebreaker’, Minnesota Labor News, 8 May 1953, in W. P. Reuther, UAW President’s Office, Series VII, Box 300, File 10, WPR. For examples of Teamster raiding, see leaflets in Box 300, File 2.
New York Times, 29 January 1955, Milwaukee Journal, 7 February 1954 and Harvey Kitzman letter to Reuther, 9 February 1954, in W. P. Reuther, UAW President’s Office, Series VIII, Box 300, File 10, WPR.
Detroit Free Press, 14 February 1955 and W. P. Reuther, UAW President’s Office, Series VIII, Box 300, File 16, WPR.
A. H. Raskin, ‘Too much labor Unity?’ New York Times, 12 January 1956, in W. P. Reuther, UAW President’s Office, Series VIII, Box 298, File 14, WPR. See also Box 333, File 5 and CIO News, 5 December 1955.
W. P. Reuther, UAW President’s Office, Series VIII, Box 298, File 8, WPR.
Quoted in Zieger, ‘George Meany’ in Dubofsky and Van Tine, Labor Leaders, p. 335.
Copyright information
© 1991 Patrick Renshaw
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Renshaw, P. (1991). The Emergence of Corporate Consensus. In: American Labour and Consensus Capitalism, 1935–1990. The Contemporary United States. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21605-5_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21605-5_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-42866-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-21605-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)