Conference paper
Labor Activism and the Immigrant Experience: Some References to the Political Economy of the United States
Garth Massey
; Department of Sociology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA
Abstract
The paper examines the changing political economy in which the immigrant worker to the United States was thrust in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Immigrant workers' involvement in the American labor movement – as examined through the reactionary/elitist, liberal, and progressive perspectives – has been contrasted to the oft-cited conservatism and patriotism found among immigrant groups. Only the latter perspective adequately addresses the structural conditions in which workers, native and immigrant alike, sought to attain industrial justice. In so doing it departs from the others in its conclusions about the reasons for the demise of American labor as a movement and the rise of bread-and-butter unionism. The paper examines political restructuring in the half century following the Civil War (especially the triumph of Northern business elites), changes in methods of industrial production and management, the evolution of a symbiotic relationship between business and government, and the utility of accomodating labor so long as it abandoned notions of industrial democracy. In this way the paper demonstrates that the role of immigrant groups was largely circumscribed by forces far more powerful than whatever associations or ideologies they might have aspired to.
Keywords
immigrants; political economy; labour movement; United States of America
Hrčak ID:
128166
URI
Publication date:
31.5.1988.
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