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Twentieth Century United States

2015-10-02T23:47:29Z

Lmflaherty:

==Book Summaries==
* Donna Alvah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/women-and-children-first-the-importance-of-gender-and-military-families-in-the-cold-war-era/ Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War, 1946-1965] (2007).
* Luis Alvarez. [[The Power of the Zoot|The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II]] (2008).
* Karen Anderson. [[Wartime Women|Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II]] (1981).
* Michael Aronson. [[Nickelodeon City|Nickelodeon City: Pittsburgh at the Movies, 1905-1929]] (2008).
* Eric Avila. [[Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight|Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles]] (2004).
* Beth Bailey. [[America’s Army|America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force]] (2009).
* Beth Bailey & David Farber. [[The First Strange Place|The First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii]] (1992).
* Beth Bailey. [[From Front Porch to Back Seat|From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America]] (1989).
* Mark Brilliant. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/californication-race-ethnicity-and-unity-in-twentieth-century-california/ Californication: Race, Ethnicity, and Unity in Twentieth Century California] (2012).
* Amy Bridges. [[Morning Glories]] (1999).
* Laura Briggs. [[Reproducing Empire|Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico]] (2002).
* Alan Brinkley. [[Voices of Protest|Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression]] (1983).
* Charlotte Brooks. [[Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends|Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California]] (2009).
* Catherine Fisher Collins. [[The Imprisonment of African American Women| The Imprisonment of African American Women: Causes, Conditions, and Future Implications]] (1997).
* Robert Caro. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/dog-days-classics-robert-caros-controversial-portrait-of-robert-moses-and-new-york/ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York](1974)
* Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for the Nation and Chicago] (2001)
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[A Consumers’ Republic|A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America]] (2003).
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[Making a New Deal|Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939]] (2008).

* Nancy F. Cott. [[Public Vows|Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation]] (2002).
* Pete Daniel, [[Lost Revolutions|Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s]] (2000)
* Mike Davis. [[City of Quartz|City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles]] (2006).
* Mike Davis & Michael Sprinker. [[Magical Urbanism|Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City]] (2001).
* Michael J. Dear. [[The Postmodern Urban Condition]] (2001).
* Robert C. Donnelly. [[Dark Rose]] (2011).
* Steven Erie. [[Globalizing L.A.|Globalizing L.A.: Trade, Infrastructure, and Regional Development]] (2004).
* Steven P. Erie. [[Beyond Chinatown|Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment in Southern California]] (2006).
* Elizabeth Ewen. [[Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars]] (1985).
* Dannelly Farrow. [[Dixie's Daughters]] (2003).
* Barbara Ferman. [[Challenging the Growth Machine|Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighborhood Politics in Chicago and Pittsburgh]] (1996).
* Marcie Ferris and Mark Greenberg. [[Jewish Roots in Southern Soil|Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History]] (2006).
* John M. Findlay. [[Magic Lands|Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940]] (1993).
* Steven Gregory. [[Black Corona|Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community]] (1999).
* Jason Hackworth. [[The Neoliberal City|The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism]] (2006).
* William Ivy Hair. [[Carnival of Fury|Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900]] (2008).
* Tona J. Hangen. [[Redeeming the Dial|Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America]] (2013).
* Andrew Hartman. [[A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars]] (2015)
* Chester W. Hartman. [[Yerba Buena|Yerba Buena: land grab and community resistance in San Francisco,]] (1974).
* Georgina Hickey. [[Hope and Danger in the New South City|Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working-Class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940]] (2005).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[The American Political Tradition|The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it]] (1989).
* Daniel Horowitz. [[Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”|Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism]] (2000).
* John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. [[Lots of Parking|Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture]] (2004).
* Daniel Martinez HoSang. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/erasing-race-whiteness-california-and-the-colorblind-bind/ Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California](2010)
* Jonathan Hughes (Editor)& Simon Sadler (Editor).[[Non-Plan|Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism]] (2000).
* Daniel Hurewitz. [[Bohemian Los Angeles|Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics]] (2007).
* Marilynn S. Johnson. [[The Second Gold Rush|The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II]] (1994).
* Tony Judt. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/neoliberalisms-license-to-ill/ Ill Fares the Land] (2011).
* Larry D. Kramer. [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004).
* Joel Kotkin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/americas-ace-in-the-hole-is-of-course-its-awesomeness/ The Next Hundred Million:America in 2050] (2010)
* Kevin M. Kruse. [[White Flight|White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism]] (2007).
* Matthew D. Lassiter. [[The Silent Majority|The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South]] (2007).
*Gary L. Lehring. [[Officially Gay|The Political Construction of Sexuality by the U. S. Military]] (2003).
* William R. Leach. [[Land of Desire|Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture]] (1994).
* Michael F. Logan. [[Fighting Sprawl and City Hall|Fighting Sprawl and City Hall: Resistance to Urban Growth in the Southwest]] (1995).
* Roger W. Lotchin. [[Fortress California, 1910-1961|Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare]] (2002).
* Lisa Lowe. [[Immigrant Acts|Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics]] (1996).
* Robert S. Lynd & Helen Merrell Lynd. [[Middletown|Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture]] (1959).
* Catherine Lutz. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century] (2001).
* Nancy MacLean. [[Freedom Is Not Enough|Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace]] (2008).
* Isaac Martin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/stalking-the-tax-man-the-pervasive-influence-of-the-property-tax-revolt/ The Permanent Tax Revolt: How Property Tax Transformed America] (2008).
* Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton. [[American Apartheid|American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass]] (1993).
* Elaine Tyler May. [[America and The Pill|America and The Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation]] (2010).
* Carol Lynn McKibben. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Racial Beachhead: Diversity and Democracy in a Military Town] (2012).
* Lisa McGirr. [[Suburban Warriors|Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right]] (2002).
* James Miller. [[Flowers in the Dustbin|Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977]] (2000).
* Glen M. Mimura. [[Ghostlife of the Third Cinema|Ghostlife of Third Cinema: Asian American Film and Video]] (2009).
* John Hull Mollenkopf. [[The Contested City]] (1983).
* Maggi M. Morehouse. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Man and Women Remember World War II] (2000).
* Edward P. Morgan. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/a-mediating-mess-how-american-post-wwii-media-undermined-democracy/ What Really Happened to the Sixties: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy] (2011)
* Charles Moskos Jr. and John Sibley Butler. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way] (1996).
* Andrew H. Myers. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Black, White, and Olive Drab: Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and the Civil Rights Movement] (2006).
* Armando Navarro. [[The Cristal Experiment|The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control]] (1998).
* Becky M. Nicolaides. [[My Blue Heaven|My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965]] (2002).
* Margaret Pugh O’Mara. [[Cities of Knowledge|Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley]] (2004).
* Gilbert Osofsky. [[Harlem|Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto : Negro New York, 1890-1930]] (1996).
* Rick Perlstein. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/essence-precedes-existence-the-problem-of-identity-politics-in-hurewitzs-bohemian-la/ Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America](2009).
* Rebecca Jo Plant. [[Mom|Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America]] (2012).
* Brenda Gayle Plummer. [[Window on Freedom|Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988]] (2003).
* Jerald E. Podair. [[The Strike that Changed New York|The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis]] (2002).
* Doris Marie Provine. [[Unequal Under Law|Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs]] (2007).
* Daniel T. Rodgers. [[Contested Truths|Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence]] (1998).
* David Roediger. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/dog-days-classics-the-wages-of-whiteness-and-the-white-people-who-love-them/ The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class] (1991).
* Adam Rome. [[The Bulldozer in the Countryside|The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism]] (2001).
* Richard Ronald. [[The Ideology of Home Ownership|The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing]] (2008).
* Jake Rosenfeld. [[What Unions No Longer Do]] (2014).
* Peter Henry Rossi & Robert A. Dentler. [[The Politics of Urban Renewal|The Politics of Urban Renewal: The Chicago Findings]] (1981).
* Sheila Rowbotham [[Dreamers of a New Day|Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century]] (2010).
* Mike Royko. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago] (1971)
* Roger Sanjek. [[The Future of Us All|The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City]] (1998).
* Jennifer Scanlon. [[Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine]] (2009).
* Bruce Schulman & Bruce J. Schulman. [[The Seventies|The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics]] (2002).
* Joel Schwartz. [[The New York Approach|The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City]] (1993).
*Gary S. Selby [[Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in America's Struggle for Civil Rights]] (2008)
* Josh Sides. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/making-san-francisco-josh-sides-erotic-city/ Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco] (2009).
* Nayan Shah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/intimate-citizenship-the-influence-of-marriage-sexuality-and-transience-on-national-membership/Stranger Intimacy:Contesting Race, Sexuality and Law in the American Northwest] (2012).
* David J. Silbey. [[A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902]] (2007).
* Rickie Solinger. [[Beggars and Choosers|Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States]] (2002).
* Allan H. Spear. [[Black Chicago|Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920]] (1969).
* Todd Swanstrom. [[The Crisis of Growth Politics|The Crisis of Growth Politics: Cleveland, Kucinich, and the Challenge of Urban Populism]] (1988).
* Ronald Takaki. [[Hiroshima|Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb]] (1996).
* Penny M. Von Eschen. [[Satchmo Blows Up The World|Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play The Cold War]] (2004).
* Robert Wiebe. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/dog-day-classics-robert-h-wiebe-and-the-search-for-order/ The Search for Order, 1877 - 1920] (1967).
* Andrew Wiese. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/getting-to-the-mountaintop-the-suburban-dreams-of-african-americans/ Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century] (2004)
* Rhonda Y. Williams. [[The Politics of Public Housing|The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality]] (2004).
* William Appleman Williams. [[The Tragedy of American Diplomacy]] (2009).
* Gwendolyn Wright. [[Building the Dream|Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America]] (1983).
*Young B. Marilyn. [[The Vietnam Wars|The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990]] (1991).
*Zimmerman, Andrew. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/the-ties-that-bind-the-transnational-trick-of-immobilizing-the-mobile/ Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South] (2010).
*Washington Harriet. [[Medical Apartheid|Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present]] (2006)

Talk:Twentieth Century United States

2015-09-30T18:52:10Z

Lmflaherty: Created page with "What Unions No Longer Do|"

[[What Unions No Longer Do|What Unions No Longer Do]]

What Unions No Longer Do

2015-09-25T19:24:38Z

Lmflaherty:

{{Infobox book
| name = What Unions No Longer Do
| image = [[File:What Unions No Longer Do.jpg|200px|alt=Cover]]
| image_caption =
| author = Jake Rosenfeld
| translator =
| country =
| language =
| series =
| publisher = Harvard University Press
| pub_date = 2014
| pages = 279
| isbn = 978-0-674-72511-9
| oclc =
| congress =
}}
The disappearance of unions in the United States and the influence they had in business as well as politics is the subject of many labor studies. They explore the how and why of labor’s failure to thrive and its rapid decline in the 70s and 80s. In Jake Rosenfeld’s book What Unions No Longer Do his goal is to document the “consequences” of the decline of labor’s hold on the United States. Using the data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) as conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Elections Studies (NES) and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service he builds his case outlining the repercussions of the loss of unions. After reviewing the data Rosenfeld comes to three conclusions: unions can no longer influence the distribution of wealth in the United States, unions can no longer help in raising the standard of living for minorities or help in the assimilation of immigrants into U.S. society nor can unions forestall the shift of power to business.

The author Jake Rosenfeld is a Professor of Sociology at Washington University-St. Louis and focuses on inequality in the United States. The book’s title is a play on an earlier book entitled What Do Unions Do by Harvard economists Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff written in 1984. In their book they defend unions against the prevailing belief at the time that unions were damaging to workers and business. The crux of What Unions No Longer Do is that the loss of union representation, particularly private, in the United States directly correlates to the rising inequalities that one sees today.

Rosenfeld begins his argument in 1973, as that is when the CPS began asking about union membership. He describes the differences between public and private union membership and the inability of public unions to affect change on the scale that private membership can. To quickly clarify, public unions represent workers who negotiate with government for pay and benefits and private unions negotiate with corporate entities for pay and benefits. Immediate differences can be seen in union members. Public unions represented around a third of workers in the 70s and continues to represent that many in 2009, the last year data was collected. Public sector employees tend to have a higher education and higher income levels. Comparatively, private sector union membership has fallen to just seven percent of workers and tend to represent those with less education. Why then can’t public unions continue the work of earlier unions in equalizing pay? As mentioned before they represent a different socio-economic class with different needs than the private sector unions. Their power to negotiate is greatly dependent of the political environment in which they are working additionally their numbers are limited to the size of government. As Rosenfeld says, contrary to political boasts the size of government has not changed in fifty years and that is a fifth of the non-farm workforce. (43) That is simply not enough people to affect the change that private unions were able to do at their peak. Any change is also dependent on the reception public unions face in government. Those states led by Democrats tend to be receptive and those led by Republicans hostile as seen in Governor Scott Walker’s successful fight to regulate collective bargaining rights with local government workers.

When it comes to impacting pay public unions fall well behind private in increasing the wealth of members. Rosenberg uses the union wage premium to compare the two sectors. The union wage premium is defined as “ …the wage benefit a worker receives as a result of his or her union membership, and membership alone. The premium is the wage effect of union membership adjusted for the impact of other confounding factors.” (44) For private unions in 2009 the wage advantage was 22 percent, for public it was only 14 percent. Private union members have a wage benefit that comes in the form of health insurance and pensions but public unions have a higher rate provision. For example 88 percent in the public sector receive a pension compared to 63 percent in private. The combination of limited numbers, differing socio-economic levels and limited ability to negotiate large gains impedes the public unions’ capacity to impact the income disparity we see today.

The relationship between unions and minorities and immigrants has been volatile. Violent racism and xenophobia can be documented throughout their shared existence. In spite of this unions were able to lift each group bringing them closer to the middle class. The world that they joined was hierarchical and had been easily unionized since shop floor workers and managers did not work side by side. The racial divide during World War II was overlooked, as manufacturers needed workers. This led to an overrepresentation of African Americans in union jobs as they experienced less discrimination than in non-union jobs. Still, due to systematic racism, these workers remained in unskilled positions and non-supervisory positions. After the War they continued to be over represented in unionized fields. Data from the Current Population Survey from 1973-2009 shows union rates for African Americans exceeded those of whites during the same period. African American females joined unions twice as often as white females. As unions lost influence African American disproportionally felt the economic punch. For African American females this is especially tragic. In the 80s the wage gap with white females was almost closed since the loss of union presence and influence they have once again experienced a steep increase in wage inequality. For males in the African American community there is no data to support their decrease in wage equality is connected with union’s decline. (120)

For newly arrived immigrants the story is very similar. Unions were a platform for training and assimilation but they often found themselves relegated to unskilled positions. For the many recent Hispanic arrivals into the U.S. the weak union environment has left them struggling to move up the economic ladder. Rosenberg writes that although the population of Hispanics rose three fold in the U.S. their involvement in unions was halved. For those that want to organize many difficulties arise resulting from the shift in power from workers in the mid twentieth century to corporations in the twenty first century.

How did the power shift away from unions to business? With each hit unions took they also lost sway with politicians. With the loss of political support, corporations moved to reduce unions voice within the system. As the cycle continued labor and those that participated in unions saw their political influence and workplace influence slide. Unions today demand a higher level of education and as a result are hiring fewer holding only high school degrees or less. Therefore, they are representing a different portion of society than in earlier times. As Rosenfeld states “the decline of one equalizing institution-organized labor- allowed for the disequalizing impact of educations.” (188) The increase in technology in the workplace has played a role in the reduction in the number of non-managerial staff. The inability to strike took away another powerful tool of the unions leaving them to long drawn out negotiations with little repercussions for the company. Those negotiations often included the impact of cheap imports from countries like China and resulted in lower wages.

Concluding, Rosenfeld does not see a revival for unions in the near future. He points to the difference between the Great Depression that galvanized workers and their unions and the Great Recession, which never considered unions in the recovery. He feels this is because the nature of capitalism in the United States has changed. In the early twentieth century manufacturing ruled the economy today we are a service driven economy relying on a more educated workforce. Politicians who once courted labor no longer see the advantage and possibly a disadvantage. With big business pouring money into campaigns to candidates that support their vision of a productive workforce, the voice of the lower income union worker gets drowned out. In his defense of unions he is comforted by a Gallup poll that found young people in support of unions. As a reader I am left to wonder if these young people have any true reference for what they claim to support.

File:What Unions No Longer Do.jpg

2015-09-25T16:24:49Z

Lmflaherty:

What Unions No Longer Do

2015-09-25T16:14:56Z

Lmflaherty:

What Unions No Longer Do

2015-09-25T15:36:57Z

Lmflaherty: Created page with "Jake Rosenfeld What Unions No Longer Do (2014)"

Jake Rosenfeld [[What Unions No Longer Do|What Unions No Longer Do]] (2014)