Academic literature on the topic 'Women labor union members Australia'
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Journal articles on the topic "Women labor union members Australia"
1
Thornthwaite, Louise. "A Half-hearted Courtship: Unions, Female Members and Discrimination Complaints." Journal of Industrial Relations 34, no. 4 (December 1992): 509–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002218569203400401.
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Research suggests that since the 1970s, while union membership has been declining in Australia, trade unions have become more supportive of women workers and their specific concerns. This change of heart has been assessed largely in terms of union policy positions and union representation of particular issues. Anti-discrimination and equal opportunity laws have emerged during the same period as this observed change of heart has taken place. It may be hypothesized that, if unions have indeed altered their approach towards gender-based concerns in recent years, women workers will be seeking union assistance with gender-specific grievances such as discrimination complaints. This paper examines why women workers who belong to male-dominated unions are not seeking their union's support with discrimination grievances, suggesting that the extent of change in women's relationships with unions may have been limited.
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Rodríguez-Gallardo, Ángel, and María Victoria Martins-Rodríguez. "The Incorporation of Women in the Agricultural Trade Union Struggle: The Case of the Galician Peasants’ Union Sindicato Labrego Galego." International Labor and Working-Class History 98 (2020): 121–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0147547918000054.
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AbstractThis project investigates the participation of rural Galician women in social movements regarding labor and rural concerns from 1970 to 1990, with a comparative and interdisciplinary approach. Based on the studies we have analyzed we can conclude that the recognition of rural women and their roles in their organizations have been consolidated in recent years. Rural women have gradually become significant social players in the development of their communities and, consequently, their economies. This study also demonstrates that participation in organizations plays a major role in the development of women's identities by changing the rural definition of gender. In the case of Galician women, historical relegation is evident as the empowerment of rural women did not begin until a group of feminist women became members of the Executive Board of Sindicato Labrego Galego. The driving force behind this empowerment was the creation of organizations for women with clear and specific objectives.
3
Milner, Lisa. "“An Unpopular Cause”: The Union of Australian Women’s Support for Aboriginal Rights." Labour History 116, no. 1 (May 1, 2019): 167–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/jlh.2019.8.
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The Union of Australian Women (UAW) was a national organisation for left-wing women between World War II and the emergence of the women’s liberation movement. Along with other left-wing activists, UAW members supported Aboriginal rights, through their policies, publications and actions. They also attracted a number of Aboriginal members including Pearl Gibbs, Gladys O’Shane, Dulcie Flower and Faith Bandler. Focusing on NSW activity in the assimilation period, this article argues that the strong support of UAW members for Aboriginal rights drew upon the group’s establishment far-left politics, its relations with other women’s groups and the activism of its Aboriginal members. Non-Aboriginal members of the UAW gave practical and resourceful assistance to their Aboriginal comrades in a number of campaigns through the assimilation era, forming productive and collaborative relationships. Many of their campaigns aligned with approaches of the Communist Party of Australia and left-wing trade unions. In assessing the relationship between the UAW and Aboriginal rights, this article addresses a gap in the scholarship of assimilation era activism.
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Skeldon, Ronald. "International Migration within and from the East and Southeast Asian Region: A Review Essay." Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 1, no. 1 (March 1992): 19–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/011719689200100103.
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Five migration systems are described: settler, student, contract labor, skilled labor, and refugee. Settler migration to the U.S., Canada and Australia has consisted primarily of family members; the future may bring a greater emphasis on highly skilled and business categories. Contract labor migration, particularly to the Middle East, has provided jobs, foreign currency through remittances and greater participation of women, but also led to illegal migration, skills drain, and labor abuses. The hierarchy of development has led to intra-regional flows: (1) skilled labor mainly from Japan to other countries in the region, and (2) contract labor and illegal migration from the LDCs to the NIEs and Japan.
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Cranford, Cynthia, Angela Hick, and Louise Birdsell Bauer. "Lived Experiences of Social Unionism: Toronto Homecare Workers in the late 2000s." Labor Studies Journal 43, no. 1 (January 26, 2018): 74–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0160449x17753065.
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This article examines workers’ experiences with a union characterized by a social unionist framing and repertoire in the political realm and bureaucratic servicing of problems in the workplace realm. It analyzes interviews with members and officials about union strategies within privatized homecare predominately provided by immigrant women in Toronto. Workers report both consensual and tense relations with clients prompting them to praise their union’s political strategies yet criticize its limited workplace support. Findings indicate the importance of framing and repertoire that connect quality work with quality care, yet indicate a complex labor process that requires more conceptual and strategic attention.
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Romenesko, Kim, and Eleanor M. Miller. "The Second Step in Double Jeopardy: Appropriating the Labor of Female Street Hustlers." Crime & Delinquency 35, no. 1 (January 1989): 109–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0011128789035001006.
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“Topical” life histories were obtained from fourteen Milwaukee female street hustlers, aged 18 to 35, eleven of whom are members (or former members) of a “street” institution termed the “pseudo-family” (made up of a “man” and the women who work for him). A putative and potential refuge to women responding to a dearth of licit employment opportunities and to the glitter and economic potential of the street, the pseudo-family actually emerges as a heteropatriarchal mechanism whose character, organization, and context serve to depress further, rather than enhance, the life chances of its female members. Once a woman is “turned out” by the “man” and enlisted in the pseudo-family, she is enmeshed in a tangled skein of conflicting emotions and motives; “wives-in-law” vie for the coveted position of “bottom woman” and for the attentions and regard of their “man,” and the “man” schemes (in concert with other “men”) to maintain his dominance and, above all, the profitability of the union. As female hustlers age, and as their criminal records lengthen, they become marginal even to this world of last resort. Traded as chattel, often stripped entirely of property in the process of exchanging “men,” and finally disowned when competition from other more naive, more attractive, and more obedient women becomes too strong, street women find themselves doubly jeopardized by capitalistic-patriarchal structures that are pervasive in “straight” society and profound upon the street.
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Engelman, Michal, and Yue Qin. "STICKING WITH THE UNION? LABOR UNION MEMBERSHIP, WORKING CONDITIONS, AND POSTRETIREMENT HEALTH IN THE MIDWEST." Innovation in Aging 6, Supplement_1 (November 1, 2022): 682. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igac059.2505.
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Abstract American Employment experiences over the past five decades have been shaped by growing prevalence of bad jobs – those that are precarious and offer few pension or health insurance benefits – and a marked decline in unionization. Previous health research has highlighted the deleterious implications of bad jobs and yielded mixed or inconclusive findings about union membership. However, most of this research focused on working-age adults, and few studies have examined the long-term impacts of working conditions and union membership. We fill this gap via data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study – a sample of men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957 and have been followed through their working years, past retirement, and into oldest-old ages. We estimated regression models examining the impact of union participation in 1975 on subsequent self-rated health and depressive symptoms (measured in 1993, 2004, and 2011). Our findings suggest that union participation was associated with poorer self-rated health in 1993 (OR=0.67, 95% CI (0.48, 0.96)), with a stronger negative effect for more active union members (OR=0.58, 95% CI (0.36, 0.96)), even after controlling for socioeconomic status in childhood and adulthood. This effect dissipated by 2004, when most WLS participants were nearing retirement and further diminished by 2011, when participants were in their 70s. We found no significant effects of union activity on depressive symptoms. Job characteristics and the historical decline in the prevalence and power of unions over the cohort’s lifetime provide important contexts for interpreting these results.
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Whyte, Marama. "“The Worst Divorce Case that Ever Happened”: The New York Times Women's Caucus and Workplace Feminism." Modern American History 3, no. 2-3 (November 2020): 153–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/mah.2020.14.
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In 1974, women at the New York Times made national headlines when they filed a class-action sex discrimination lawsuit. The drama of the court case, however, has overshadowed the formation of the Times Women's Caucus two years prior, in 1972. A focus on the Caucus, the daily labor its members undertook in the years before and after filing suit, and the behind-the-scenes negotiation of internal office politics reveals the years-long process of consciousness raising and workplace organizing required to undertake a lawsuit in this novel legal area. Activist newswomen operated with unique restrictions and necessarily distanced themselves from the feminist movement, while quietly advocating for feminist goals. Caucus members drew from the feminist, labor, and union movements strategically rather than ideologically, and laid the foundation for substantial shifts in women's participation and representation in the mainstream media.
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Avendaño, Ana. "Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: Where Were the Unions?" Labor Studies Journal 43, no. 4 (November 12, 2018): 245–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0160449x18809432.
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Unions have a mixed record when it comes to fighting sexual harassment, especially in cases that involve harassment by union members. Union responses to sexual harassment have been shaped by their position in labor markets that remain highly segmented by gender and race, with male-dominated unions playing a passive role vis-à-vis female targets of sexual harassment, and too often siding with male harassers. Those responses have also been shaped by a legacy of sexism within the labor movement, and exclusion of women from the formal labor market, and from unions, and by a distinctive form of feminism exercised by women inside the labor movement, which focuses on women’s economic situation rather than on other social factors that keep women down. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, some unions faced their own internal harassment scandals. Several unions have since adopted internal codes of conduct, and other approaches to better address harassment internally, and on the shop floor. While codes of conduct are an important element in changing the culture that permits harassment to persist, they are not enough. By authentically focusing on sexual harassment, unions would connect to the experiences of women in all workplaces. They would also increase their chances of growing. Unions remain the most powerful voice for working people in America, and the best vehicle to create a transparent, accessible system that empowers those who suffer harassment in the workplace to stand up collectively and individually against violators. The moment demands intentional, well-resourced, genuine efforts from unions to do better. This article offers modest suggestions that unions could easily adopt.
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Team, Victoria, Lenore H. Manderson, and Milica Markovic. "From state care to self-care: cancer screening behaviours among Russian-speaking Australian women." Australian Journal of Primary Health 19, no. 2 (2013): 130. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/py11158.
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In this article, we report on a small qualitative scale study with immigrant Russian-speaking Australian women, carers of dependent family members. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we explore women’s health-related behaviours, in particular their participation in breast and cervical cancer screening. Differences in preventive health care policies in country of origin and Australia explain their poor participation in cancer screening. Our participants had grown up in the former Soviet Union, where health checks were compulsory but where advice about frequency and timing was the responsibility of doctors. Following migration, women continued to believe that the responsibility for checks was their doctor’s, and they maintained that, compared with their experience of preventive medicine in the former Soviet Union, Australian practice was poor. Women argued that if reproductive health screening were important in cancer prevention, then health care providers would take a lead role to ensure that all women participated. Data suggest how women’s participation in screening may be improved.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Women labor union members Australia"
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Pocock, Barbara. "Challenging male advantage in Australian unions /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1996. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09php7409.pdf.
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Raymond, Melanie. "Labour pains : working class women in employment, unions and the Labor party in Victoria, 1888-1914 /." Connect to thesis, 1987. http://eprints.unimelb.edu.au/archive/00000326.
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Fritsma, Teri Jo. "Women and the labor movement occupational sex composition and union membership, 1983-2005 /." Diss., University of Iowa, 2007. http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/178.
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4
Hutchison, Jane. "Export opportunities: women workers organising in the Philippine garments industry." Thesis, Hutchison, Jane (2004) Export opportunities: women workers organising in the Philippine garments industry. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2004. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/84/.
Full textAbstract:
Transnational production arrangements have been widely argued to lessen the organising capacities of industrial workers, none more so than in the case of women workers in 'export' or 'world market' factories in developing countries. This thesis contests this assertion by showing that women workers' ability to form enterprise unions in the Philippine garments industry are enhanced by transnational production arrangements involving an overseas market. Specifically, the thesis demonstrates that, in order to meet the quality and delivery requirements of overseas buyers and contractors, local owners and/or production managers are forced to routinely keep more production in-house in order to exert more direct controls over the work processes of their women sewers. By thereby limiting the amount of local subcontracting which is done, women workers are agglomerated in larger numbers in the one place and, consequently, their capacities to engage in collective action - as indicated by the establishment of enterprise unions - is markedly increased.
Empirically, the argument of the thesis draws on a 'multiple-case' study of sixty-five garment-making establishments located in and around Manila. The study involved interviews with owners, production managers and/or trade union officials about the local subcontracting practices of their establishments. The conclusions drawn about the links between export production and enhanced labour organising capacities at the enterprise level are corroborated by the 'commodity chain' literature on industrial deepening in the international garments industry and the status of the Philippine industry in this regard. But rather than think simply in terms of industrial deepening, this thesis is concerned with the impacts of exporting on class processes.
Theoretically, the thesis thus draws on the Marxist view that capitalist development entails changes in the social form of labour, through the real subsumption of labour. But, whereas Marx linked the real subsumption of labour to greater capitalist controls over the labour process, in this thesis the real subsumption of labour is also tied to concomitant changes in the spatial form of the labour process. From this standpoint, the thesis engages with labour process theory after Braverman (accusing it of often failing to link capitalist control to class processes) and with theories of class (which often ignore the social and spatial form of the labour process). In tying organising capacities of women workers at the enterprise level to changes in social and spatial form of the labour process, it is nevertheless argued that these capacities are also shaped at the national level by the legal framework for legitimate organising and by 'political space' in which the law in fact operates. In this regard, it is argued that, whilst the state often passes laws to protect labour standards, it does not grant workers the means to ensure such standards are actually enforced.
The thesis also challenges the view that the recruitment of women is a strategy which employers deliberately use in the Philippine garments industry to limit industrial conflict. Against this assertion of a rational economic basis to women's employment, the thesis argues that women are employed for sewing jobs as a result of the sex-typing of such jobs; but that this is also more an effect than a cause as the feminisation of sewing in the modern garments industry is embedded in class processes in the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States. Gender is a dimension of labour control, but women workers in the garments industry are not employed to limit enterprise unionism.
5
Hutchison, Jane. "Export opportunities : women workers organising in the Philippine garments industry /." Hutchison, Jane (2004) Export opportunities: women workers organising in the Philippine garments industry. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2004. http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/84/.
Full textAbstract:
Transnational production arrangements have been widely argued to lessen the organising capacities of industrial workers, none more so than in the case of women workers in 'export' or 'world market' factories in developing countries. This thesis contests this assertion by showing that women workers' ability to form enterprise unions in the Philippine garments industry are enhanced by transnational production arrangements involving an overseas market. Specifically, the thesis demonstrates that, in order to meet the quality and delivery requirements of overseas buyers and contractors, local owners and/or production managers are forced to routinely keep more production in-house in order to exert more direct controls over the work processes of their women sewers. By thereby limiting the amount of local subcontracting which is done, women workers are agglomerated in larger numbers in the one place and, consequently, their capacities to engage in collective action - as indicated by the establishment of enterprise unions - is markedly increased.
Empirically, the argument of the thesis draws on a 'multiple-case' study of sixty-five garment-making establishments located in and around Manila. The study involved interviews with owners, production managers and/or trade union officials about the local subcontracting practices of their establishments. The conclusions drawn about the links between export production and enhanced labour organising capacities at the enterprise level are corroborated by the 'commodity chain' literature on industrial deepening in the international garments industry and the status of the Philippine industry in this regard. But rather than think simply in terms of industrial deepening, this thesis is concerned with the impacts of exporting on class processes.
Theoretically, the thesis thus draws on the Marxist view that capitalist development entails changes in the social form of labour, through the real subsumption of labour. But, whereas Marx linked the real subsumption of labour to greater capitalist controls over the labour process, in this thesis the real subsumption of labour is also tied to concomitant changes in the spatial form of the labour process. From this standpoint, the thesis engages with labour process theory after Braverman (accusing it of often failing to link capitalist control to class processes) and with theories of class (which often ignore the social and spatial form of the labour process). In tying organising capacities of women workers at the enterprise level to changes in social and spatial form of the labour process, it is nevertheless argued that these capacities are also shaped at the national level by the legal framework for legitimate organising and by 'political space' in which the law in fact operates. In this regard, it is argued that, whilst the state often passes laws to protect labour standards, it does not grant workers the means to ensure such standards are actually enforced.
The thesis also challenges the view that the recruitment of women is a strategy which employers deliberately use in the Philippine garments industry to limit industrial conflict. Against this assertion of a rational economic basis to women's employment, the thesis argues that women are employed for sewing jobs as a result of the sex-typing of such jobs; but that this is also more an effect than a cause as the feminisation of sewing in the modern garments industry is embedded in class processes in the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States. Gender is a dimension of labour control, but women workers in the garments industry are not employed to limit enterprise unionism.
6
Joyce, Robin Rosemary. "Women's labour : women's power? : women in the Western Australian labour movement from the early 1900s to the Depression." Master's thesis, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/147157.
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Clarke, K. Jan. "Changing technologies and women's work lives a multimedia study of information workers, and feminist and union action research in Canada /." 1997. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ27286.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 1997. Graduate Programme in Sociology.Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 217-231). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ27286.
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Foley, Janice R. "Redistributing union power to women : the experiences of two women’s committees." Thesis, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/8765.
Full textAbstract:
This study examined women’s committees in two public sector unions in British
Columbia with predominantly female memberships over a twenty year period. The question
addressed was how and under what circumstances the committees could secure gains for
women, given a context where women remain at a power disadvantage relative to men.
Gains sought were of three types: 1) improvements in contract clauses particularly
beneficial to women; 2) increased female participation in union governance; and 3)
structural changes conducive to future increases in female participation in union governance.
Structures as defmed included both formal structures and other regularized procedures,
including processes of communication, decision making and resource distribution.
Based on literatures from several disciplines, a power model was developed that
guided data collection. Data were collected via archival research and semi-structured
interviews, and analyzed qualitatively.
The study found that the structures governing how the committees operated were
significant factors in committee effectiveness and that the active cooperation of the
leadership and/or the membership ensured that structures conducive to committee
effectiveness existed. The committees’ major challenge was to align their goals with those
of the leadership or the membership in order to generate the level of support that would
permit them to achieve their goals. The degree of alignment between committee and
membership goals affected to what extent the committee could secure goals not supported
by the leadership and was the major variable affecting committee power. However,
committee power was not necessarily associated with the level of gains achieved for women because both leadership and membership actions and existing union structures could induce
outcomes for women not orchestrated by the committees.
As a result of this research, the initial power model was refined and the restrictions
on the committees’ and leaderships’ use of power were clarified. The utility of crossing the
disciplinary boundaries between organizational theory, industrial relations, and political
science to explore how power is exercised in unions was demonstrated. Support for the
political model of organizations was generated, suggesting that insights gained from the
study of unions might advance organizational theorizing.
9
Curtin, Jennifer. "Women in trade unions : strategies for the representation of women's interests in four countries." Phd thesis, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/144316.
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Motsatsing, Tshetsana Ntebalang. "Investigating the nature of women's participation and representation in Botswana public sector unions : a case study of BOTSETU." Thesis, 2014.
Find full textAbstract:
There is a general view that women have joined trade unions in large numbers in the work
environment. However, it is clear that in spite of such large numbers, there are low levels of
representativity as well as low levels of active involvement among the women members. As a
consequence, women do not have enough bargaining power within the unions. This study
investigates reasons for this low level of representativity and active involvement of women
members in BOSETU. This research, therefore, aims at finding out the extent to which Botswana
secondary school women unionists face challenges in terms of their participation and
representation in BOSETU.
The data was collected from a sample of female and male trade unionists from Botswana
Secondary School Teachers Union (BOSETU), which is one of the Botswana Public Sector
Unions. This study adopted a qualitative research methodology using a triangulation of methods
through the use of interviews, observation and documentary analysis. There were two separate
interview schedules; one for the women unionists and the other for key informants.
The study drew on Feminist Theories such as patriarchy to explain the low levels of participation
and representation of women in trade unions. The study further points out that there are
marginally more women in BOSETU than men. However, in spite of this numerical advantage,
their membership is neither proportionally represented in the union leadership hierarchy nor is
their participation in union affairs robust enough. These findings are consistent with the literature
on gender and trade unionism which indicate that there are several obstacles to women
participation and representation in unions.
vii
This study contributes to the body of existing knowledge about women in trade unions. It
confirms findings of other studies that women still experience structural disadvantages as
unionists, despite trade unions’ constitutional support and the changing environment in
legislature.
Books on the topic "Women labor union members Australia"
1
Mumford, Karen. Trade union membership and the segregation of women in the Australian work force. [North Ryde, N.S.W.]: Macquarie University, School of Economic and Financial Studies, 1986.
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2
Kirkby, Diane Elizabeth. Alice Henry: The power of pen and voice : the life of an Australian-American labor reformer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
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1935-, Loh Morag Jeanette, ed. Left-wing ladies: The Union of Australian Women in Victoria, 1950-1998. Flemington, Vic: Hyland House, 2000.
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Women and trade unions: A comparative perspective. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999.
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Nightingale, Martina. Facing the challenge: Women in Victorian unions : the results of the first major survey into the representation of women in trade unions and progress on action for women members : a report. Carlton South: Victorian Trades Hall Council, 1991.
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6
Crosby, Michael. Power at work: Rebuilding the Australian union movement. Annandale, N.S.W: Federation Press, 2005.
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7
Göhring, Walter. Anna Boschek: Erste Gewerkschafterin im Parlament : Biographie einer aussergewöhnlichen Arbeiterin. Wien: Das Institut, 1998.
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8
Mabrouk Ben Laïba, Mouna, joint author, ed. Mongia Mabrouk Amira: Une tunisienne qui a su donner un sens à sa vie. Tunis: Editions Sahar, 2013.
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9
Bilden, Helga. Frau geht voraus: Frauen, ein unterschätztes Innovationspotential in den Gewerkschaften. München: Profil Verlag, 1994.
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10
Boehm, Marina C. Who makes the decisions?: Women's participation in Canadian unions. Kingston, Ont: Industrial Relations Centre, Queen's University, 1991.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "Women labor union members Australia"
1
Stephenson, Scott. "How to Build a Trade Union Oligarchy." In Frontiers of Labor. University of Illinois Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252041839.003.0012.
Full textAbstract:
Trade unions are ostensibly democratic organizations, but they often fail to operate as democracies in practice. Most studies of Western trade union democracy have acknowledged that oligarchy is the norm among unions but have nonetheless examined exceptional democratic unions to understand how those unions defied the trend. My study inverts this approach and instead examines two known oligarchical unions, the Australian Workers Union (AWU) and the United Automobile Workers (UAW) in the United States. I argue that union oligarchy requires certain conditions to thrive. Both unions lacked democratic rules, close-knit occupational communities, local autonomy, rank-and-file decision making, internal opposition, equality between members and officials, and free communication, but these absences were expressed in different ways in each organization. Comparing a prominent US union with a prominent Australian union allows for assessment of the extent to which oligarchy was the result of national context. I argue that the experience of trade union oligarchy in the United States and Australia was more similar than different. National differences between the two countries were important, but they manifested primarily as different methods to achieve similar outcomes.
2
Hernández, Sonia. "The Language of Motherhood in Radical Labor Activism." In For a Just and Better World, 98–110. University of Illinois Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252044045.003.0005.
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While considered part of the radical labor wing, women and fellow union members who petitioned on behalf of political prisoners, unions, agrarian cooperatives, and similar entities often employed the language of motherhood, which underscored the importance of women as caregivers and reproducers of community. Chapter 4 examines these developments and discusses women’s use of the language of motherhood within the context of radical labor activism. Such rhetoric, despite its use in state-sanctioned political parties and labor collectives, emerged as a radical alternative within anarcho-syndicalist groups because it sought to elevate women’s role as mothers and working mothers outside of the confines of the state. A revolutionary anarchist motherhood also stood for a strong critique of the Catholic Church, warning working mothers and women alike of the Catholic Church’s role in maintaining gender inequality. While activists aligned with the emerging state-sanctioned Partido Socialista Fronterizo (PSF) promoted the idea of the revolutionary mother/worker, anarcho-feminists, on the other hand, advocated a revolutionary motherhood that did not bow to the interests of the state or the church.
3
Lytle, Mark H. "Blue-Collar Blues." In The All-Consuming Nation, 287–305. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197568255.003.0013.
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The chapter opens by exploring the travails afflicting General Motors in the 1970s that included the labor unrest at Lordstown, competition from Japanese and German imports, and its own heavily bureaucratic corporate culture. As the nation’s number one manufacturer, GM’s woes were emblematic of the decline of the American economy, leading to what Jimmy Carter described as a “crisis of confidence.” Another source of stagnation was the failure of labor unions to serve their members and to adapt to new economic realities. Labor’s miseries included the decision of United Mine Workers president Tony Boyle to have his rival for power, Jock Yablonski, murdered. Very few historians of the postwar era give labor such prominent treatment that goes on also to look at the new role of women. This was the period, after all, that in which Karen Silkwood and Norma Rae became heroic figures. Another source of union woes was Hollywood’s shift from its generally sympathetic treatment of labor and workers in the 1930s to a more skeptical and even hostile treatment in such films as Blue Collar, Joe, and Saturday Night Fever. Another schism opened in popular culture as such country and western icons as Merle Haggard, along with evangelical Christians, spoke out for patriotism and family values and against countercultural values. Herein lies a major source of the current red state–blue state divide.
4
Carson, Matter. "“Everybody’s Libber”." In A Matter of Moral Justice, 166–86. University of Illinois Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252043901.003.0011.
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The immediate postwar years saw significant turmoil in the Laundry Workers Joint Board, the result of competitive pressures in the industry, an employer offensive (evidence that in the laundries a postwar “social contract” did not exist), and internal conflict between the leadership and members of the democratic initiative. Chapter 10 demonstrates that the racial tensions that had animated the union since its birth exploded in the late 1940s as work contracted and as LWJB secretary treasurer Louis Simon consolidated his power over the union. Adelmond publicly confronted the leadership and employers for engaging in racist and sexist practices and organized through her own local, where the workers demanded racial justice at home and for people of color abroad fighting colonialism. This chapter reveals that Robinson supported and nurtured the workers’ civil rights unionism by creating educational initiatives; by building alliances with labor and civil rights activists, including the indomitable congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr.; by mentoring workers of color; and by founding and supporting organizations committed to Black women’s empowerment. Adelmond’s and Robinson’s multifaceted postwar organizing illuminates the complex ways in which Black working-class women organized at the intersection of multiple positionalities, a reflection of the simultaneity of race, class, and gender discrimination in the lives, as well as their location within and commitment to diverse goals and movements, including civil rights, women’s rights, and organized labor.