During a period when serious writing on the American Labor movement was at an absolute premium, the contributors to New Politics magazine created a body of literature distinguished by its clear-eyed vision of the limits and prospects of the working class. Assuming neither an "end of ideology" nor the "destruction of the working class," these writings are characterized by a precision matching their high purpose. This collection of essays is unique in providing voice to insurgent members of such unions as the National Maritime Union, the Seafarers' International, the Brotherhood of Painters, the Federation of Teachers, the Miners' Union and others. Rank and filers describe their efforts to achieve membership participation and control of their unions. Progressive unions like Harry Bridge's West Coast longshoremen's union and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union are examined, as are some traditionally more conservative "business" unions. Officials of some of these unions comment and are answered by their critics. This volume will be particularly useful to those interested in problems of work and labor in American society, problems of social organization, problems of mass and elite behavior in American industry, and to those who have come to realize that the working class, whether in ethnic or Americanist guise, remains a potent force in the political, economic and social life of the United States in the seventies.

With working lives characterized by exploitation and rootlessness, merchant seamen were isolated from mainstream life. Yet their contacts with workers in port cities around the world imbued them with a sense of internationalism. These factors contributed to a subculture that encouraged militancy, spontaneous radicalism, and a syndicalist mood. Bruce Nelson's award-winning book examines the insurgent activity and consciousness of maritime workers during the 1930s. As he shows, merchant seamen and longshoremen on the Pacific Coast made major institutional gains, sustained a lengthy period of activity, and expanded their working-class consciousness. Nelson examines the two major strikes that convulsed the region and caused observers to state that day-to-day labor relations resembled guerilla warfare. He also looks at related activity, from increasing political activism to stoppages to defend laborers from penalties, refusals to load cargos for Mussolini's war in Ethiopia, and forced boardings of German vessels to tear down the swastika.

Divided We Stand is a study of how class and race have intersected in American society--above all, in the "making" and remaking of the American working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Focusing mainly on longshoremen in the ports of New York, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, and on steelworkers in many of the nation's steel towns, it examines how European immigrants became American and "white" in the crucible of the industrial workplace and the ethnic and working-class neighborhood. As workers organized on the job, especially during the overlapping CIO and civil rights eras in the middle third of the twentieth century, trade unions became a vital arena in which "old" and "new" immigrants and black migrants forged new alliances and identities and tested the limits not only of class solidarity but of American democracy. The most volatile force in this regard was the civil rights movement. As it crested in the 1950s and '60s, "the Movement" confronted unions anew with the question, "Which side are you on?" This book demonstrates the complex ways in which labor organizations answered that question and the complex relationships between union leaders and diverse rank-and-file constituencies in addressing it. Divided We Stand includes vivid examples of white working-class "agency" in the construction of racially discriminatory employment structures. But Nelson is less concerned with racism as such than with the concrete historical circumstances in which racialized class identities emerged and developed. This leads him to a detailed and often fascinating consideration of white, working-class ethnicity but also to a careful analysis of black workers--their conditions of work, their aspirations and identities, their struggles for equality. Making its case with passion and clarity, Divided We Stand will be a compelling and controversial book.