Labor's Struggles, 19451950 A Participant's View [Paperback]

This book skillfully combines autobiography and scholarly analysis to present original insights into this period of labour history.This book skillfully combines autobiography and scholarly analysis to provide the reader with information available from no other source. Informative and original in its approach, the insights this book provides must be included in any subsequent efforts to interpret this period of labour history.This book skillfully combines autobiography and scholarly analysis to provide the reader with information available from no other source. Informative and original in its approach, the insights this book provides must be included in any subsequent efforts to interpret this period of labour history.Informative and original, Labor's Struggles, 1945-1950 contains information and insights that must be included in any subsequent efforts to interpret this period in labor history. The author based this account largely on his own experience as legislative representative for the United Auto Workers-CIO from 1943 to 1947, as well as on documents and conversations from that period, supplemented with historical research. This study of policy-making in union headquarters and in Washington centers on the 1945 splits within the CIO as well as the sharp division between the social CIO and the opportunist AFL. In addition, it focuses on the Labor Management (Taft-Hartley) Act of 1947 that divided an already fragmented movement.Introduction and acknowledgments; Labour's fragmentation and the industrial relations context in 1945; Searching for coexistence: the management labour charter and the labour management conference; The great strike wave of 1946 and its political consequences; The Taft-Hartley legislative scene; The aftermath of Taft-Hartley; Postlude; Appendix: The Labour Management Relations (Taft-Hartley) Act of 1947; Illustrations. Richter's book points to issues that scholars have just begun to wrestle with: the relationship between labor and the stlƒ0