*Labor's Time: Shorter Hours, the UAW, and the Struggle for American
Unionism*. By Jonathan Cutler. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press,
2004. 236 pp. $62.50 hardback, $20.95 paper.
"Whatever happened to organized labor's perennial demand for shorter hours
and higher wages?" is the question that Wesleyan University sociologist
Jonathan Cutler takes up in his excellent book, *Labor's Time*. He concludes
that the demand for shorter hours, the longtime bedrock of the syndicalist
tradition of the American labor movement, was a casualty of the corporatist
collective bargaining regime that emerged in the decade and a half following
World War II.
Cutler explores the mid-century clash of syndicalism and corporatism through
a detailed account of factional power struggles within the United Auto
Workers (UAW). The book centers on the maverick Local 600, representing the
tens of thousands of workers at Ford's enormous River Rouge plant, and its
oppositional relationship to UAW president Walter Reuther.
The primary battle over the shorter hours demand played out between Reuther
and Carl Stellato, president of Local 600 through the 1950s. Stellato
championed the demand for 30 hours' work at 40 hours' pay ('30-40') out of
political necessity, not personal conviction—the Local's militant rank and
file left him no choice. As Cutler argues, Local 600, through Stellato,
insisted that the demand for shorter hours remain on the UAW's bargaining
agenda, even as Reuther worked to consolidate his own bureaucratic authority
and steer the union toward more conciliatory positions.
The shorter hours fight disintegrated in the wake of the collective
bargaining round of 1958. Abandoning the 30-40 demand in the lead-up to
bargaining, Stellato instead staked out an accommodationist position within
the Reuther camp, in preparation for a doomed campaign for U.S. Congress. In
the months and years following Stellato's sell-out, as it was seen by much
of Local 600's rank and file, the shorter hours movement fell further and
further from the UAW's bargaining agenda. Cutler concludes that this
foreclosure of rank and file militancy had disastrous consequences: after
1958 "the UAW moved into full retreat."
This story is extraordinarily important, with implications far beyond the
internal politics of a single union. For its detailed explication of
Reuther's opposition to shop-floor militancy, *Labor's Time* should be
required reading for all students of the so-called labor-management accord
of the postwar period. Moreover, Cutler expertly explores the place of Cold
War politics within Reuther's UAW. At the height of American anti-Communism,
opponents of the 30-40 demand argued that shorter hours for U.S. auto
workers would only aid the Soviet Union.
As much as *Labor's Time* explains, it does suggest further study of the
place of industrial work and workers in the larger configuration of postwar
U.S. culture and society. Local 600's fight for shorter hours was part of a
long history of workers' organizing for control of their own time. Cutler's
study could be extended to engage directly with this history, as well as
with the politics of working class leisure in the postwar period. Another
key backdrop for Local 600's shorter hours movement was the ongoing
transformation of American manufacturing, a process led by the auto
industry. Though Cutler briefly discusses the push toward automation and
decentralization, a more in-depth treatment of these matters would have
enriched his analysis. Even with the further questions that it
provokes, *Labor's
Time* is an important new work in U.S. labor studies.
Daniel A. Gilbert Yale University
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On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote:
> Rudy Fichtenbaum wrote:
> > You can find the latest financial data for unions on the Department of
> Labor
> > website. Look for the LM2, which is the financial data that unions report
> to
> > DOL each year.
> >
> > UAW for 2008 -- $1.2 billion in assets, $5.8 million in liabilities, $315
> > million in total receipts, $310 million in disbursements, and a
> membership
> > of 431,037.
> >
> > Rudy
>
> interesting source. looking at the rate of growth of UAW membership
> between years, we get:
>
> 2001 4.4% (growth from 2000)
> 2002 -9.4%
> 2003 -2.2%
> 2004 4.7%
> 2005 -16.1%
> 2006 -3.4%
> 2007 -14.7%
> 2008 -7.6%
>
> almost a 15% fall going from 2006 to 2007!!
>
> --
> Jim Devine / "If heart-aches were commercials, we'd all be on TV." -- John
> Prine
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Sandwichman
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