Sunshine Was Never Enough - Los Angeles Workers, 1880-2010

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-0-520-27345-0
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 460 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 159 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 748 g

Delving beneath Southern California’s popular image as a sunny frontier of leisure and ease, this book tells the dynamic story of the life and labor of Los Angeles’s large working class. In a sweeping narrative that takes into account more than a century of labor history, John H. M. Laslett acknowledges the advantages Southern California’s climate, open spaces, and bucolic character offered to generations of newcomers. At the same time, he demonstrates that—in terms of wages, hours, and conditions of work—L.A. differed very little from America’s other industrial cities. Both fast-paced and sophisticated, Sunshine Was Never Enough shows how labor in all its guises—blue and white collar, industrial, agricultural, and high tech—shaped the neighborhoods, economic policies, racial attitudes, and class perceptions of the City of Angels.

Laslett explains how, until the 1930s, many of L.A.’s workers were under the thumb of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association. This conservative organization kept wages low, suppressed trade unions, and made L.A. into the open shop capital of America. By contrast now, at a time when the AFL-CIO is at its lowest ebb—a young generation of Mexican and African American organizers has infused the L.A. movement with renewed strength. These stories of the men and women who pumped oil, loaded ships in San Pedro harbor, built movie sets, assembled aircraft, and in more recent times cleaned hotels and washed cars is a little-known but vital part of Los Angeles history.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Laslett, John H. M.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte Regionalgeschichte der USA: Einzelne Staaten, Städte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction: Scope and Purpose

PART ONE: UNDER THE THUMB OF THE OPEN SHOP
1. Myth versus Reality in the Making of the Southern California Working Class, 1880–1903

2. “It’s Class War, without a Doubt”: The Open Shop Battle Intensifies, 1904–1916

3. Grassroots Insurgencies and the Impact of World War I, 1905–1924

4. Moving to the “Industrial Suburbs”: From Hollywood to South Gate, and from Signal Hill to the Citrus Belt, 1919–1929

PART TWO: ORGANIZED LABOR COMES INTO ITS OWN
5. Unemployment, Upton Sinclair’s EPIC Campaign, and the Search for a New Deal Political Coalition, 1929–1941

6. Raising Consciousness at the Workplace: Anglos, Mexicans, and the Founding of the Los Angeles CIO, 1933–1938

7. Battle Royal: AFL versus CIO, and the Decline of the Open Shop, 1936–1941

8. “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back”? L.A. Workers in World War II, 1941–1945

PART THREE: CULTURAL CHANGE AND THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW INDUSTRIAL ORDER

9. “Caught between Consumption and the Cold War”: Rebuilding Working-Class Politics, 1945–1968

10. Employment, Housing, and the Struggle for Equality in the Era of Civil Rights, 1965–1980

11. Globalization, Labor’s Decline, and the Coming of a Service and High-Tech Economy, 1970–1994

12. False Dawn? L.A.’s Labor-Latino Alliance Takes Center Stage, 1990–2010

Conclusion: Comparative Reflections

Notes

Primary Sources

Index

Über Autor(innen)

John Laslett is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author or co-author of many books including Labor and the Left, Failure of a Dream?, Colliers Across the Sea, and History of the ILGWU in Los Angeles.