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Like Night and Day: Unionization in a Southern Mill Town
Contributor(s): Clark, Daniel J. (Author)
ISBN: 0807846171     ISBN-13: 9780807846179
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
OUR PRICE:   $40.38  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: March 1997
Qty:
Annotation: Focusing on the Harriet and Henderson Cotton Mills, this book shows that workers valued the Textile Workers Union of America for more than the higher wages and improved benefits it secured for them. Specifically, Clark points to the importance members placed on union-instituted grievance and arbitration procedures, which most labor historians have previously seen as impediments rather than improvements.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Political Science | Labor & Industrial Relations
- History | United States - 20th Century
- Social Science
Dewey: 331.881
LCCN: 96-7730
Lexile Measure: 1560
Physical Information: 0.75" H x 6.17" W x 9.21" (0.90 lbs) 272 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - Southeast U.S.
- Geographic Orientation - North Carolina
- Cultural Region - South Atlantic
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Daniel Clark demonstrates the dramatic impact unionization made on the lives of textile workers in Henderson, North Carolina, in the decade after World War II. Focusing on the Harriet and Henderson Cotton Mills, he shows that workers valued the Textile Workers Union of America for more than the higher wages and improved benefits it secured for them. Specifically, Clark points to the importance members placed on union-instituted grievance and arbitration procedures, which most labor historians have seen as impediments rather than improvements.


From the signing of contracts in 1943 until a devastating strike fifteen years later, the union gave local workers the tools they needed to secure at least some measure of workplace autonomy and respect from their employer. Union-instituted grievance procedures were not without flaws, says Clark, but they were the linchpin of these efforts. When arbitration and grievance agreements collapsed in 1958, the result was the strike that ultimately broke the union. Based on complete access to company archives and transcripts of grievance hearings, this case study recasts our understanding of labor-management relations in the postwar South.


Contributor Bio(s): Clark, Daniel J.: - Daniel J. Clark is assistant professor of history at Oakland University in Michigan.