The History Corner

Mike Zickar
SIOP Historian
Bowling Green State University

In my last column, I discussed work-related documentary films as a way to expand our and students’ understandings of the history of work.  I asked for people to submit other film favorites and got one suggestion:  Nude Girls Unite! (the story of strippers in San Francisco trying to unionize).  I promised the recommender (who shall remain nameless!) that I planned to see it though I have yet to watch it (the local eclectic video store does have it).

In this column I would like to recommend a couple of scholarly books on the history of work.  From my experience, I-O psychologists are much better at keeping up to date with relevant research in psychological journals, though we neglect the greater literature that tries to understand the meaning of work from other disciplinary lenses.  Although most of us associate American history with retelling of presidential lives or refighting past battles and wars long since won or lost, there is a significant component in American history that tries to understand the role of work in our society.  My brief and sporadic reading of the history of work has been extremely influential in guiding my own historical research in I-O psychology, plus I have found it extremely interesting.  I thought it might be worth column space to detail two of my favorite books in the history of work.

Steeltown, by Charles Rumford Walker, is a brilliant and thorough study of a steel plant closing in Ellwood Pennsylvania.  The “plot” is a common refrain these days (though novel back in 1950 when the book was published) in that a factory threatens to relocate for financial reasons.  The steel plant in Walker’s study was the largest employer in a small town that had been built, literally and figuratively, around the factory.  The larger corporation decided that the machinery in the plant was obsolete and that a location in Gary, Indiana would be more cost efficient given that it was closer to related plants and to transportation hubs.  The story itself is so common that there is little novelty in it, at least these days.

What is interesting is Walker’s exhaustive study of the steelworkers’ jobs as well as the likely effects that the plant closing will have.  Although Walker was an economist, he reports on many things that I-O psychologists are interested in, including job satisfaction, attitudes toward unions, and the work–life balance of employees.  Walker had permission from management and labor as well as trust of employees to collect data on any number of questions and variables that he was interested in.  He used surveys, conducted one-on-one interviews, transcribed reports from union meetings, collected relevant newspaper articles, and even mapped workers’ residences throughout the city.  Walker quotes the employees of the mill in extensive detail.  Sometimes the workers communicate a point much better than any historian could do.  For example, one worker in describing what satisfied him said “I like my job best because you get a breathing spell.  The job operating is too nervous.  Every once in a while we can sit down on a bench...or have a cigarette.  That’s what I like” (p. 63).  The book has many similar descriptions that seem to provide much more thick description than you might find just reading our literature on job satisfaction!

Another favorite is I Remember Like Today:  The Auto-Lite Strike of 1934 by Philip Korth and Margaret Beegle, which is an oral history account of one of the country’s most famous labor conflicts at the time.  The Auto-Lite factory in Toledo, Ohio made automobile components for U.S. automakers.  Because of terrible working conditions, on-and-off employment, and poor management, the factory workers decided to try to organize with the fledging Automobile Workers Federal Union.  When the company refused to recognize the union, a large number of Auto-Lite workers went on strike.  The story of the Auto-Lite strike includes many of the exciting but typical details of violent labor strikes of the time including vandalism, taunting of people who crossed the picket lines, radical Communist infiltrators, competing injunctions, and the National Guard.  I won’t ruin the story for you!

What makes this book incredible is that the researchers tracked down survivors of the strike and present the conversations that these people had about the strike.  The researchers made a point to get myriad points of view including strikers, management, people who supported the strike and those who did not, newspaper reporters, policeman, labor organizers, and people who just came and watched the strike as it unfolded.  These interviews conducted 40 or more years after the strike show how important work was in the lives of the strike’s participants and how they coped with the stresses and chaos that industrial conflict inevitably brings about.  Perhaps the book had even more significance for me, given that the events took place about 10 minutes from where I live.  It makes me wonder what kinds of hidden secrets lie around us, whether our parents, grandparents, or neighbors might have lived a workplace history that we someday might regret that we never discovered.

I encourage you, next time you are considering picking up a latest bestseller to take your mind away from work, to pick up a book on the history of work.  Chances are you will enjoy it (just as you would the bestseller) but also that it will enrich your work.  If you have any good suggestions to pass on, please contact me (mzickar@bgsu.edu).

References

     Korth, P. A., & Beegle, M. R. (1988). I remember like today: The Auto-Lite Strike of 1934.  East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press. 
     Walker, C. R. (1950). Steeltown. New York: Harper & Brothers.