Review (PDF)

Law And The Shaping Of The American Labor Movement

Why did American workers, unlike their European counterparts, fail to forge a class-based movement to pursue broad social reform? Was it simply that they lacked class consciousness and were more interested in personal mobility? In a richly detailed survey of labor law and labor history, William Forbath challenges this notion of American "individualism." In fact, he argues, the nineteenth-century American labor movement was much like Europe's labor movements in its social and political outlook, but in the decades around the turn of the century, the prevailing attitude of American trade unionists changed. Forbath shows that, over time, struggles with the courts and the legal order were crucial to reshaping labor's outlook, driving the labor movement to temper its radical goals.

Paperback: 230 pages

Publisher: Harvard University Press (May 1, 1991)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0674517822

ISBN-13: 978-0674517820

Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.6 x 8.2 inches

Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #438,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #104 in Books > Law > Specialties > Labor Law #374 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Labor & Industrial Relations #377 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Labor & Industrial Relations

I am being forced to read this for a class on American Legal History. It is insightful and the arguments are compelling. The labor movement in the US was influenced to a great degree by the judiciary during the end of the 19th century. Court action changed the character of the labor movement from one of broad social reform to fragmented trade unionism and "Voluntarism." Voluntarism became predominant in labor's legal pretext, in part, due to:1. "...the courts... principally determined how labor legislation, once passed, would fare."2. Those legal victores for labor (Sherman Anti-Trust Act 1890, etc;) benefitted the institutions that labor was trying to protect itself from.3. The courts repeatedly upheld "freedom of contract" arguments in In re Jacobs, Ritchie v. People, etc;4. Judiciary attacked the economic weapons of labor: city-wide boycotts, symapthy strikes, etc;Labor (AFL, Gompers, etc;) eventually asked for independent labor relations i.e., freedom to negotiate contracts without government intervention...I believe that sums it up fairly well, but as a fair warning, this book is academic and painfully boring. If given a choice between hammering my balls flat or rereading this book, I would be forced to make a difficult decision indeed.

On the plus side, the book is easy to get through. On the down side, nothing really sticks. I'd recommend this book for a history buff. The main theoretical points of the reading are often lost in the mass of historical detail, but it's written very well and it's short.

I love this purchase

Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement Movement Matters: Essays on Movement Science, Movement Ecology, and the Nature of Movement Shaping The Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (ND Kellogg Inst Int'l Studies) For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State (Politics and Society in Modern America) Labor and Employment Arbitration: An Annotated Bibliography 1991-1996 (Cornell Industrial and Labor Relations Bibliography Series) Back Labor No More!!: What Every Woman Should Know Before Labor The Worker Center Handbook: A Practical Guide to Starting and Building the New Labor Movement Industrial Violence and the Legal Origins of Child Labor (Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society) Gilbert Law Summaries on Labor Law Labor Law in the Contemporary Workplace (American Casebook Series) Preaching on Wax: The Phonograph and the Shaping of Modern African American Religion (Religion, Race, and Ethnicity) The Shaping of American Higher Education: Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System The Conservative Movement in Judaism: Dilemmas and Opportunities (Suny Series in American Jewish Society in the 1990s) (Suny Series, American Jewish Society in the 1990s) Administrative Law, the American Public Law System: Cases and Materials (American Casebooks) (American Casebook Series) Labor Law, Cases and Materials: 2016 Statutory Appendix and Case Supplement (University Casebook Series) Labor Law, Cases and Materials, 15th, 2015 Statutory Appendix and Case Supplement (University Casebook Series) The Color of Law: Ernie Goodman, Detroit, and the Struggle for Labor and Civil Rights (Great Lakes Books Series) Employment and Labor Law (South-Western Legal Studies in Business Academic) Labor and Employment Law: Text & Cases (South-Western Legal Studies in Business) Employment and Labor Law