Realizing Solidarity

Abstract

In a time of economic depression and racism more overt than anything we now experience, the unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) during the 1930s and 1940s forged a lasting interracial solidarity within the industrial working class. The authors tell the stories of how three CIO organizing drives achieved interracial solidarity. In 1933, the United Mine Workers (UMW) adopted the “UMW formula” for placing Black workers in positions as union officers and organizers. Adopted from more radical unions, the formula institutionalized racial inclusion, which proved to be a major tactical innovation in realizing class solidarity across racial lines. Faced with similar conditions, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in 1937 and the United Auto Workers in 1940 adopted variants of the UMW formula to overcome racial barriers to organizing. The authors analyze narratives of these three drives using the following two qualitative methods: event-structure analysis (ESA), a diachronic method, and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), a synchronic method. Both approaches reveal the importance of three main factors: tactical innovations, political context, and labor market conditions. The first two factors are explained by political process theory, and the third is predicted by split labor market theory. Among these findings, ESA highlights path dependence of tactical innovations and QCA emphasizes structural conditions in the labor market.

Making Space for Adaptive Learning

“…Data were collected from print and video documentation of the initiatives and semistructured interviews with at least one evaluator and one program member per case (in total, 9 interviews, 119 documents, and 13 video files). Each case was analyzed separately by the principal investigator, using inductive coding in NVivo within an overarching, common coding framework, combined with an adapted form of event structure analysis (e.g., Brueggemann & Boswell, 1998; Stevenson, Zinzow, & Sridharan, 2003). The focus of data collection and analysis was on “turning point events” or process transition points and case trajectory.…”

Theoretical Notes on Action Schemes in Society

“…Event Structure Analysis, or ESA for short (Corsaro & Heise, 1990;Griffin, 1993;Griffin & Korstad, 1998;Heise, 1989;Heise & Durig, 1997;Freitas et al, 2021), was developed as a qualitative methodology for analyzing narratives in order to reduce the action schemes that are implicit in them. The methodology, implemented in a computer program called Ethno 7 , has been applied in ethnography (Corsaro & Heise, 1990;Eder & Enke, 1991;Ponti, 2010), history (Brown, 2000;Brown & Brueggemann, 1997;Brueggemann & Boswell, 1998;Brueggemann & Brown, 2003;Griffin et al, 1997;Griffin & Korstad, 1996;Isaac et al, 1994;Richardson, 2009), organizational studies (O'Neill et al, 2007;Stevenson & Greenberg, 1998, 2000Stevenson et al, 2008), and folkloristics (Heise, 1988;Uehara, 2001).…”

Trade and Strike Activity in the Postwar United States

“…Research in the United States found that increasingly unionized sectors of the economy are more likely to strike (Cornfield 1991;Wallace et al 1989). Other work found that repertoires of militant collective action are also more likely when union members have a precarious employment situation (Brueggemann and Boswell 1998;Dubofsky and Tine 1977). These insecure working conditions force unions to become more confrontational, reflecting the established cultural practices and solidarities of workers (Voss 1993).…”