Strikebreaking or Solidarity in the Great Steel Strike of 1919: A Split Labor Market, Game-Theoretic, and QCA Analysis

The Distinctiveness of Comparative Research

“…To illustrate the construction of a truth table, we review Brown and Boswell's (1995) analysis of how split labor markets affected interracial strikebreaking and solidarity during the 1919 steel strike. After conducting case studies of 16 northern cities, 2 Brown and Boswell (1995) use comparative methods (specifically, crisp-set QCA) to identify three causal conditions that explain four forms of interracial strikebreaking. 3 To simplify our discussion, we review just one of their outcomes: the presence of black strikebreaking in the face of white worker solidarity.…”

The Threat of the “Other”: Ethnic Competition and Racial Interest

“…In an attempted to understand the role of the state in the split labor market, scholars have explored employer decision-making, racist ideologies and mobilization (Brown & Boswell 1995;Brown & Brueggemann 1997;Brown 2000;Boswell, Brown, Brueggemann and Peters 2006). Adding a new twist to the existing literature, Brown and Boswell (1995) provide an analysis concerning the possibility of interracial solidarity or strikebreaking. Solidarity had been largely unexplored using this framework.…”

The Racialized Picket Line: White Workers and Racism in the Southern California Supermarket Strike

“…In this sense, white workers view workers of color as a threat and thus express their resentment toward workers of color as an act to protect white workers' interests (Bonacich, 1972). The split labor market theory has been used to explain the underlying causes behind racialized labor and the divide among working classes along racial lines (Bonacich, 1972(Bonacich, , 1975(Bonacich, , 1976Boswell, 1986;Brown and Boswell, 1995;Brueggemann and Boswell, 1998). According to Bonacich (1972: 549), 'The central hypothesis [of the split labor theory] is that ethnic antagonism first germinates in a labor market split along ethnic lines.'…”