Technological Change and Labor in the Railroad Industry

Cottrell, Fred

doi:10.2307/3102298

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“…Although acknowledging the sixty-one percent decline in railroad employment between 1947 and 1970, there was an even steeper decline of employment on the maintenance of way, from 265,000 to 87,000, or a 67 percent decline, respectively (National Commission on Productivity and Council of Economic Advisers 1973). The man hours worked in 1947 also fell 63.8 percent from 1947to 1970(National Commission on Productivity and Council of Economic Advisers 1973. Fifty-five percent of railroad operating costs were for labor in 1947, but by 1970, labor accounted for only forty-four percent (National Commission on Productivity and Council of Economic Advisers 1973).…”

Section: Undermining Gains Of Labor and Civil Rights Movementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Technological Change before Globalization

Calderon-Zaks

2022

JWSR

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Though the world-systems school has argued that globalization has been a long process over the last five centuries, globalization is often only synonymous with the late twentieth century. Globalization has gained a lot of attention in the context of declining blue-collar job sectors, but the technologies that enabled it had already displaced workers on U.S. railroads. To bridge both schools, railroads are the perfect setting for this study since it’s at the intersection of race, labor, technological changes, and globalization. Mexicans once accounted for ninety percent of track workers in the U.S. Southwest, but after gaining higher wages by the early 1950s, most of their jobs were lost to automation by the 1960s. While faster and larger cargo ships and railroads in recent decades have been synonymous with globalization, the technologies and infrastructure didn’t enable that global process until the 1970s at the earliest. Technological changes eliminated more jobs on the tracks before 1970 than to globalization since. Globalization was not possible without those technological changes.

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Section: Undermining Gains Of Labor and Civil Rights Movementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Technological Change before Globalization

Calderon-Zaks

2022

JWSR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Technological Change and Labor in the Railroad Industry

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Technological Change before Globalization

Technological Change before Globalization

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