For All White-Collar Workers: The Possibilities of Radicalism in New York City's Department Store Unions, 1934-1953. By Daniel J. Opler. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2007. x, 270 pp. $49.95, ISBN 978-0-8142-1063-5.)

Abstract

Daniel J. Opler's history of a group of department store unions in New York City focuses on a segment of the work force that was neglected for a long time by both labor historians and labor activists. The author sees a connection there, and he seeks both to fill gaps in the historiography of American labor activism, and to explain the lack of attention that organized labor has given to service sector workers until relatively recently. Those twin purposes create a tension in the book: For All White-Collar Workers wants to present a case study of an uncommon group of union locals in a unique context, while simultaneously offering broad reflections on the current condition of organized labor in the United States. The book traces the history of a cluster of left-wing department store union locals from their origins in the labor militancy of the 1930s to the decline of that militancy during the second red scare. It demonstrates how store owners, union organizers, and workers responded to the changing economic and political conditions beginning with the emergence of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (cio) and continuing through the Popular Front period, World War II, the Taft-Hartley Act, and postwar consumerism.