Organizing the Meatpacking Industry in the United States

Abstract

THE HlSTORYof the meatpacking industry and the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) raises questions about class, industrial relations, race, gender, and ethnicity in the United States. This industry's history, which entwines traditional institutional questions with those of workers' agency, suggests how changing work processes influenced workers' political development and encouraged unified action among previously divided groups. Its story also embraces the surrounding neighbourhoods where community figures played an increasingly important role in determining the success of union drives. Halpern's study and Stromquist and Bergman's collection are two of the best examples from a growing number of monographs, dissertations, and articles on the meatpacking industry that capture the human experience of industrial relations in 20th-century America. By integrating rich oral histories with archival research, and by offering a variety of thoughtprovoking perspectives on the meatpacking industry and the nature of its union,