The Emergence of White-Collar Unionism in New York’s Culture Industries

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 2 explores the development of white-collar unionism in New York’s culture industries during the Great Depression. Culture workers responded to the crisis with new organizing initiatives, many of which eventually gravitated toward the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Larger groups of workers received charters from the CIO as affiliated international unions, such as the American Newspaper Guild, with the New York locals containing a substantial share of total national membership. Organizing efforts in cultural fields that were more concentrated in the metropolitan area, like the Book and Magazine Guild and the American Advertising Guild, became local unions within the United Office and Professional Workers of America, which was the CIO affiliate with a general jurisdiction covering white-collar workers. This chapter also examines the important role of women activists in white-collar organizing as well as unionists’ participation in the broader Popular Front social movement of the 1930s.