Under the Stars: Essays on Labor Relations in Arts and Entertainment ed. by Lois S. Gray, Ronald L. Seeber

Abstract

986 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the wealthy slaveholders and their allies who originally conceived Alabama’s leading industrial city in the 1850s continued even after the Civil War to prefer low-paid and poorly motivated black labor to a free labor system. Despite all the problems alienated black workers presented, including absenteeism and lackadaisical performance on the job, southern managers considered them more tractable, and above all less strike-prone, than free white workers, especially when the latter came from the North. Had Birmingham’s postwar entre­ preneurs been able to use both skilled and unskilled black workers, they would gladly have done so. Experienced black puddlers, molders , and rolling mill operatives, however, had not been needed in the prewar period, when slaves ran the charcoal-fired blast furnaces to which Alabama’s early iron industry was almost exclusively lim­ ited. Not until the late 1850s had the state even begun to experience the impact of technological changes, such as the switch from char­ coal to mineral coal and coke, the hot blast, and the introduction of puddling, that had affected northern ironmaking at an earlier date. As a result, no black workers familiar with such technologies were available in the postwar period. The fact that Birmingham’s industrialists would have preferred to employ skilled African-Americans, had that been possible, is the real reason why skilled white workers suspected that local boosters would ultimately back away from the promises they had made in the 1870s—as indeed they did. McKiven’s book would therefore benefit from a somewhat sharper focus. But it is excellent even as it stands, and its fundamental thesis is sound. W. David Lewis Dr. Lewis is Distinguished University Professor at Auburn University. His most recent book, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham, District: An Industrial Epic (Tuscaloosa: University ofAlabama Press, 1994), deals with the distinctively southern nuances ofBirmingham’s industrial evolution and its grounding in antebellum plan­ tation slavery. Under the Stars: Essays on Labor Relations in Arts and Entertainment. Ed­ ited by Lois S. Gray and Ronald L. Seeber. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996. Pp. xv+207; notes, bibliography, index. $38.00 (cloth); $16.95 (paper). The mass media in the United States have undergone rapid changes in recentyears. A number ofscholarlyworks have examined technical changes, but all from the corporate point of view. Under the Stars: Essays on Labor Relations in Arts and Entertainment takes up the effects for workers. The contributors to this six-part anthology systematically examine the challenges posed for labor and their unions and significantly add to a literature that can be described as thin at best. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 987 The “arts and entertainment” in the book’s subtitle mean live performing arts, musical recordings, movies, television, and radio. Employing about one million persons, this set of industries is still heavily unionized, although its union structure has been changing in recent years. “Above the line” (for example, performers’ and di­ rectors’) unions have been growing while membership in “below the line” (for example, technicians’) unions has been shrinking. This transformation of labor relations, according to Under the Stars, reflects both workers’ attempts to deal with technological displace­ ment and corporations’ desires to lower costs. Thus, not unexpect­ edly, the arts and entertainment industries have recently been racked with far more labor strife than almost any other sector of the U.S. economy. The editors of this volume are both professors of industrial rela­ tions at Cornell University. Their six contributors are also scholars, save a single outsider, Les Brown, a trade journalist and longtime industry critic. The catalyst for the book seems to have been the wellpublicized strike by the Writers Guild against TV and movie produc­ ers in 1988. While Under the Stars is overtly about labor relations in only one set of industries, its six contributors suggest over and over again that understanding the arts and entertainment industry expe­ riences offers useful insights into labor relations in other rapidly evolving service industries. Since, importantly for these applied la­ bor economists, the arts and entertainment industries are still highly unionized, there exists much data in the public record about labormanagement...