Picket Line Research Articles

Promises, Promises? Or Restoration and Renaissance? Fifteen Brutal Years for School Libraries in British Columbia

British Columbia teachers, through the offices of the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) and often through their own time on the picket lines, have fought for fifteen years to get back the negotiated language that contractually defined the working conditions of teachers, including specialist or non- enrolling teachers such as teacher-librarians. This paper documents the struggles that took the case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada where, in November of 2016, in just minutes, the teachers’ rights were affirmed and the BC Liberal government’s actions in stripping the negotiated contract language were determined to be illegal. Staffing lost was to be restored. For teacher-librarians, easily the hardest hit teacher group, the decision seemed to offer a breath-taking relief after years of progressively deeper cuts. At the time of writing, believing in the imminent full restoration of staffing to re-define the work of teacher-librarians and in a glorious re-birth of the place of the school library in public education in BC appears to be unrealistic.

Free Labor: The Civil War and the Making of an American Working Class

Monumental and revelatory, Free Labor explores labor activism throughout the country during a period of incredible diversity and fluidity: the American Civil War. Mark A. Lause describes how the working class radicalized during the war as a response to economic crisis, the political opportunity created by the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the ideology of free labor and abolition. Grappling with a broad array of organizations, tactics, and settings, Lause portrays not only the widely known leaders and theoreticians, but also the unsung workers who struggled on the battlefield and the picket line. His close attention to women and African Americans, meanwhile, dismantles notions of the working class as synonymous with whiteness and maleness. In addition, Lause offers a nuanced consideration of race's role in the politics of national labor organizations, in segregated industries in the border North and South, and in black resistance in the secessionist South, creatively reading self-emancipation as the largest general strike in U.S. history.

The Pew and the Picket Line: Christianity and the American Working Class ed. by Christopher D. Cantwell, Heath W. Carter, and Janine Giordano Drake

<i>The Pew and the Picket Line: Christianity and the American Working Class</i> ed. by Christopher D. Cantwell, Heath W. Carter, and Janine Giordano Drake

The Pew and the Picket Line: Christianity and the American Working Class

The Pew and the Picket Line: Christianity and the American Working Class

The Pew and the Picket Line: Christianity and the American Working Class

Review of: The Pew and the Picket Line: Christianity and the American Working Class, by Christopher D. Cantwell, Heath W. Carter, and Janine Giordano Drake.

Lessons from the 2016 Harvard Strike

For 22 days during the month of October 2016, more than 750 cooks, food servers, dishwashers, and cashiers struck Harvard University's dining halls. This was the first open-ended strike in the 380-year history of the institution. It drew national and international press and inspired many students, faculty, and members of the university community to rally in support of the workers. The strike's picket lines, marches, acts of civil disobedience, and building occupation became a collective repudiation of the corporate logic of the contemporary American university, one that privileges endowments, budgets, and HR departments over community, humanitarian values, and families. This was summed up in the slogan chanted thousands of times in Harvard Yard: “If we don't get it, SHUT IT DOWN!”

Silk Stockings and Socialism: Philadelphia's Radical Hosiery Workers from the Jazz Age to the New Deal by Sharon McConnell-Sidorick

Reviewed by: Silk Stockings and Socialism: Philadelphia's Radical Hosiery Workers from the Jazz Age to the New Deal by Sharon McConnell-Sidorick Christina Burr Sharon McConnell-Sidorick, Silk Stockings and Socialism: Philadelphia's Radical Hosiery Workers from the Jazz Age to the New Deal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2017) In Silk Stockings and Socialism, Sharon McConnell-Sidorick examines the activism of hosiery workers during the 1920s and 1930s in the Kensington section of north-east Philadelphia; a mill-town with a long and significant history of labour activism in the US. Kensington was the birthplace of the Knights of Labor in 1869, and later in 1889 the American Federation of Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers (afffhw). McConnell-Sidorick argues that 19th-century traditions of community-based activism and radicalism were carried over into the 20th century where a younger generation of hosiery workers, or "youth militants," were at the forefront of the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (cio), New Deal programs, socialism, and labour feminism. McConnell-Sidorick situates the story of Kensington hosiery workers in the context of the transatlantic movement of industry and traditions of workers' radicalism from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. She uses oral histories, trade union records, the labour press, and studies conducted by social scientists in the 1930s to paint a rich picture of the community networks of support and traditions of resistance and radical craft unionism that emerged in Kensington. By [End Page 335] the 1920s what the author describes as a form of "working-class cosmopolitanism" existed in the community. African-Americans, however, comprised only a small percentage of Kensington's population, and were peripheral to the textile trades both in the community and nationally. She suggests that the textile unions of the 19th and early 20th centuries did not concern themselves with racist hiring practices, but does not explore this issue in depth. Gender occupies a prominent place in McConnell-Sidorick's analysis. Although women did not occupy the most skilled jobs in the trade, which were the purview of male workers, McConnell-Sidorick emphasizes the importance of women, including wage-earning wives and mothers, to the development of the trade. When hosiery women asserted themselves in the community, she suggests, they were continuing a tradition of "disorderly women" that can be traced back to the textile trades in England. The hosiery industry in Kensington benefited from Jazz Age changes in fashion and popular culture. The hosiery industry expanded with the demand for sheer, form-fitting, more affordable, stockings. A new generation of young workers in the industry participated in the bourgeoning youth culture and its pursuit of commercial amusements. McConnell-Sidorick challenges the interpretations of the flapper as a frivolous party girl, who wore short dresses and purchased an array of consumer goods including cigarettes and cosmetics. From a reading of the local labour press, McConnell-Sidorick concludes that the modern working girl of the 1920s was also influenced by "a new sense of independence and rights, and an admiration for the female 'heroines' who gained prominence in sports, movies, and the media during the 1920s," sparked by the heroism of the suffragettes. (7) Hosiery workers of both sexes reconfigured into what the author describes as "youth militants," by fusing youth culture and radical politics to build a subculture that included dances and parties as well as picket lines and sit-down strikes, while forging a vision for social change. Participation in such pastimes and an interest in consumerism did not necessarily preclude the development of social consciousness. McConnell-Sidorick suggests that Kensington was ethnically diverse, but overwhelmingly white in the 1920s and that most young workers lived with their families. More analysis of ethnic differences in the freedom and independence granted to working wives and daughters might have highlighted any tensions and differences in what the author presents as a harmonious view of working-class community and family life. The wave of repression that swept the US after World War I resulted in a series of strikes in the 1920s. A concerted effort was made by textile unionists to build a broad based cross-generational and cross-gender solidarity based on socialist...

PERFORMANCE-AS-RESISTANCE AND RESISTANCE-AS-PERFORMANCE IN THE NO MUOS MOVEMENT IN SICILY

One of the US-owned Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) installations was projected and built in Sicily, near Niscemi. Since 2012, NO MUOS activists have excogitated various forms of protest that are reminiscent of artistic performances and identitarian rituals. Additionally, a number of creators/performers across different art forms have supported the movement by referring to the NO MUOS resistance in their work. This article seeks to explore the connection between protest and performance in the symbolic practices staged within and outside the picket line. I argue that these protests/performances possess an identitarian content that points to the reclamation of Sicily's sovereignty against the hysteric militarisation of an imaginary North/South border in the Mediterranean.

Deadly Picket-Lines in US Labour History

20 | International Union Rights | 24/2 FOCUS | UNITED STATES Deadly Picket-Lines in US Labour History Dead men tell no tales; that is, until the living give them voice. From 1870 to 1970, a veritable victims’ chorus of no fewer than 1160 fatalities was amassed during labour dispute confrontations within the United States of America. Each was simultaneously an expression of and catalyst within the dialectical evolution of US labour-management relations. To thee they sing. Strike-Fatality Overview Violence on America’s picket lines was protracted, widespread and intense. Fatalities, the most extreme outcome of violence, were incurred in at least 244 separate strike events, more than a dozen industries, thirty-eight states, and seventy-two years. Many more resulted in various forms of intimidation, non-fatal injuries, and property damage. Strike event names such as the Battle of Homestead (1892), Battle of Blair Mountain (1921), and Colorado Mine War (1913-14) testify to the ferocity with which agents of capital and labour advanced and / or defended their perceived rights to property and labour over the course of an era widely recognised as the most violent and bloody of any Western industrialised nation. While likely true that the vast majority of strikes involved no violence, those that did (especially those involving fatalities which are more likely to be recorded, verified and / or compiled than lesser outcomes) afford traceable patterns and insights. First, the commonly used term ‘labour violence’ is belied by the fact that strikers, organisers, and / or their sympathisers comprised nearly two-thirds of the classifiable victims. Another ten percent were bystanders: leaving less than one-fourth of the victims to be divided among strike-breakers, company guards, and / or state agents. Second, deaths were concentrated within the extraction and transportation industries. Coal mining alone accounted for roughly one-third of the deaths with another 199 (18.1 percent) on the railroads. Third, the regional distribution changed over time. Initially, strike fatalities were most heavily concentrated in the Northeast and to a slightly lesser extent the Midwest. As industrialisation spread, the violence shifted to the West and ultimately South. Fourth, 97.3 percent of the fatalities occurred between eruption of the Great Railway Strike of 1877 and passage of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947: an era over the course of which evolved a discomforting and incendiary blend of economic desperation, labour militancy, employer intransigence, political uncertainty, and fatal resolve sandwiched between spans of relative labour quiescence. Dialectics of Violence The Great Railway Strike of 1877 provided a watershed moment in American labour history. It began in protest of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’s decision to uphold the company’s annual dividend while reducing wages during a period of severe economic depression; and quickly spread across railways, industries, and state lines, disrupting commerce on first the Eastern seaboard and ultimately nationwide. Before its end, the nation had witnessed its first general strike, the deployment of police, numerous state and municipal militias, and federal troops against groups of non-seditious citizens, the destruction and looting of numerous railway yards, and the deaths of more than one hundred individuals. Prior to the Great Strike, ‘labour violence’ had generally been considered sporadic and non-threatening. In its wake, the reigning elitist sense of insulation from leftist politics and class based struggles was shattered, ushering instead the rise of the ‘labour question’: a multi-sided and contentious discursive formation that posed concerns centring on either problems for the newly emerging industrial society for collective labour or the problem of collective labour for the new industrial society. Alerted to the disruptive potential of large-scale labour insurgency, the overarching response by America’s political and industrial elite was to hone the means of repression. Public and private arsenals were built and stocked with updated weaponry. Militia units were re-staffed with typically middle-class personnel and sometimes upper class elites. Army officials openly lobbied for strike duty and found themselves in competition with the rise of private police forces such as the Pinkertons. Reformist impulses only began to gain traction after the Pullman Railway Strike of 1894. Like the Great Strike, Pullman was a violent national affair centred mainly on the railways, this time...

Escaping the Mechanism: Soldier Fraternization during the Siege at Petersburg

Escaping the MechanismSoldier Fraternization during the Siege at Petersburg Lauren K. Thompson (bio) On July 18, 1864, Gen. Robert E. Lee issued Special Orders No. 167 to the 1st Army Corps commander, Lt. Gen. R. H. Anderson. Lee ordered, "The practice of permitting communication between our pickets and skirmishers and those of the enemy, is highly injurious to the service and subversive of discipline. No intercourse or conversation with the enemy shall be allowed, and no officers or man will be permitted to go outside of our picket lines except by authority of the Corps commander or officer commanding detached troops."1 Lee's concern over rampant fraternization demonstrated the frequency with which soldiers risked their standing in the army, and ultimately their lives, to communicate with the enemy. As citizen soldiers, both northern and southern men went to war expecting to prove their worth but soon realized military life contradicted notions of individualism. For example, Union soldier Thomas Bell wrote, "A private has but little chance of knowing what movements are or what they are for. His only duty is to receive orders and obey them. I first launched out to gain a livelihood for myself and (as then I thought) to be independent but alas the folly that ambition often leads to."2 Bell's thoughts signified a gap between soldiers' expectations and [End Page 349] reality.3 To lessen this divide, soldiers seized opportunities to fight the war under military discipline while still maintaining some personal freedom. Aside from the more commonly studied forms of resistance—such as desertion, drinking, and brawling—Union and Confederate soldiers fraternized with one another despite strict prohibitions from the high command. Throughout the war, fraternization occurred during the Peninsula, Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga campaigns; across the Rappahannock and Chattahoochee Rivers; and during burial truces from Manassas to Nashville. When the Army of the Potomac besieged the Army of Northern Virginia at Petersburg in 1864, the resulting trench warfare led to one of the war's most widespread and longest-lasting incidents of fraternization. The development of fraternization between enemies provides insight to how loyal soldiers constructed ways to counter the limitations of trench warfare. Click for larger view View full resolution Trading Coffee for Tobacco, from Edwin Forbes, Army Sketchbook (New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1890), shows pickets trading along the Rappahannock. Certainly, this was no "Brothers' War." Bell Irvin Wiley cautioned against exaggerating the "significance of the fraternizing that dotted the war" in his scholarship more than seven decades ago.4 Kenneth Noe and Jason Phillips also [End Page 350] "warn against inflating the true degree of fraternization between Johnny Reb and Billy Yank."5 However, when one takes fraternization at face value or dismisses it as a form of cowardice, an opportunity to understand how soldiers withstood the harsh realities of army life is lost. Labeling soldiers as either committed or coward, with those who fraternized as the latter, overlooks the majority of men whose resistance actually reflected their commitment to fight the war.6 Fraternization did not result in an earthshattering experience that triggered soldiers to desert their ranks in massive droves, nor did it cause soldiers to abandon their motivations for fighting. Rather, it allowed them to replenish their spirits. In other words, for a soldier who fraternized, it was less about the enemy and more about himself. Because it was outlawed and a punishable offense, but happened so frequently, fraternization obviously carried considerable value for the soldiers. Whether it was a relief from the monotony of camp or the provision of a plug of tobacco or a newspaper, soldiers used fraternization to make their duties more manageable. Soldiers responded to war in a variety of ways. Some fraternized, some did not, and many witnessed it. For those who did, fraternization served as a means of handling challenges to their ideology and maintaining their individuality.7 Historians proved the majority of Civil War soldiers knew quite clearly why they enlisted and continued to fight: they fought and died for intrinsic and deep-seated notions of identity, nationalism, and independence. Confederate soldiers, slaveholders or not, fought for the protection and expansion of a slave labor society that...

An Injury to One is an Injury to All? US Labour's Divergent Reactions to Trump

6 | International Union Rights | 24/2 FOCUS | UNITED STATES An Injury to One is an Injury to All? US Labour’s Divergent Reactions to Trump Arshiya Chime is a union member helping to rescue the world from climate change. Once she gets her doctorate degree later this year from the University of Washington, she will become a highly prized mechanical engineer, helping economies become less dependent on oil while protecting the environment and creating jobs. But Chime, a leader in her graduate student employees union, United Auto Workers Local 4121, is not welcome in Donald Trump’s vision of America. As an Iranian immigrant, she’s denied the right to freely travel. If Trump’s Muslim travel ban orders ultimately are upheld, Chime would probably have to take her expertise to another country, because US firms won’t want to hire someone unable to work on foreign projects and attend international conferences. Chime is not alone. About 30 percent of her fellow graduate student employees at the University of Washington are international students, many of them from countries included in the Trump travel ban. When the White House announced the ban in late January, Chime’s union rallied with other labour groups, immigrant rights organisations, faith allies and political activists, staging impromptu airport mass marches and shutdowns. Chime and other UAW 4121 leaders mobilised public opinion1 by speaking out at press conferences, organising teachins , and by joining the lawsuit that ultimately blocked Trump’s ban. Other union leaders, unfortunately, seem to have forgotten the picket line refrain, ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’. The same month, but a political galaxy away from the boisterous airport demonstrations, construction union leaders exited an Oval Office meeting to rave about the new president’s pledge to boost infrastructure spending. ‘we have a common bond with the president’, gushed Sean McGarvey, head of North America’s Building Trade Unions2. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka praised Trump for talking up jobs in his first joint congressional address3 and could barely manage a milquetoast riposte4 to Trump’s xenophobic attacks on people like Arshiya Chime. The divergent labour reactions frame the stark choice facing the US union movement: build fighting working class solidarity, or a hunker down in a desperate every-union-for-itself strategy. Today’s situation is perilous. US unions represent barely 10 percent of the US workforce, down from 33 percent in the 1950s. Union leaders across the political spectrum are quick to pin blame for the present crisis on relentless union-busting and hostile politicians. That’s accurate – but not a complete explanation. Corporate America’s insatiable profit drive is only half of our problem; the other half is the movement itself. The disastrous situation didn’t materialise overnight. Rather, the seeds of today’s ruinous harvest were planted 70 years ago. An Era of Union Complacency By the end of World War II, US union membership had soared, reaching a third of all workers. In manufacturing, fully 69 percent of production workers were covered by union agreements. Militant strikes during and right after the war pushed demands for a greater share of the economic pie along with social demands like price controls. In 1946 alone, 4.6 million workers went on strike – about 1 in every 20 in the paid US workforce. But rather than build on that nascent power, most union leaders determined to make peace with political and business elites, believing – incorrectly – that the tripartite domestic détente of World War II was still alive. Even before Senator Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunts, unions started purging communists and other suspected radicals from their ranks, seeking to demonstrate their loyalty to government and business. The leadership of the labour federation that emerged in the 1950s steered away from organising more workers. AFL-CIO president George Meany famously declared, ‘I used to worry about the size of the membership. I stopped worrying because to me it doesn’t make any difference. The organised fellow is the only fellow that counts’. Most union leaders focused on securing economic gains for their largely white memberships, tamping down militant insurgency in the ranks, giving lip service to the emerging civil and...

Christopher D. Cantwell, Heath W. Carter, and Janine Giordano Drake, editors. The Pew and the Picket Line: Christianity and the American Working Class .

Christopher D. Cantwell, Heath W. Carter, and Janine Giordano Drake, editors. <i>The Pew and the Picket Line: Christianity and the American Working Class</i> .

Critical Pedagogy in the Neoliberal University: Reflections on the 2015 York University Strike through a Marcusean Lens

In this article, we see the month-long graduate student and contract faculty strike at York University (Toronto, 2015) through a lens informed by Herbert Marcuse’s thought. In the context of widespread student protests across North America against neoliberal austerity, we draw on our picket line experiences to argue that Marcuse’s work provides insights into how students and faculty can engage in critical praxis within the neoliberal university. We argue that CUPE 3903, the union of TAs and contract faculty at York, is a kind of counter-institution that Marcuse argued was necessary for liberation. Marcuse strategically urged students to take advantage of gaps or cracks in a disintegrating system. Our analysis revolves around the complex experience of the graduate student picket lines – a “gap” – as a site of rupture for the liberation of aesthetic experience, “organized spontaneity,” open, democratic organization, as well as conflict.

Pulpit, Pews and Picket Lines: Galamison's Fight to Integrate NYC Schools and the Theology Behind It

Critics of Black liberation theology often argue it never left the halls of the academy; the case of Milton Galamison proves such assertions to be false. This article, drawing from archival resources that include Galamison's unpublished autobiography and sermons spanning decades, teases out the sources and norms of his theology, the myriad responses from congregants, and details his involvement with the struggle to integrate the largest school district in the United States. The article, therefore, highlights a praxiological framework for Black liberation theology from one of its under appreciated and acknowledged practitioners. It is hoped that this work will expand the parameters of Black liberation theology and highlight that its impact has extended beyond the halls of the academy.

The Working Poor: Two Perspectives on Reality—A Communication to the Editor Inviting a Discussion

The Working Poor: Two Perspectives on Reality—A Communication to the Editor Inviting a Discussion

Performing “in the red”: transformations and tensions in repertoires of contention during the 2012 Quebec student strike

The longest and largest student strike in Canadian history began in Quebec in the spring of 2012 in resistance to proposed tuition hikes and the increasing privatization of education and public services that this signaled. The symbol of the student movement, the red square (denoting ‘squarely in the red’ or ‘squarely in debt’) quickly went ‘viral’. At its height, an estimated 300,000 students were striking – nearly 75% of Quebec’s post-secondary student population; on May 22nd some 500,000 people marched in support. The strike continued for six months, ending only after the government was overturned and a new government cancelled the tuition increase. The redeployment of local protest repertoires, including traditional tactics such as picket lines combined with inclusive and creative tactics popularized in alter-globalization movements. Formal student associations combined with various ad hoc coalitions and organizations, as well as communitarian groups, in an uneasy alliance to create a mass mobilization that some commentators dubbed Québec’s ‘Maple Spring’. This article documents the transformation of what Tilly has called ‘repertoires of contention’ within the context of the Quebec student movement. In so doing, it highlights some of the principle debates concerning social values and distributions of agency that resurfaced in connection with the diverse tactics that formed the ‘new’ combinational repertoire.

Junior doctors’ all-out strike: voices from the picket lines

“None of us here wants to strike but we feel that, in the interests of patient safety, patients would be better off if we did strike. There’s a lot of spin and different opinions that make it confusing and that’s why we’re out here today, to try to show patients why we’re doing it and the benefits of striking for them.” “I am taking part in industrial action as I feel it is the only recourse left to bring attention to, and defend against, the threat posed by this government to my patients. My strike effort is being covered by my consultant senior colleagues who are 100% behind our action. The public is really supportive. I’m in the north. Who are people going to trust—all their doctors or a Tory government?” “Escalating action is a significant move but unfortunately it’s the only possible one. The next action would be a longer period of strike action or a full walk out. Given the state of the contract I would support that. The negative impact of the contract in the long term is going to be significantly worse than any short term strike action we take now. It’s like ripping off a plaster. You either rip it off all at once, or you peel it off nastily and slowly.” “I am supporting the junior doctors because the new contract carries safety risks for our patients, will affect the quality …

Social media on the picket line

This article provides an overview of Chinese working-class social media, which has been used on the picket line for an entire decade since 2004. A variety of social media tools such as QQ, Weblog, online forum, vlog, Weibo, and WeChat have been added to the toolkit of working-class politics, creating an enlarged media ecology of resistance. Using Raymond Williams’ tripartite framework of the dominant, the residual, and the emergent, I submit that social media on the picket line is not a revolution in itself, but a tactical evolution of the residual and, more crucially, the emergent, within a much longer revolutionary tradition of the Chinese working class. Such a framework can and still needs to be further developed through the examination of labor movements in China as well as developing regions of the Global South, probably using worker-generated content (WGC) as one of its most promising analytical foci.

Junior doctor reunites Green Wing cast to support strike action

The cast of Green Wing have supported the fourth round of junior doctors’ industrial action from a picket line after they were contacted by a junior doctor. Five of the cast of the Channel 4 comedy attended the picket line at Northwick Park Hospital, London, on Wednesday 6 April to show their support for the action. Janis Burns, an anaesthetic trainee who works at the hospital, where the series was filmed, told BMJ Careers that she emailed the agents of 10 members of the cast, asking if the actors would get involved. “At the last strike I felt that there was a little bit of apathy and people were quite demoralised and I thought about what we could do to try and improve things,” Burns said. “Working at Northwick Park I knew that Green Wing was filmed there so I decided to contact the actors and see whether they would be interested in reuniting on the picket line with junior doctors, over ten years after Green Wing was filmed. And they agreed.” Burns said that after emailing the agents of the cast members …

New contract will increase rota gaps, striking doctors warn

Junior doctors taking part in industrial action have expressed concerns over the effect that their new contract could have on the NHS in the future. Junior doctors across England are taking part in industrial action between 8 am on Wednesday 6 April and 8 am on Friday 8 April over government plans to impose a new contract in August.1 Speaking from the picket line at Northwick Park Hosptial in London, Mhairi Murdoch, a core medical trainee, said that she was concerned that the new contract would lead to unsafe working hours. “We already have gaps in our rota across core medicine in London and it looks likely that the new contract will lead to even more gaps,” …