Union renegades : miners, capitalism, and organizing in the Gilded Age / Dana M. Caldemeyer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Caldemeyer, Dana M., 1986- author.

Series:

Illinois scholarship online.

Illinois scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Coal miners--History--Middle West--19th century.

Coal miners--Labor unions--Middle West--History--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 231 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Urbana, Illinois : University of Illinois Press, [2021]

Summary:

In the late nineteenth century, Midwestern miners often had to decide if joining a union was in their interest. Arguing that these workers were neither pro-union nor anti-union, Dana M. Caldemeyer shows that they acted according to what they believed would benefit them and their families. As corporations moved to control coal markets and unions sought to centralize their organizations to check corporate control, workers were often caught between these institutions and sided with whichever one offered the best advantage in the moment. Workers chased profits while paying union dues, rejected national unions while forming local orders, and broke strikes while claiming to be union members. This pragmatic form of unionism differed from what union leaders expected of rank-and-file members, but for many workers the choice to follow or reject union orders was a path to better pay, stability, and independence in an otherwise unstable age.Nuanced and eye-opening, Union Renegades challenges popular notions of workers attitudes during the Gilded Age.

Contents:

Deceived : producers in a dishonest world

Undermined : winter diggers, union strikebreakers

"Judases" : union "betrayal" and the aborted 1891 strike

Outsiders : race and the exclusive politics of an inclusive union, 1892-1894

Unsettled : nonunion mobilization and the 1894 strike

Wolves : fractured unions in the Gilded Age, 1894-1896.

Notes:

Also issued in print: 2021.

Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on August 10, 2021).

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0252043502

9780252043505

9780252052385

0252052382