Review of Unionizing the1ungles: Labor and Community in the Twentieth-Century Meatpacking Industry Edited by Shelton Stromquist and Marvin Bergman

Authors

Laura LaCasa, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Date of this Version

1998

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 4, Fall 1998, pp. 352-53

Comments

Copyright 1998 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska- Lincoln

Abstract

Hacking through meatpacking's mass production jungle, historians Shelton Stromquist and Marvin Bergman gather nine essays addressing twentieth-century Midwestern unionization and its impact on industrial and social relations within and beyond factory walls.

The work details the historical struggles inherent to the meatpacking labor movement. Racial, gender, and ideological differences, compounded by guarantees that all workers benefit equally from union membership, have been the most serious traditional obstacles to uniting employees. Wilson Warren's essay, for instance, argues that whites in the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) declined initiating anti-discrimination programs after World War II intentionally to limit African American advancement.