Singlejack Solidarity (Critical American Studies Series)

Blue-collar intellectual and activist publisher, Stan Weir devoted his life to the advocacy of his fellow workers. Weir was both a thoughtful observer and an active participant in many of the key struggles that shaped the labor movement and the political left in postwar America. He reported firsthand from the front lines of decisive fights over the nature of unions in the auto industry, the resistance to automation on the waterfront, and battles over racial integration in the workplace and within unions themselves. Written throughout Weir's decades as a blue-collar worker and labor educator, "Singlejack Solidarity offers a rare look at modern life and social relations as seen from the factory, dockside, and the shop floor. This volume analyzes issues central to working-class life today, such as the human costs of automation, union policies, mass media images of work, and intergenerational relations in working-class families. It also provides humorous commentaries, historical vignettes, and moving portraits of people Weir encountered, including James Baldwin, C.L.R. James, and Eric Hoffer. Gathered here for the first time, Weir's writings are equal parts memoir, labor history, and polemic; taken together, they document a crucial chapter in the life story of working-class America.

This volume collects 38 essays by rank and file labor activist and writer Weir (1921-2001). The essays describe his experiences as an activist in the longshore and automotive industries, explore labor and union culture, analyze the human costs of automation, consider the need and proper forms of working class networks, attack the concept of the "vanguard party," present a rank and file alternative to the business unionism of the AFL-CIO, and other issues of the history and future directions of labor.
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