Abstract
Global solidarity between waterfront locals emerged through the use of the electronic and computer communication networks and technologies when their national and international organizations failed to act in the interests of the working class and showed themselves to be conservative and reactionary. Given current failures of the labor movement, both in the U.S. and internationally, this article describes how the protracted struggle around the Charleston 5 builds toward reform within unions such as the ILA and international organizations such as the ITF. These events show how in recent years an older leadership is being replaced by younger, brasher, and more combative leadership from the ranks of workers who understand their common interests and act upon them following the example of the ILWU.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Brodkin, Karen, and Cynthia Strathmann. 2004. The struggle for hearts and minds: Organization, ideology, and emotion. Labor Studies Journal 29 (3): 1–24.
Durrenberger, E. Paul. 2001. Explorations of class and consciousness in the U.S. Journal of Anthropological Research 57 (1): 41–60.
Durrenberger, E. Paul. 2003. Ethnography at home: Teamsters speak on war in Iraq. Society for Applied Anthropology Newsletter 14 (1): 3–4.
Durrenberger, E. Paul, and Suzan Erem. 2005. Class acts: An anthropology of service workers and their union. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.
Durrenberger, E. Paul, and Suzan Erem. 2007. Anthropology unbound: A field guide to the 21st century. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.
Erem, Suzan, and E. Paul Durrenberger. 2008. On the global waterfront: The fight to free the Charleston 5. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Fletcher, Bill Jr., and Fernando Gapasin. 2008. Solidarity divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gottschalk, Marie. 2000. The shadow welfare state: Labor, business, and the politics of health care in the United States. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Griffith, David. 1987. Nonmarket labor processes in advanced capitalist economy. American Anthropologist 89 (4): 838–852.
Griffith, David. 2003. Jonses’s minimal: Low-wage labor in the United States. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Kornbluh, Joyce L. 1964. Rebel voices: An I.W.W. anthology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Levinson, Marc. 2008. The box: How the shipping container made the world smaller and the world economy bigger. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Logan, John. 2002. Consultants, lawyers, and the “union free movement” in the US since the 1970s. Industrial Relations Journal 22 (3): 197–214.
Logan, John. 2006. The union avoidance industry in the United States. British Journal of Industrial Relations 44 (4): 651–675.
Mills, C. Wright. 1948. The new men of power. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Mills, C. Wright. 1951. White collar: The American middle classes. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mills, C. Wright. 1956. The power elite. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nordstrom, Carolyn. 2007. Global outlaws: Crime, money and power in the contemporary world. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pilcher, Willie. 1972. The Portland longshoremen: A dispersed urban community. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Durrenberger, P. If you have a strong union, you don’t need a necktie: U.S. labor and global solidarity. Dialect Anthropol 33, 129–141 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-009-9107-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-009-9107-8