On the Ground: Labor Struggle in the American Airline Industry

by Liesl Miller Orenic

Overview

On the Ground charts labor relations in the airline industry, unraveling the story of how baggage handlers—classified as unskilled workers—built tense but mutually useful alliances with their skilled coworkers such as aircraft mechanics and made tremendous gains in wages and working conditions, even in the era of supposedly "complacent" labor in the 1950s and 1960s. Liesl Miller Orenic explains how airline jobs on the ground were constructed, how workers chose among unions, and how federal labor policies as well as industry regulation both increased and hindered airline workers' bargaining power.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252076275
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	06/11/2009
Series:	Working Class in American History
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Liesl Miller Orenic is an associate professor of history and the director of American studies at Dominican University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations   ix
Acknowledgments   xi
Introduction   1
1. The U.S. Airlines through the 1930s   7
2. Airline Work during World War II   49
3. Organizing the Airline Industry, 1945-49   71
4. Bargaining in Prosperity, 1949-59   132
5. On the Ramp in the 1950s and 1960s   155
6. Militance and the Mutual Aid Pact, 1960-70   191
Epilogue: Deregulation and Beyond   217
List of Interviews   225
Manuscript Collections and Specialized Libraries   227
Notes   229
Index   271

Editorial Reviews

Provides a detailed history of institutions, regulatory regimes, technological evolution, and the development of the division of labor, wages and working conditions in the airline industry. This is an extremely useful work.”—EH.Net



"An important study."—Enterprise and Society



"An important study ... which should interest union activities and academics."—Enterprise & Society

"This wonderful treatment of an underexamined area of labor history is able to cut through mounds of tangled and confusing material to reveal a clear picture of how workers coped with an ever-changing industry. . . . An important book."—Labor Studies Journal

"With sympathy and careful detail, Orenic offers a well-documented counterpoint to the story of post-World War II labor complacency by showing how airline ground crews used militant tactics to build their unions in the 1950s and 1960s."—Business History Review

From the Publisher