Labor, civil rights, and the Hughes Tool Company
Annotation On July 12, 1964, in a momentous decision, the National Labor Relations Board decertified the racially segregated Independent Metal Workers Union as the collective bargaining agent at Houston's mammoth Hughes Tool Company. The unanimous decision ending nearly fifty years of Jim Crow unionism at the company marked the first ruling in the Labor Board's history that racial discrimination by a union violated the National Labor Relations Act and was therefore illegal. This ruling was for black workers the equivalent of the Brown v. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court in the area of education. Botson traces the Jim Crow unionism of the company and the efforts of black union activists to bring civil rights issues into the workplace. His analysis clearly demonstrates that without federal intervention, workers at Hughes Tool would never have been able to overcome management's opposition to unionization and to racial equality. Drawing on interviews with many of the principals, as well as extensive mining of company and legal archives, Botson's study "captures a moment in time when a segment of Houston's working-class seized the initiative and won economic and racial justice in their work place."
eBook, English, ©2005
Texas A & M University Press, College Station, ©2005
Electronic books
1 online resource (xiv, 265 pages) : illustrations
9781603446143, 1603446141
826658073
Houston's working class and the origins of organized labor in the Bayou City
How it all began : Houston, labor, oil, and working at Mr. Hughes's place
Labor at Hughes Tool, 1929-1934 : hard times, Jim Crow, unions, and Uncle Sam
Industrial democracy comes to the monarchy of Hughes street : the Wagner Act, the CIO, and Hughes Tool, 1935-1940
Jim Crow wearing steel-toed shoes and safety glasses : Hughes Tool's race-based unionism, 1940-1943
The battle for union security and civil rights : labor's war at Hughes Tool, 1943-1946
The Independent Metal Workers Union era, 1946-1961
No gold watch for Jim Crow's retirement