Household workers unite : the untold story of African American women who built a movement

Resource Information

The work Household workers unite : the untold story of African American women who built a movement represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Waubonsee Community College. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Household workers unite : the untold story of African American women who built a movement

Title remainder

the untold story of African American women who built a movement

Statement of responsibility

Premilla Nadasen

Creator

• Nadasen, Premilla

Author

• Nadasen, Premilla

Subject

• African American household employees -- History -- 20th century
• African American labor leaders
• African American labor leaders -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Arbeiterbewegung
• HISTORY -- United States -- 20th Century
• Haushaltshilfe
• History
• Household employees -- Labor unions
• Household employees -- Labor unions -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• 1900-1999
• SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Ethnic Studies | African American Studies
• Schwarze
• USA
• United States
• Women household employees
• Women household employees -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Women labor leaders
• Women labor leaders -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Labor & Industrial Relations
• African American household employees

Genre

• History

Language

eng

Summary

"Premilla Nadasen recounts in this powerful book a little-known history of organizing among African American household workers. She uses the stories of a handful of women to illuminate the broader politics of labor, organizing, race, and gender in late 20th-century America. At the crossroads of the emerging civil rights movement, a deindustrializing economy, a burgeoning women's movement, and increasing immigration, household worker activists, who were excluded from both labor rights and mainstream labor organizing, developed distinctive strategies for political mobilization and social change. We learn about their complicated relationship with their employers, who were a source of much of their anguish, but, also, potentially important allies. And equally important they articulated a profound challenge to unequal state policy. Household Workers Unite offers a window into this occupation from a perspective that is rarely seen. At a moment when the labor movement is in decline; as capital increasingly treats workers as interchangeable or dispensible; as the number of manufacturing jobs continues to dwindle and the number of service sector jobs expands; as workers in industrialized countries find themselves in an precarious situation and struggle hard to make ends meet without state support or protection--the lessons of domestic worker organizing recounted here might prove to be more important than just a correction of the historical record. The women in this book, as Nadasen demonstrates, were innovative labor organizers. As a history of poor women workers, it shatters countless myths and assumptions about the labor movement and proposes a very different vision."--Publisher information

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

331.4/78116408996073

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

HD6072.2.U5

LC item number

N33 2015

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography