Chapter 1 The Battle Between Capital and Labor in America Chapter 2 American Labor Market Policy, Strategy, and Political Institutions Chapter 3 Labor and Regulation, 1865-1900 Chapter 4 The AFL Confronts Employers Chapter 5 Employer's Counterattack Chapter 6 The AFL's Strategic Retreat and Its Consequences Chapter 7 Limitations of Labor Market Regulation Chapter 8 Confining Trade Union Powers Chapter 9 Marginalizing Labor Market Management Chapter 10 Circumscribing Work Insurance Chapter 11 The American Model of Labor Market Policy
David Brian Robertson is associate professor of political science at University of Missouri, St. Louis.
Robertson's systematic approach, which brings together the full
range of labor market programs, adds an unusual an interesting
dimension to the study. The constant comparison with British,
European, and even Australasian labor market experiences is
extremely enlightening. The emphasis on the influence of America's
political institutions in shaping its exceptional labor market
regime should remind social historians of the importance of that
broad institutional/political context. This significant study
offers a clearly written and provocative interpretation of American
labor market history, and it deserves a wide audience.
*Journal of American History*
David Robertson makes a distinctive and persuasive argument about
why American workers enjoy so little power in the workplace.
Drawing on extensive archival materials, he shows how employers
repeatedly used their access to the state to defeat labor
initiatives. Robertson argues that the failed campaign for the
union shop marked the turning point in labor's efforts to gain more
power vis-a-vis employers. This book is filled with important
insights for students of American political development, labor
history, and labor market policy.
*Margaret Weir, University of California-Berkeley*
This is a careful analysis of U.S. labor market policy in the early
decades of the twentieth century. Probing a panoply of labor-market
regulations—hours laws, employment offices, child labor laws, trade
union laws, workers' compensation, and unemployment
insurance—Robertson uncovers a common theme: that the United States
lagged behind other nations in efforts to protect workers from an
unfettered market. The book shows how reform efforts foundered in
the face of a fragmented political system and fierce opposition
from employers. Despite the reforms enacted during the New Deal,
American employers today remain exceptionally free to manage
workers as they see fit. Whether delighted or troubled by that
fact, readers will find this book a useful guide to the past events
that shaped our present.
*Sanford M. Jacoby, The Anderson School at UCLA*
By far the finest treatment to date of the political origins and
limited character of labor market regulation in the United States,
this analytical and inclusive policy history asks why American
employers, seen in comparative perspective, have enjoyed an
uncommon autonomy to manage relations with their employees.
Focusing on the period spanning the end of the Civil War to the
start of the New Deal, the study deploys its breadth of research,
clarity of exposition, and penchant for systematic analyses to
illuminate this long-vexing question.
*Ira Katznelson, Columbia University*
In this strongly conceptualized, powerfully argued, and skillfully
crafted study, David Brian Robertson effectively challenges much
that has been written about the origins of America's exceptional
labor policy. The American divergence, he shows, was a
twentieth-century development, attributable less to a peculiar
labor movement than to political and legal peculiarities that led
to employer dominance in labor markets and thwarted reform
challenges to employer prerogatives. His insightful reconstruction
of what emerged in the areas of labor regulation, trade union law,
labor market management, and worker insurance makes a significant
contribution, both to ongoing debates about American labor history
and to current debates over whether the American model should be
copied internationally.
*Ellis W. Hawley, University of Iowa*
In this book political scientist David Brian Robertson offers an
account of American labor exceptionalism that appeals to the
uniqueness of American political and legal institutions. . . .
Economic historians interested in labor or political economy will
find much to sink their teeth into here. . . . It is a virtue of
David Brian Robertson's stimulating historical interpretation that
both sides of the debate will find much to learn and ponder.
*H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online*
This is a brilliant explanation of the emergence of the American
industrial relations system. It is necessary reading for those who
mistakenly believe that the American industrial relations system
will solve the problems of unemployment currently facing a number
of European countries and who wish to understand the performance of
the American system
during the twentieth century.
*J Rogers Hollingsworth, Professor of History, Sociology, and the
Industrial Relations, The University of Wisconsin*
A very concise, insightful examination of the ongoing struggle of
unions, employers, and the government to establish the precise
boundaries of U.S. labor-management relations in the post-Civil War
era. Recommended for upper-division undergraduate through
professional collections.
*CHOICE*
Robertson provides a persuasive multicausal explanation for the
patchy and limited charachter of American labor policy that belongs
on the bookshelf on anyone interested in workers, employment law,
and political development in the United States. Robertson provides
a complex and convincing interpretation of American labor policy
that anyone working on the subject must consider.
*Enterprise & Society*
The argument that Robertson advances here for the importance of
political institutions as a determining force in the development of
American labor markets is provocative and should be of interest to
many economic historians. Robertson is an effective advocate of
this interpretation, and goes a long way toward documenting the way
in which American policymaking institutions shaped this country's
labor markets.
*Journal of Economic History*
Robertson's analysis is insightful, ambitious, and systematic.
*Business History Review*
Capital, Labor, and State has many virtues and makes a substantial
contribution. It is distinguished by its careful conceptualization
of labor market policy, thorough research in both primary and
secondary literature, focused and well-developed argument, and
effective blending of historical, institutional, and
political-economic analysis. To my knowledge no other work analyzes
developments before the New Deal so comprehensively and
systematically or with such careful and sustained attention to all
four actors—unions, employers, academic reformers, and government.
Yet, any reservations are themselves overwhelmed by Robertson's
remarkably rich and impressive study of an issue that so agitated
American politics from the late-nineteenth century to the middle of
the twentieth. Capital, Labor, and State is a considerable
achievement that should be widely read and discussed.
*American Political Science Review*
David Robertson has written a fine interpretation of labor policy
in the United States during the seven decades of
industrialization.
*Industrial and Labor Relations Review*
This is one of a small handful of important and synthetic and
interpretive works on the history of politics and class relations
in the United States published during the last few years, none of
them, perhaps not coincindentally, written by a labor
historian.
Robertson's great strength is the breadth of his conception of the
range of public policies that 'The Battle of American Labor
Markets' entailed (and entails: it really does bring the reader up
to date)
Turn to him with confidence for an analytical narrative of long-run
policy development in the areas of the state and other social
benefits. The research is thorough and not , as sometimes happens
when political sociologists do history, exclusively library based:
Robertson has gone beyond the familiar texts, to original public
documents, and in some cases to archival materials.
*Labor History, Feb. 2005*
I recommend this book as a good resource to understand today's
trends in the economy.
*Political Studies Review*
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