Despite years of being largely distinct fields, the recent trend in twentieth-century U.S. history of labor historians doing business history (Nelson Lichtenstein, Matthew Garcia)—and vice versa (Jessica Levy)—invites the question of what role organized labor has in business history. This panel approaches this question from two main angles.
First, it brings labor into business history by examining relations between labor unions and management that fall outside of the traditional collective bargaining process developed in the New Deal. This includes anti-union activity, such as the development of union-avoidance consultancies, but also managerial solicitation of, and even partnership with, labor union leaders. While labor and business visions of the public interest are often taken as distinct, such labor-management partnerships illuminate the ideas, programs, and strategies through which certain labor and business leaders promoted shared interests such as social stability and rising living standards.
Second, it examines labor unions acting as businesses themselves: entities that engage with questions of production and employment, managers of pools of financial capital, and economic actors balancing visions of public interest alongside the immediate concerns of stakeholders. This includes both “business unionism”—the idea that unions should behave and organize themselves like businesses—and more radical unionists who engage in business-like practices to serve distinct ends.
The two papers presented in this panel, while each focusing on some of these questions more than others, collectively examine the multitude of ways that organized labor fits into the business history of the postwar United States.