The UAW and the struggle to organize aircraft, 1937–1942
This article examines the United Automobile Workers’ Union (UAW) efforts to organize the aircraft industry, 1937–1942. It argues that the North American Aviation Strike in Inglewood, California in 1941 played a pivotal role in determining the union's fate in the industry. Following the controversial strike national UAW leaders seized control over the Aviation Organizing Campaign, placing the drive clearly in the hands of the union's auto interests. The move removed local leaders, and alienated a workforce that long cast a suspicious eye on the UAW. Ultimately, as events at Curtiss-Wright in Buffalo, New York show, the decision greatly hindered the UAW efforts in aircraft and opened the door to fierce competition from the International Association of Machinists.
Americanism and anti-communism: the UAW and repressive liberalism before the red scare
The relationship between Communism and Americanism during the Popular Front period is now largely perceived as a positive one. By promoting the idea that Communism was an extension of specifically American political traditions, the argument runs, Communists were able to advance their participation in the unions and in a left-oriented cultural-political alliance with broad popular appeal. Against this perspective, this article highlights the repressive significance of liberal nationalism as a resource for the narrowing of political culture in the New Deal labor movement. In particular, the analysis focuses on the importance of Americanism to attacks by the Reuther caucus on the Communist Party in the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from the end of the 1930s through the war. Such factional politics are significant both as a reflection of more general developments in the Congress of Industrial Organizations and because of the UAW's centrality to the political trajectory of the labor movement. More broadly, this history reveals how a liberal anti-Communism embraced the demonizing politics typically associated with the post-war red scare, linking New Deal political culture to a long tradition of countersubversive discourse in America.
The alcohol-aggression stereotype: a cross-cultural comparison of beliefs.
University students (N = 1,008) in eight countries participated in a survey aimed at mapping cross-cultural alcohol expectancies. Multisample structured means analysis was applied to compare changes in aggressive behaviors believed to occur in connection with drinking after "many" alcoholic drinks. Most subjects expressed the belief that intoxication was associated with greater aggressiveness, but there were significant national differences unrelated to self-reported alcoholic beverage preference, frequency of drinking to intoxication, or rates of personal involvement in episodes of alcohol-related aggression. Thus, the expectation that drinking leads to aggression may be determined to a significant extent by contextual factors and cultural traditions related to alcohol use.