Premier Issue: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas

The inaugural issue of Labor offers an example of what readers can expect to find on a regular basis-full coverage of new trends in labor history. It features an extensive interview with retired Yale University professor David Montgomery, the acclaimed “dean” of the new labor history since the 1970s. One article plumbs management and labor archives as well as oral histories to reconstruct the patterns of abuse encountered by women on automobile shop floors from 1930 to 1970. Drawing on fieldwork in a southern California domestic service placement agency, a contributor documents the commodification of gender and ethnic stereotypes in the international maid trade. Another essay begins a two-part series on the history of U.S. labor and international solidarity; still another explores the recent desecration of the memorial to victims of the Ludlow Massacre.

Contributors. James R. Barrett, Joshua Brown, Leon Fink, Dana Frank, John French, James Green, Julie Greene, Gregory Kealey, Kristen Hill Maher, Steve Meyer