Michael Perelman wrote: > > Think of the village shoemaker & the urban printer in English radical > history. In > manufacturing, relatively skilled workers were often the leaders of radical > organizations in the UK. Were the Irish at the forefront of radical > organizations? > In the US, my understanding was that the early Irish immigrants tended to > resort to > arson & the like as a protest rather than organizing. > > Writing from relative ignorance...
At the level of pure anecdotage (though I think there is published material on this). In the summer of '55 I got a summer job at Detroit Transmission Divisiion of General Motors at Willow Run. On what was to be my first day at work I met with a wildcat strike by skilled workers, discontented with the pact the UAW had just signed. The thing that struck me at the time, and still constitutes the image I retain, was of how happy the faces of the pickets looked -- as though they were at play. When I got on the job I discovered that the machine repair men (who were among the skilled workers) had had only one day off -- easter -- between New Years and mid June. Their schedule was 7 10 hour days, then 7 7.5 hour days, alternating week after week. Hell -- they struck just to get a day off. I think _time_ becomes (or can become) more important as a worker gets further away from real physical hardship. But probably the Sandwichman could say more about this. Carrol
