1. Kenosha Retrospective: A Biographical Approach. Burckel, Nicholas C. and John A. Neuenschwander, eds.

Kenosha, Wis.: Kenosha County Bicentennial Commission; 1981. xvi, 384 p. Notes: PARTIAL CONTENTS: “C. Fred Stemm: Labor’s Political Outsider” / by Don Jensen, p. [62]-108. — “Felix Olkives: Labor Enterpreneur” / by Leon Applebaum, p. [170]-202. — “George Molinaro: Labor-Ethnic Politician” / by John D. Buenker, p.[242]-294. — “UAW Local 72: Assertive Union” / by Angela Howard Zophy, p. [296]-331.

N.B. Labor leader C. Fred Stemm, a blacksmith with the Bain Wagon works forge, was a member of the Knights of Labor and active in Kenosha city politics from 1882 to through 1913, serving on the city council and also, for part of those years, as mayor of the city; Olkives was president of the Kenosha Trades and Labor Council from the late 1920s through World War II; George Molinaro worked on the assembly line for forty-five years, first at Nash Motors and then at American Motors after the company later changed hands, while also having a prominent career in the Wisconsin State Assembly, upon which political activities this article concentrates–he was also one of the older brothers of the actor, Al Molinaro); United Auto Workers Local 72 represented the unionized workers at the Nash Motors plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

  1. Doro, Sue. Blue Collar Goodbyes. 1st ed. Watsonville, Calif.: Papier-Mache Press; 1992. 73 p.

Notes: Poems, photographs and essays about the thirteen years the author spent in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the only woman machinist with the Milwaukee Road Railway and at the Allis-Chalmers tractor plant at a time of increased plant closings and cutbacks. In 1993 the Wisconsin Library Association selected this book as one of the ten books of “Outstanding Achievement” by Wisconsin authors for the year.

Reviewed: Allen, Hayward (reviewer). “Badger Books: Writers Link Past to Present.” Wisconsin State Journal, Sunday, November 22, 1992, p. 3F. Reviewed: Monaghan, Pat (reviewer). Booklist p. 710 December 15, 1992. Reviewed: Ratner, Rochelle (reviewer). Library Journal p. 81 March 1, 1993.

Another edition: Doro, Sue. Blue Collar Goodbyes. Huron, O.: Bottom Dog Press, 2000. 85 p. (Working Lives Series) ISBN: 0-933087-66-7.

  1. —. Heart, Home & Hard Hats: The Non-Traditional Work and Words of a Woman Machinist and Mother .

Minneapolis, Minn.: Midwest Villages & Voices; 1986. 85 p. Notes: This second collection of poems by Sue Doro includes a glowing preface written by Meridel Le Sueur, a member of the group Midwest Villages & Voices which published this volume. Many of these poems touch on aspects of Doro’s non-traditional work as a woman machinist and on the people in her life, both at work and at home.

  1. —. Of Birds and Factories. Milwaukee, Wis.: Peoples’ Books and Crafts; 1983. 104 p.

Notes: This first collection of poems by Sue Doro includes a glowing foreword written by Meridel Le Sueur. Some of the poems in this volume also made it into her second collection, Heart, Home & Hard Hats, but many appear here only.

  1. Holmes, Michael. J. I. Case, the First 150 Years. Racine, Wis.: J.I. Case Company; 1992. 200 p.

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6. Ozanne, Robert W. “The Effects of Communist Leadership on American Trade Unions”; 1954.

Notes: Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1954. 329 leaves. (American Doctoral Disserations, W1954.)

This dissertation consists of two major divisions. Part I (p. 1-184) is an overview of the “Effects of Communist Leadership on American Trade Unions” nationally. In his first chapter Ozanne reviews what he characterizes as a well-established pattern throughout U.S. history of various reform groups distracting the American labor movement from the unions’ primary mission of ‘bread and butter unionism’ which he defines as “a term used to designate the attempts to improve the living standards of the workers within the existing economic system as differentiated from movements which seek improvement by abolishing the wage system through development of producer cooperatives or state ownership as in socialism or communism or such other reforms” (p. 4); among such reform groups he includes the women’s suffrage movement, the Knights of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the political movement of socialism. In his second chapter he provides in more depth “An Evaluation of Communist Leadership of American Trade Unions” during the period from 1934 to 1953 and argues that any union leaders found to adhere to the tenets of communism would have to be subordinating the interests of their union’s members to the “necessity of following the twists of the Soviet foreign policy” (p. 99). In his third chapter, Ozanne analyzes the “Techniques of Communist Control in Unions” at both the local union level and the international union level and relies heavily on testimony at Congressional hearings held in 1952 by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities, as well as similar hearings of the period held before various other Congressional committees.

Finally, in Part II (p. 185-324) Ozanne turns his attention to a Wisconsin local union and provides a “Study of Local 248 UAW-CIO 1937-1947: A Case Study of a Communist-Led Local Union”. United Auto Workers Local 248, the union at the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Corporation in West Allis, Wisconsin (a suburb of Milwaukee) was the largest local union in Wisconsin, important both for the leadership role it had within the Milwaukee labor movement as well as the impact it had nationally within the United Auto Workers international union. Ozanne spends the next five chapters describing UAW Local 248’s collective bargaining, grievance handling, and local union administration. Throughout these chapters he characterizes the local’s leadership as “Communist leadership” and spends considerable time giving his assessment of how these political sentiments of the local’s leadership affected the essential activities of the local union and its members, conceding that the leadership of UAW Local 248 remained faithful to trade union principles and often went against the wishes of the Communist Party. Ozanne’s overall conclusion in this section is that the “vulnerability of Communist leadership invites employer attacks” (p. 253) and unnecessarily weakens a union which has such leaders. In his conclusion to the dissertation as a whole, Ozanne further surmises that “Communist leadership” of a local union will generally have to be eventually rejected by the union members they represent because “their political and propaganda activities are an affront to the patriotism of the American worker” (p. 321). For an assessment of Ozanne’s interpretation of this period in UAW Local 248’s history, be sure to see Steve Meyer’s book, “Stalin Over Wisconsin”: The Making and Unmaking of Militant Unionism, 1900-1950 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), p. 13-14.

Two strikes by UAW Local 248 against the Allis-Chalmers company are discussed by Ozanne in some detail. One strike was over the issue of union security, brought about by an organizing drive by the rival American Federation of Labor; this was a national news story as it occurred during World War II (from January 22 to April 7, 1941) resulting in national concern that the critically-needed generators and propulsion machinery for a number of naval vessels being built for the war effort would be delayed. The other strike occurred from April 29, 1946 to March 23, 1947 and was set off when the company unilaterally withdrew the maintenance of membership agreement which the local union had won from the War Labor Board in 1943; during this strike the company was able to use anti-communist hysteria to viciously smear the leadership of UAW Local 248 in the local press.

  1. —. The Negro in the Farm Equipment and Construction Machinery Industries. Elsa Kemp, With the

assistance of. Philadelphia, Pa.: Industrial Research Unit, Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, University of Pennsylvania; distributed by University of Pennsylvania Press; [1972].

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115 p. (The Racial Policies of American Industry; report no. 26). Notes: Two Wisconsin companies and the unions representing their workers are featured in this study: United Auto Workers Local 180 at the J.I. Case company in Racine, Wisconsin, and United Auto Workers Local 248 at the Allis-Chalmers company in West Allis, Wisconsin (a suburb of Milwaukee).

  1. Somers, Gerald and Roomkin, Myron. Training and Skill Acquisition: A Pilot Case Study. Madison, Wis.:

Manpower and Training Research Unit, affiliated with the Industrial Relations Research Institute and the Center for Studies in Vocational and Technical Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison; 1972. [273] p. Notes: This study was done as Contract 81-55-71-04 for the Manpower Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor (with copies available through the National Technical Information Service) and used the Gisholt Machine Company, of Madison, Wisconsin, as a case study of company training programs and the costs and benefits of the acquired skills. Because the study occurred during the time of the shutdown of this important Madison, Wisconsin company, it has much to tell about the laid-off employees and their subsequent employment in new workplaces. The Gisholt Machine Company had been founded in Wisconsin in 1889 and at its height in 1970 had over 2,000 employees and was nationally one of the fourteen largest firms in its specialty of machine tool production; only four other Madison companies at that time employed over 1,000 employees. In 1966, the company had been purchased by another Wisconsin machine tool manufacturer, Giddings and Lewis, which announced in January 1971 its decision to close the Gisholt company. United Steelworkers of America Local 1401 had represented all hourly employees at Gisholt since 1955, except those working in the areas of computer programming and data processing.

  1. Wilson, Nellie. “Nellie Wilson: A Black Woman Meets the Union”. IN: Holter, Darryl, editor. Workers and

Unions in Wisconsin: A Labor History Anthology. Madison, Wis.: State Historical Society of Wisconsin; 1999; pp. 184-185. Notes: The on-the-job experiences of a pioneering African-American woman unionist, who was hired during World War II for defense work at the A.O. Smith plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; the Smith plant was represented by the United Steelworkers of America. Her comments were made at the Wisconsin Labor History Society Conference on April 22, 1989, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.