What's a penny worth?

Abstract

With the end of the Second World War, white male union members in the United States confronted contradictory political impulses on the former Home Front. The war radically transformed the domestic workforce as women and non-white workers joined in unprecedented numbers, and significantly increased many unions' political power and legitimacy. The end of war production thus presented an opportunity to solidify the egalitarian ideology of productive citizenship that had helped mobilize the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ during the war. However, organized labor also directed its efforts toward the reinscription of the ‘traditional’ social roles that had been disrupted by the Depression and war, particularly those assigned to home-making women and breadwinning men. This article considers the complex negotiations of these cultural politics through an historical ethnography of the wage struggles of Local 128 (Los Angeles, Long Beach California) of the Oil Workers International Union in the first two years of peace-time. The discussion emphasizes the ways in which the wage, far from simply reflecting ‘ noneconomic’ political relations, became a critical site within which the meanings of American working-class manhood were contested and produced.