ABOUT THIS BOOK

From white-collar executives to mail carriers, public workers meet the needs of the entire nation. Frederick W. Gooding Jr. and Eric S. Yellin edit a collection of new research on this understudied workforce. Part One begins in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century to explore how questions of race, class, and gender shaped public workers, their workplaces, and their place in American democracy. In Part Two, essayists examine race and gender discrimination while revealing the subtle contemporary forms of marginalization that keep Black men and Black and white women underpaid and overlooked for promotion. The historic labor actions detailed in Part Three illuminate how city employees organized not only for better pay and working conditions but to seek recognition from city officials, the public, and the national labor movement. Part Four focuses on nurses and teachers to address the thorny question of whether certain groups deserve premium pay for their irreplaceable work and sacrifices or if serving the greater good is a reward unto itself.

Contributors: Eileen Boris, Cathleen D. Cahill, Frederick W. Gooding Jr., William P. Jones, Francis Ryan, Jon Shelton, Joseph E. Slater, Katherine Turk, Eric S. Yellin, and Amy Zanoni

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Frederick W. Gooding Jr. holds the Dr. Ronald E. Moore Professorship in Humanities in the John V. Roach Honors College and is an associate professor of African American studies at Texas Christian University. He is the author of American Dream Deferred: Black Federal Workers in Washington, D.C., 1941–1981. Eric S. Yellin is an associate professor of history and American studies at the University of Richmond. He is the author of Racism in the Nation's Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson’s America.

REVIEWS

“Public Workers in Service of America is a fascinating and consequential history of public sector-work that demonstrates how public employees from diverse backgrounds have fought to define their rights over time and in a wide variety of occupations. It contributes to an essential conversation about the need for a robust and inclusive public workforce in a nation that often uncritically embraces the private sector.”--Margaret C. Rung, author of Servants of the State: Managing Diversity and Democracy in the Federal Workforce, 1933–1953

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Joseph A. McCartin

Acknowledgments

A Note on Language

Introduction Frederick W. Gooding Jr. and Eric S. Yellin

Part I: The Politics of Public Work at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

1 Gender and Politics among Federal Indian Service Employees, 1880-1930 Cathleen D. Cahill

2 The Spoils as Reparations Eric S. Yellin

Part II: Good Government Jobs for Whom?

3 Dead End Job? Black Public Workers Struggle to See Light of Day Frederick W. Gooding Jr.

4 “We’re the Backbone of this City”: Women and Gender in Public Work Katherine Turk

Part III: Organizing Public Workers

5 Police Unions and Public-Sector Labor Law and Policy Joseph E. Slater

6 The Road to Memphis: Southern Sanitation Workers and the Transformation of Public Employee Unionism in the Postwar United States William P. Jones

7 “They Won’t Work for a Cop of Any Kind”: The 1970 Sanitation Slowdown and the Struggle for Black Independent Politics in Philadelphia Francis Ryan

Part IV: Public Workers in the Neoliberal Age

8 Sick Ins, Feed Ins, Heal Ins, and Strikes: Labor Organizing at Chicago’s Public Hospital in the 1960s and Its Legacy for the 1970s Amy Zanoni

9 The Meaning of Teachers’ Labor in American Education: Change, Challenge, and Resistance Jon Shelton

Afterword Eileen Boris

Contributors

Index