Women's
&
Gender
Studies
Lecture Series 2016 - 2017
The Union's Police
How Early Industrial Unions
Surveilled Working Class Women
Early trade unions in Europe and North America established benefit
funds that distributed payments to surviving family members of
fatally injured workers. In managing the funds, unionists regularly
surveilled women recipients of benefit funds, scrutinizing their
romantic lives and domestic labors. Focusing on the case of early
British railway trade unions, this talk will outline the dynamics of
such surveillance, will discuss archival traces of
women's resistance
to such invasive scrutiny, and will show how union surveillance
related to contemporary policing practices. The talk will place this
historical discussion in the context of recent efforts to challenge the
normalization of police violence by US labor unions, including
campaigns to remove police unions from the AFL-CIO and other
labor movement organizations.
Dr. Amanda Armstrong
Michigan Society of Fellows,
Assistant Professor of History,
University of Michigan
April 13, 2017 |
300 HALLE
| 4pm