Co-Sponsored by the History Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northern Illinois University, and the Labor and Working Class History Association

Friday, February 18, 2005
3:00pm-5:00pm, The Newberry Library

On a Wing and a Prayer: Organizing on the Airlines
Liesl Orenic, Dominican University

Part of a book-length work on ground service workers in the American airline industry from 1930 to 1970, this paper examines the organizing drives of the World War II era. Ground service workers or "fleet service clerks" at American, Pan Am and Northwest airlines all played an important role in the organizing campaigns of the 1940s. Which organizations they chose to represent them reflected how they recognized themselves in relation to other airline workers as well as how these organizations viewed them as part of the airline industry. Fleet service clerks' participation in organizing activities reflected their attitudes about the perceived glamour of the industry itself, the reputation of the union soliciting their support, as well as important differences in the racial makeup of the workforce and the area of the country in which they lived and worked.

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