Victor G Devinatz
Biographic Data
| ID | 1316931 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Victor G Devinatz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Victor G |
| FAMILY NAME | Devinatz |
| SIGNATURE | DEVINATZ V G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Illinois State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6236-4569 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Trotskyism, Trade Unionism, and Entryism
Lessons Learned from a Successful Faculty Union Organizing Drive and First Contract Campaign in the Age of Covid-19 and Trump, 2021–2025
The successful union organizing drive and first contract campaign of the tenure track faculty at Illinois State University (ISU) came after a string of unsuccessful organizing campaigns which took place circa 1998 to 2018. After the tenure track faculty of four Illinois public universities unionized during the 2010s, the United Faculty Illinois State University's (UFISU) successful organizing campaign initially emerged out of discussions regardin…
Class Dealignment, Multiracial Workers, and Labor's Future After Trump's Reelection
One reason explaining Kamala Harris' loss to Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential election is the swing of multi-cultural (non-white) voters to Trump. Joseph Biden possessed a lead of 46% among these voters over Trump in the 2020 US presidential election which declined to 30% for Harris in 2024. Moreover, this multicultural worker voting shift in the 2024 US presidential election is indicative of a longer-term trend labeled class dealignment,…
Labor’s Struggle under Fordist and Post-Fordist Industrial Relations Systems in the 20th and the 21st Centuries
Under Fordism circa the 1920s to the 1970s, the predominant US worker organization was the trade union comprised of primarily males in manufacturing utilizing collective bargaining for obtaining workplace improvements. When impasses transpired, labor’s struggle involved economic strikes. In the post-Fordist era, other worker organizations emerged. Moreover, labor’s struggle now involves many more women and workers of color in service industries e…
Matt Vidal. Management Divided: Contradictions of Labor Management
The War on the North American Left-Wing Labor Movement From World War I Through the Post-World War II Period
Repression of the North American trade union movement dates to the late nineteenth century. Much of this repression has occurred in response to union militancy during strikes, some of which were directed against political radicals of various orientations. Peaks of repression against radical trade unionism occurred during World War I and in the immediate postwar years as well as in the early Cold War period, after World War II’s conclusion into th…
Trade Union Lessons from Early US Trotskyism and US Communism
There has been an upsurge in union organizing in 2021 and 2022. From October 2021 to March 2022, the filing of union certification election petitions with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
US Communists as Early Social Movement Unionists Circa 1930 to 1956
Through the examination of three recently published volumes, in this review essay I argue that US Communists were “premature social movement unionists” in the quarter century circa 1930 to 1956. US Communists had adopted social movement unionism ( smu ), which did not officially emerge as an accepted type of trade unionism until the late 1980s/early 1990s, approximately a half century before becoming accepted throughout the world. This demonstrat…
Union Democracy, Union Bureaucracy, and the Left
To have healthy union democracy, it is essential for the Left to be active in unions. Leftist unions are more democratic than non-leftist unions on all measures of union democracy including the absence of union corruption, the quantity of union factions, the presence of grassroots militancy, and union member participation in social movement unionism and community unionism. Additionally, although union democracy is associated with union effectiven…
The Labor Party Question: Rethinking American Exceptionalism, the CPUSA’s Role and CPUSA-Led/Influenced Trade Union Activity Circa 1936 to 1955
(2021). The Labor Party Question: Rethinking American Exceptionalism, the CPUSA’s Role and CPUSA-Led/Influenced Trade Union Activity Circa 1936 to 1955. American Communist History: Vol. 20, No. 1-2, pp. 95-107
The First International, the US Left and British Trotskyism: Their Relevance to Trade Unions and Workers
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc countries and “actually existing socialism” circa 1989–1991, the traditional Left workers parties (Labor, Social Democratic and Communist) have
Interpreting the Communist Party USA’s Historical Role in the US Trade Unions: Insights from the Early Institutionalist Theory of Industrial Relations
From 1935 to 1945, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) trade unionists were indefatigable and dedicated organizers for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The objective of this article is to analyze the CPUSA’s role in the US trade union movement through applying the early institutionalist theory of industrial relations. This theory was selected because it provided the intellectual underpinning for New Deal trade union policy when the CIO…
Left-Wing SPA-Led and CPUSA-Led Unions and Worker Organizations as the Vanguard of U.S. Social Democracy’s Left-Wing, Circa 1935 to 1950
During the golden era of world trade unionism (circa 1945 to 1980) the trade union movement’s political arm, the workers’ parties (Labor, Social Democratic, and Communist) were at their peak strength attaining a significant amount of electoral support from the citizens in many European industrial democracies. This situation, however, did not occur in the United States where both the Socialist Party of America (SPA) and the Communist Party USA (CP…
Donald Trump, George Wallace, and the White Working Class
After Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association: What Should Labor Do
A Cold War Thaw in the International Working Class Movement? The World Federation of Trade Unions and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, 1967-1977
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) emerged from the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in 1949 after Western trade union affiliates in the latter organization expressed major policy differences over the Marshall Plan. For its first 20 years, the ICFTU refused all forms of collaboration with the WFTU, contending that the Federation advocated a politically monolithic Communism with its primary function being the promo…
Struggling against U. S. Labor's Decline under Late Capitalism: Lessons for the Early 21St Century
The three books reviewed in this essay provide meaningful contributionsand extensions to the crucial dialog on what is needed for U. S. trade union movement revival in an era of neoliberal globalization and increasing employment insecurity. What Andrew Battista’s The Revival of Labor Liberalism, Steve Early’s Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home, and Steve K. Ashby and C. J. Hawking’s Staley: The Fight …
Reevaluating US company paternalism from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries
Spark: how old-fashioned values drive a twenty-first century corporation: lessons from Lincoln Electric's unique guaranteed employment program, by Frank Koller, New York, Public Affairs Books, 2010
The Rise and Fall of Communism
Union Solidarity, Collective Struggle and the Caterpillar Labor Dispute, 1991-1998
Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Management and Quantitative Methods at ISU ReD: Research and eData. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications-- Management and Quantitative Methods by an authorized administrator of ISU ReD: Research and
The United Auto Workers Union as American Vanguard, 1935 to 1970: Reality or Illusion
McCarthyism on the Charles: The Life and Times of Labour Historian Ray Ginger before and After His Dismissal from Harvard University
Left History features articles from a variety of theoretical approaches; these include feminist, marxist, and postmodernist deliberations on topics such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, culture, the state, labour, the environment, theory, and method
A Cold War at International Harvester: The Shachtmanites and the Farm Equipment Workers Union's Demise, 1946–1955
The Workers Party (WP)/Independent Socialist League (ISL), whose members were known as the Shachtmanites, obtained control of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 6 through the dominant Positive Action Caucus (PAC). The Shachtmanite-led PAC red-baited the United Farm Equipment and Metal Work-ers Union (FE), the first time in U. S. trade union history in which a Marxist organization of the ostensibly revolutionary left aided in the destruction of a Com…
Reading Communist Biographies: The Birth of American Communism, International Communism through the Cold War’s Early Years and the New Communist Movement
Left History features articles from a variety of theoretical approaches; these include feminist, marxist, and postmodernist deliberations on topics such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, culture, the state, labour, the environment, theory, and method
A Reevaluation of the Trade Union Unity League, 1929–1934
The “Third Period” trade union activities of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), especially the creation of independent “red” industrial unions as opposed to continuing to work within the craft-oriented American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions, has been widely criticized in the literature. The recent opening of the CPUSA archives has made it possible to reevaluate the Party's activities during this era. While the TUUL unions suffered major defeats …
A Reevaluation of the Trade Union Unity League, 1929–1934
The “Third Period” trade union activities of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), especially the creation of independent “red” industrial unions as opposed to continuing to work within the craft-oriented American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions, has been widely criticized in the literature. The recent opening of the CPUSA archives has made it possible to reevaluate the Party's activities during this era. While the TUUL unions suffered major defeats …
A Cold War Thaw in the International Working Class Movement? The World Federation of Trade Unions and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, 1967-1977
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) emerged from the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in 1949 after Western trade union affiliates in the latter organization expressed major policy differences over the Marshall Plan. For its first 20 years, the ICFTU refused all forms of collaboration with the WFTU, contending that the Federation advocated a politically monolithic Communism with its primary function being the promo…
Donald Trump, George Wallace, and the White Working Class
A Heroic Defeat: The Caterpillar Labor Dispute and the UAW, 1991-1998
In "The Caterpillar Labor Dispute and the UAW, 1991-1998," Isaac Cohen contests the popular notion that the UAW's dispute with Caterpillar resulted in a major defeat for the union. He states that the struggle's outcome did not end in an unconditional union surrender because the UAW obtained a contract that was considerably better than the company's imposed terms and conditions during the dispute. Cohen argues that had the UAW International adopte…
Nelson Lichtenstein and the Politics of Reuther Scholarship
IN THE SUMMER OF 2001, while conducting research in the George Meany Memorial Archives, I came across a curious document. Thorough and meticulous, it detailed a 1939 meeting held in Detroit that identified Walter Reuther as a member of the United States Communist Party (CPUSA). In a subsequent Notes and Documents contribution, Reassessing the Historical UAW, I situated this piece of evidence historically and historiographically and suggested the …
US Communists as Early Social Movement Unionists Circa 1930 to 1956
Through the examination of three recently published volumes, in this review essay I argue that US Communists were “premature social movement unionists” in the quarter century circa 1930 to 1956. US Communists had adopted social movement unionism ( smu ), which did not officially emerge as an accepted type of trade unionism until the late 1980s/early 1990s, approximately a half century before becoming accepted throughout the world. This demonstrat…
Union Democracy, Union Bureaucracy, and the Left
To have healthy union democracy, it is essential for the Left to be active in unions. Leftist unions are more democratic than non-leftist unions on all measures of union democracy including the absence of union corruption, the quantity of union factions, the presence of grassroots militancy, and union member participation in social movement unionism and community unionism. Additionally, although union democracy is associated with union effectiven…
A Cold War at International Harvester: The Shachtmanites and the Farm Equipment Workers Union's Demise, 1946–1955
The Workers Party (WP)/Independent Socialist League (ISL), whose members were known as the Shachtmanites, obtained control of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 6 through the dominant Positive Action Caucus (PAC). The Shachtmanite-led PAC red-baited the United Farm Equipment and Metal Work-ers Union (FE), the first time in U. S. trade union history in which a Marxist organization of the ostensibly revolutionary left aided in the destruction of a Com…
High Tech Betrayal: Working and Organizing on the Shop Floor
Based on seven months of working at a medical electronics factory, dispels myths that the new high-technology factories are better or safer places to work than auto factories and steel mills. Also offers a perspective on trying to organize workers in a small non-union factory in the early 1980s. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews
Nelson Lichtenstein and the Politics of Reuther Scholarship
IN THE SUMMER OF 2001, while conducting research in the George Meany Memorial Archives, I came across a curious document. Thorough and meticulous, it detailed a 1939 meeting held in Detroit that identified Walter Reuther as a member of the United States Communist Party (CPUSA). In a subsequent Notes and Documents contribution, Reassessing the Historical UAW, I situated this piece of evidence historically and historiographically and suggested the …
Doug Fraser's 1978 Resignation Letter from the Labor‐Management Group and the Limits of Trade Union Liberalism
The Role of the Trotskyists in the United Auto Workers, 1939- 1949
Left History features articles from a variety of theoretical approaches; these include feminist, marxist, and postmodernist deliberations on topics such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, culture, the state, labour, the environment, theory, and method
A Heroic Defeat: The Caterpillar Labor Dispute and the UAW, 1991-1998
In "The Caterpillar Labor Dispute and the UAW, 1991-1998," Isaac Cohen contests the popular notion that the UAW's dispute with Caterpillar resulted in a major defeat for the union. He states that the struggle's outcome did not end in an unconditional union surrender because the UAW obtained a contract that was considerably better than the company's imposed terms and conditions during the dispute. Cohen argues that had the UAW International adopte…
To Find Answers to the Urgent Problems of Our Society: The Alliance for Labor Action's Atlanta Union Organizing Offensive, 1969-1971
The Alliance for Labor Action (ALA) was created through the joint efforts of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and the Teamsters Union in July 1968, in opposition to the AFL-CIO's policies. The motivation behind the creation of this new labor federation, which lasted until 1972, was to organize the millions of unorganized work ers and to promote the social concerns that the two founding unions felt had been ignored since the merger of the AFL-C…
Reading Communist Biographies: The Birth of American Communism, International Communism through the Cold War’s Early Years and the New Communist Movement
Left History features articles from a variety of theoretical approaches; these include feminist, marxist, and postmodernist deliberations on topics such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, culture, the state, labour, the environment, theory, and method
A Reevaluation of the Trade Union Unity League, 1929–1934
The “Third Period” trade union activities of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), especially the creation of independent “red” industrial unions as opposed to continuing to work within the craft-oriented American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions, has been widely criticized in the literature. The recent opening of the CPUSA archives has made it possible to reevaluate the Party's activities during this era. While the TUUL unions suffered major defeats …
McCarthyism on the Charles: The Life and Times of Labour Historian Ray Ginger before and After His Dismissal from Harvard University
Left History features articles from a variety of theoretical approaches; these include feminist, marxist, and postmodernist deliberations on topics such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, culture, the state, labour, the environment, theory, and method
A Cold War at International Harvester: The Shachtmanites and the Farm Equipment Workers Union's Demise, 1946–1955
The Workers Party (WP)/Independent Socialist League (ISL), whose members were known as the Shachtmanites, obtained control of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 6 through the dominant Positive Action Caucus (PAC). The Shachtmanite-led PAC red-baited the United Farm Equipment and Metal Work-ers Union (FE), the first time in U. S. trade union history in which a Marxist organization of the ostensibly revolutionary left aided in the destruction of a Com…
The United Auto Workers Union as American Vanguard, 1935 to 1970: Reality or Illusion
The Rise and Fall of Communism
Union Solidarity, Collective Struggle and the Caterpillar Labor Dispute, 1991-1998
Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Management and Quantitative Methods at ISU ReD: Research and eData. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications-- Management and Quantitative Methods by an authorized administrator of ISU ReD: Research and
Struggling against U. S. Labor's Decline under Late Capitalism: Lessons for the Early 21St Century
The three books reviewed in this essay provide meaningful contributionsand extensions to the crucial dialog on what is needed for U. S. trade union movement revival in an era of neoliberal globalization and increasing employment insecurity. What Andrew Battista’s The Revival of Labor Liberalism, Steve Early’s Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home, and Steve K. Ashby and C. J. Hawking’s Staley: The Fight …
Reevaluating US company paternalism from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries
Spark: how old-fashioned values drive a twenty-first century corporation: lessons from Lincoln Electric's unique guaranteed employment program, by Frank Koller, New York, Public Affairs Books, 2010
A Cold War Thaw in the International Working Class Movement? The World Federation of Trade Unions and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, 1967-1977
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) emerged from the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in 1949 after Western trade union affiliates in the latter organization expressed major policy differences over the Marshall Plan. For its first 20 years, the ICFTU refused all forms of collaboration with the WFTU, contending that the Federation advocated a politically monolithic Communism with its primary function being the promo…
After Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association: What Should Labor Do
Donald Trump, George Wallace, and the White Working Class
Left-Wing SPA-Led and CPUSA-Led Unions and Worker Organizations as the Vanguard of U.S. Social Democracy’s Left-Wing, Circa 1935 to 1950
During the golden era of world trade unionism (circa 1945 to 1980) the trade union movement’s political arm, the workers’ parties (Labor, Social Democratic, and Communist) were at their peak strength attaining a significant amount of electoral support from the citizens in many European industrial democracies. This situation, however, did not occur in the United States where both the Socialist Party of America (SPA) and the Communist Party USA (CP…
The First International, the US Left and British Trotskyism: Their Relevance to Trade Unions and Workers
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc countries and “actually existing socialism” circa 1989–1991, the traditional Left workers parties (Labor, Social Democratic and Communist) have
Interpreting the Communist Party USA’s Historical Role in the US Trade Unions: Insights from the Early Institutionalist Theory of Industrial Relations
From 1935 to 1945, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) trade unionists were indefatigable and dedicated organizers for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The objective of this article is to analyze the CPUSA’s role in the US trade union movement through applying the early institutionalist theory of industrial relations. This theory was selected because it provided the intellectual underpinning for New Deal trade union policy when the CIO…
The Labor Party Question: Rethinking American Exceptionalism, the CPUSA’s Role and CPUSA-Led/Influenced Trade Union Activity Circa 1936 to 1955
(2021). The Labor Party Question: Rethinking American Exceptionalism, the CPUSA’s Role and CPUSA-Led/Influenced Trade Union Activity Circa 1936 to 1955. American Communist History: Vol. 20, No. 1-2, pp. 95-107
US Communists as Early Social Movement Unionists Circa 1930 to 1956
Through the examination of three recently published volumes, in this review essay I argue that US Communists were “premature social movement unionists” in the quarter century circa 1930 to 1956. US Communists had adopted social movement unionism ( smu ), which did not officially emerge as an accepted type of trade unionism until the late 1980s/early 1990s, approximately a half century before becoming accepted throughout the world. This demonstrat…
Union Democracy, Union Bureaucracy, and the Left
To have healthy union democracy, it is essential for the Left to be active in unions. Leftist unions are more democratic than non-leftist unions on all measures of union democracy including the absence of union corruption, the quantity of union factions, the presence of grassroots militancy, and union member participation in social movement unionism and community unionism. Additionally, although union democracy is associated with union effectiven…
Trade Union Lessons from Early US Trotskyism and US Communism
There has been an upsurge in union organizing in 2021 and 2022. From October 2021 to March 2022, the filing of union certification election petitions with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
Political science (27 works) · Law (24 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (19 works) · Economics (17 works) · Law (17 works) · Politics (16 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Communism, Protests, Social Movements (11 works) · Communism (9 works) · Political economy (9 works)