Illinois Authors

University of Illinois Press, Urbana : ©2009.

"On the Ground charts labor relations in the airline industry, unraveling the story of how baggage handlers--classified as unskilled workers--built tense but mutually useful alliances with their skilled coworkers such as aircraft mechanics and made tremendous gains in wages and working conditions, even in the era of supposedly "complacent" labor in the 1950s and 1960s. Examining company and union records as well as interviews with former baggage handlers, Liesl Miller Orenic explains how airline jobs on the ground were constructed, how workers chose among unions, and how federal labor policies as well as industry regulation both increased and hindered airline workers' bargaining power."--Publisher's website.