As a historian of the 20th century,
Joseph McCartin tracks the labor movement's peaks and valleys to fully learn how the times shape the circumstances of workers. Now, McCartin believes, the time is ripe for a resurgence of a labor movement.
"More and more people are recognizing a key problem that has to be dealt with," says the associate professor of history. "Over the past generation, we've had the greatest growth in income inequality over the 20th century. There's a growing realization that we can't continue down the path of being an unequal society."
By advocating for living wages and protection, workers use unions as one avenue of addressing income disparity, McCartin says. He explains that, left to its own devices, the marketplace does not always deliver necessities for the economy's long-term health: stable incomes, dignity for workers and the promise of greater opportunities for future generations.
"Unions exist as a crucial tool that can help working people gain dignity and ensure that when they increase their productivity, their efforts will come back to them at least in part as an increase in wages," McCartin says. "The disjuncture between rising productivity and stagnant incomes that has contributed to rising inequality over the past 10 years or so has made it clearer than ever that all of America has something to gain from a revived labor movement."
But he also warns the labor movement must confront a series of obstacles if it wants to strengthen its presence. Globalization, technology and divisions within the movement present challenges to unions and workers nationwide, he says.
"The labor movement still is weakened, not only after decades of lack of growth, but also due to internal divisions," McCartin says. "There's no unity of opinion within the labor movement about what's wrong and how to fix it."
McCartin will explore the root of organized labor's recent troubles in an upcoming book that scrutinizes the movement's decline since the 1960s. The historian identifies the 1981 Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strike as a key moment in organized labor. President Reagan ended the protest by firing more than 11,000 striking workers who ignored a return to work order.
"That act had huge repercussions. Before Reagan replaced the air traffic controller strikers, it was relatively uncommon for employers to replace striking workers," McCartin explains. "But it became far more common after 1981, and in many ways President Reagan legitimized that response to strikes."
History doctoral candidate
Kevin Powers (G'09) helped McCartin transcribe the more than 100 interviews the professor conducted with air traffic controllers, union leaders and Reagan administration officials.
"The PATCO strike usually gets three paragraphs in a history book, but I think Joe's book will provide people with a whole new way to consider the strike and its effects," Powers says. "That's the kind of historian Joe is -- he doesn't want rote memorization from students, he wants a deep understanding of history's significance."
Tracking labor and working conditions is not just a research area for McCartin. It's a devotion borne from his upbringing in the blue-collar city of Troy, N.Y.
"I grew up in a very highly Catholic world, and I think it was a combination of that and my working class community that taught me the value of social justice teaching," he says. "My parents held strong values about fairness, and they wanted me to do something with my life that was more than just a successful career."
The professor and
Kathleen Maas Weigert, executive director of the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service, collaborate frequently, including during McCartin's time as a fellow at the center. The professor also has been a speaker for two years during Worker Justice D.C., an alternative spring break run through the center.
"I know well his passion and intellectual acumen," Maas Weigert says. "Joe has a vision of what's important in labor and social justice, and finds ways to connect Georgetown's students, faculty and staff to those issues."
McCartin says his students respond to the challenges of creating fair working conditions in part because of the Catholic Jesuit values stressed at Georgetown.
"Our students are the kind of students who can be drawn to and find appeal in the work we're doing," McCartin says. "The purpose of a Jesuit education is to create women and men for others."
