Preserving the Historical Record of American Labor: Union-Library Archival Services Partnerships, Recent Trends, and Future Prospects

THEARCHIVAL RECORDS OF American labor institutions are a rich resource for the studies of American history, society, and culture. Not only can a researcher find evidence for the institutional history of unions by examining these records, but a whole array of other research topics come into play: strikes and their effects on communities and businesses, the effects of technology on employment and work processes, race and gender issues, and workers’ culture, to name a few. This article briefly reviews endeavors by academic research institutions to capture and preserve this important historical resource, focusing on a recent project to assess the state of labor archives efforts and on the challenges facing union officials and labor archivists if a comprehensive documentation of American workers and their unions is to be achieved. A BRIEF HISTORY OF LABOR EFFORTS ARCHIVES Efforts to document the American labor movement by archivists, librarians, and scholars date back to the early part of the twentieth century with the work of Richard T. Ely and John R. Commons, founders of the “Wisconsin School” of labor history. Through the American Bureau of Industrial Research, and in cooperation with the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Ely and Commons gathered data from a wide range of sources for their classic studies of American industrial society and organized labor. That data ultimately became available to other researchers to examine and use.l Other data-gathering efforts followed Ely and Commons: the American Labor Year Book (begun in 1916)and labor-collecting by the Rand School for Social Science and the Tamiment Library. In the 1940s,the U.S.National Archives began to take an active interest in fostering the preservation of Thomas James Connors, 250 8* St., SE, Washington, D.C. 20003 LIBRARYTRENDS, Vol. 51, No. 1, Summer 2002, pp. 85-100 02002 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois 86 LIBRARY TRENDS/SUMMER 2002 labor union records, and the Labor-Management Documentation Center (now known as the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation) at Cornell commenced its collecting activity. The establishment of this research facility represents the first instance of labor unions agreeing to work in partnership with an academic institution to preserve union records to support labor history. Perhaps the signal event that launched a widespread effort to locate and collect American union records was the establishment of the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University in Detroit. Founded in 1960 and housed in the Walter Reuther Library since 1975, the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs has collected and made available the records of national and international unions such as the United Auto Workers, the American Federation of Teachers, the Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Air Line Pilots Association, the United Farm Workers, and others. The Reuther Library also collects the records of labor-support organizations, state and regional labor councils, and the papers of labor activists. Wayne State’s collecting efforts ushered in an era of vigorous union records-gathering activities by university special collections departments and state historical societies such as the Pennsylvania State University, the University of Connecticut, California State University at Northridge, the University of Texas at Arlington, the University of Maryland, Rutgers University, and the Ohio Historical Society. Georgia State University established the Southern Labor Archives in 1969, and in 1977 the Robert F. Wagner Archives at New York University was established. Encouraged by the research needs of social and “new” labor historians, labor archives enjoyed a period of reasonable financial support and strong scholarly interest. But even as the George Meany Memorial Archives was being established by the AFGCIO in 1980 and new regional efforts were taking shape at California State University at Northridge, San Francisco State University, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Connecticut, the activism of the American labor archives effort seemed to peak. Labor archivists and other interested parties meeting at the George Meany Center for Labor Studies, Silver Spring, Maryland, in November 1980, assessed the situation and made several recommendations. Noting that repositories were unable to keep up the collecting pace of the 1960s and 1970s, that huge backlogs of unprocessed records had accumulated, and that the costs of processing had risen, they suggested that unions develop their own in-house archives, with the newly established AFL-CIO archives program offering consulting services in archives and records management. They also called for the establishment of a clearinghouse of information on the location and extent of holdings in the many repositories holding labor materials. CONNORS/PRESERVING THE HISTORICAL RECORD 87 Through the 1980s and into the 199Os, steps were taken to implement these suggestions. Labor History published a special issue on labor archives in the U.S. in 1982 (which was updated and published in book form in 1992). The George Meany Center for Labor Studies has periodically offered a course in records management for local unions and has produced a records-management manual for distribution to local unions (Bernhardt, 1992). The Labor Archives Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists, composed of archivists from repositories with strong labor collections or agencies dealing in labor-related records, has sustained a discussion of labor archives issues since 1985. It was from the Labor Archives Roundtable that the Labor Archives Project, a recent effort to assess the work of labor archivists in the context of a changing labor movement, emerged. In 1997, the Labor Archives Project pulled together a large body of data relating to unions and organizational change, the current holdings of institutions that collect labor materials, and research trends. THELABORARCHIVES PROJECT, 1995-97: PROJECTOVERVIEW AND RECOMMENDATIONS In 1995 a group of ten archivists responsible for union collections held by academic institutions commenced a discussion on what effect the changes in the American labor movement-in other words, the new AFL CIO leadership, a spate of mergers, union institutional reorganizations, and increasing labor militancy and aggressive organizing campaigns-would have on the documentary record created by unions. This discussion led to research efforts into how unions were actually experiencing organizational changes, and how this was affecting established agreements between unions and repositories. In 1997, archivists representing five repositories holding substantial labor materials applied for and were awarded a Bentley Library Fellowship for the Study of Modern Archives Administration to assess the labor archives scene in light of the changing face of the American labor movement.2 In July 1997, Debra Bernhardt (Wagner Labor Archives, New York University), Les Hough (Walter Reuther Library, Wayne State University), Lee Sayrs (George Meany Memorial Archives), Julia Marks Young (Southern Labor Archives, Georga State University), and the author gathered in Ann Arbor to review preassigned areas of research and to develop an action plan for American labor archives. The group summarized its findings as follows: A detailed organizational analysis of American trade unions, examining typical union structure, administrative functions and the extent of current organizational change, indicates that despite historical stability, many unions are entering a period of organizational transformation. The growing merger movement among AFL-CIO affiliates, the increas88 LIBRARY TRENDS/SUMMER 2 0 0 2 ing number of unions undergoing internal reorganization, and expanding efforts in organizing and community outreach will have serious consequences for union record-keeping practices and thus the records produced. Most unions engage in some form of records management. Approximately thirty of the seventy-eight AFL-CIO affiliates have in-house archives programs or agreements for archival services with outside repositories. The increased use of personal computers and the decline of central filing systems in union offices, as well as the overall fragility of records at the district and local levels, however, make it urgent that unions review and upgrade record keeping practices to ensure that crucial historical documentation from these organizational levels and entities is not lost. With national holdings of more than 130,000linear feet, labor archives serve steadily increasing numbers of researchers. Students and academic faculty continue to be the most reliable users, with union administrative staff comprising a significantly growing user group. Unions are rightly proud of their rich cultural and historical legacies. Outreach programs by archives to unions will help guarantee that union culture and history are used to benefit their creators. Based on the above findings, the following recommendations were derived: