Blogs

Thirty years ago, Poland captured the world’s attention when the workers of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk went on strike and launched a national rebellion. Solidarność, the free trade union born during the strike, developed into a social movement that established a democratic government in Poland and eventually led to the end of the Cold War in Eastern Europe. The Reuther Library’s latest exhibit, "Solidarność: Poland’s Struggle for Freedom, 1980-1990," provides an historical account of Solidarność from the events leading up to the first strike in 1980 through the 1989 election in Poland.  read more »

Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen shortly after being attacked by Ford Service men during the “Battle of the Overpass.” The men were beaten for distributing United Auto Workers leaflets outside of the Ford Rouge Plant, Dearborn, Michigan, 23 May 1937.

The 2010 North American Labor History Conference will top off this year’s event with a viewing of the latest cut of the new documentary Brothers on the Line on Saturday, October 23 at 11:00 AM.

The documentary, which relies heavily on the collections of the Walter P. Reuther Library, looks at the lives of the Reuther Brothers, Walter, Victor, and Roy, and their struggles to organize the United Auto Workers  read more »

The 32nd annual North American Labor History Conference (NALHC) will take place October 21-23, 2010 on the campus of Wayne State University. In 1979, a committee representing Wayne State's History Department, the Walter P. Reuther Library, and other parts of the University formed to address the growth of labor history as a field of scholarship. The result was the first NALHC in October 1979.  read more »

Like other organizations, labor unions and the archives that house their material operate in and are shaped by history. That history is largely informed by the records that labor archives receive from labor unions, the “symbiotic relationship” between the two, as Michael Nash reminds us, and the extent to which they are made available to and used by researchers. This is the message found within How to Keep Union Records. Edited by Michael Nash with selections by a cadre of labor archivists, the book is intended as much for labor archivists requiring guidance as it is for unions seeking ways to manage their records and ensure that their legacy lives into the future.  read more »