Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits: A Century of Building Trades History - Paperback

by Grace Palladino (Author)

Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits follows the history of the Building and Construction Trades Department from the emergence of building trades councils in the age of the skyscraper; through treacherous fights over jurisdiction as new building materials and methods of work evolved; and through numerous Department campaigns to improve safety standards, work with contractors to promote unionized construction, and forge a sense of industrial unity among its fifteen (and at times nineteen) autonomous and highly diverse affiliates. Arranged chronologically, Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits is based on archival research in Department, AFL-CIO, and U.S. government records as well as numerous union journals, the local and national press, and interviews with former Department officers.

Author Biography

Grace Palladino is the Codirector of The Samuel Gompers Papers at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the author of Teenagers: An American History; Dreams of Dignity, Workers of Vision: A History of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; and Another Civil War: Labor, Capital, and the State in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania.