Steelworker Alley - (Ilr Press Books) by Robert Bruno (Paperback)

About the Book

For retired steelworkers in Youngstown, Ohio, the label "working class" fits comfortably. Questioning the widely held view that laborers in postwar America have adopted middle-class values, Robert Bruno shows that in this community a blue-collar...

Book Synopsis

For retired steelworkers in Youngstown, Ohio, the label "working class" fits comfortably. Questioning the widely held view that laborers in postwar America have adopted middle-class values, Robert Bruno shows that in this community a blue-collar identity has provided a positive focus for many residents.The son of a Youngstown steelworker, Bruno returned to his hometown seeking to understand the formation of his own working-class consciousness and the place of labor in the larger capitalist society. Drawing on interviews with dozens of former steelworkers and on research in local archives, Bruno explores the culture of the community, including such subjects as relations among co-workers, class antagonism, and attitudes toward authority. He describes how, because workers are often neighbors, the workplace takes on a feeling of neighborhood. He also demonstrates that to understand class consciousness one must look beyond the workplace, in this instance from Youngstown's front porches to its bowling alleys and voting booths. Written with a deeply personal approach, Steelworker Alley is a richly detailed look at workers which reveals the continuing strength of class relationships in America.

Review Quotes

Steelworker Alley is a compassionate book based on extensive research chronicling the lives and identities of men who had been steelworkers. Bruno offers a significant contribution to the debate on class consciousness by examining how the similarity of their lives on the job, at home and in their neighborhoods created the basis for a shred sense of identity for steelworkers.... This analytical account... raises troubling concerns regarding the options people have to provide for their families in a economic system so heavily weighed against them.

--June Corman "Canadian Journal of Sociology"

Steelworker Alley suggests that the recent books on working-class illiberalism do not tell the whole story.

--Judith Stein, Graduate School and City College of the City University of New York "Industrial and Labor Relations Review"

Bruno has provided a very compelling discussion of how class works in Youngstown.... Steelworker Alley is an important contribution to new working-class studies. Not only is it worker-centered, but it attempts to deal with the contradictory expressions of class in America. The book should be of interest to labour historians and educators, social scientists, and cultural geographers.

--John Russo, Youngstown State University "Left History"

For this well-written ethnography, Bruno interviewed 75 retirees, wives and other residents.... Readers see everyday working-class life.... Recommended for classes in stratification, social history, and work.

-- "Choice"

In marvellously well written passages, Bruno is able to really evoke a feeling for the working and home lives of his interviewees.... He builds up a picture of life experience that is completely at odds with any notion of the disappearance of the working class.

--Diane Fieldes "The Journal of Industrial Relations"

This book combines the immediacy of personal recollection with scholarly analysis to describe working-class life.

-- "Library Journal"

About the Author

Robert Bruno is Assistant Professor in the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois.