A.&L. Tirocchi Dressmakers Project
Business records, correspondence and more from the dressmakers shop located in Providence, RI.
America at Work/America at Leisure
Collection of 150 digitized films dating from 1894-1915 depicting work and leisure activities.
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project 1936-1940
This collection of life histories consists of approximately 2,900 documents, compiled and transcribed by more than 300 writers from 24 states, working on the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers’ Project, a New Deal jobs program that was part of the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936 to 1940. Typically 2,000-15,000 words in length, the documents vary in form from narratives to dialogues to reports to case histories. They chronicle vivid life stories of Americans who lived at the turn of the century and include tales of meeting Billy the Kid, surviving the 1871 Chicago fire, pioneer journeys out West, grueling factory work, and the immigrant experience.
Eastern Air Lines Digital Collection
Collection "brings together content that represents different aspects of Eastern's legendary history: labor, management, public relations, mediation, corporate culture, marketing, media coverage, and operations.
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRASER)
FRASER is a digital library of U.S. economic, financial, and banking history — particularly the history of the Federal Reserve System. FRASER provides access to data and policy documents from the Federal Reserve System and other institutions, as well as papers from labor officials, reports on labor conditions in other countries, and reports on various industries.
Henry J. Kaiser Pictorial Collection, 1941-1946
More than 900 photos documenting the work of the Kaiser company.
The Westinghouse Works Collection contains 21 actuality films showing various views of Westinghouse companies. Most prominently featured are the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, and the Westinghouse Machine Company. The films were intended to showcase the company's operations. Exterior and interior shots of the factories are shown along with scenes of male and female workers performing their duties at the plants.
Business and Labor History: Primary Sources at the Library of Congress
The Manuscript Division holds the nation's largest corpus of the papers of chief justices and associate justices, as well as those of many judges of the lower federal courts who played leading roles in American life. Included also in the Division's collections are the papers of members of Congress, U.S. attorneys general, several solicitors general, appeals court judges, and lawyers whose papers provide insights into major cases that affected the course of labor history. Files regarding key court cases bearing upon the legal position of workers and unions often can be found in the relevant judicial papers.
The Joseph A. Labadie Collection is one of the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive collections of its kind, with materials on anarchism, anti-colonialist movements, antiwar and pacifist movements, atheism and free thought, civil liberties and civil rights, ecology, labor and workers’ rights, feminism, LGBTQ movements, prisons and prisoners, the New Left, the Spanish Civil War, and youth and student protest.
Digital Collections:
Labor, Work, & Industry Collection
Brings together items from various collections at the Special Collections & Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst that fit into the overarching theme of Labor, Work, and Industry.
Highlights from the collection include:
Mexican Labor & World War II: The Bracero Program
Beginning in World War II, the Bracero Program brought Mexican laborers to the United States to remedy wartime production shortages. The program (which derived its name from the Spanish word for a manual laborer, “bracero”) continued until 1964, with braceros working mainly in agricultural areas in the Southwest and on the West Coast. Braceros worked long hours for low wages in difficult jobs that separated them from their families. In the United States, they also faced discrimination and became the subject of national labor debates. Get new insight into the Bracero Program and its workers through this collection of era photographs, documents, and oral history interviews.
Organizing Los Angeles Workers, 1980-Present
In the last two decades of the 20th century, labor unions in Los Angeles defied a national trend of decline for the labor movement. Led by a new generation of leaders who drew inspiration from social movements of the 1960s, the L.A. labor movement grew by organizing immigrant, Latino, and African American workers in the service economy. In a series of high profile strikes, unions took on the power of transnational corporations and, more often than not, they won. Buoyed by these victories, the L.A. County Federation of Labor then helped to reshape electoral politics in California by mobilizing working-class voters. Items in this collection are drawn from the records of the United Service Workers West/SEIU (Justice for Janitors), the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), UNITE HERE Local 11, and the records of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.
Patriotic Labor: America during World War I
The Great War would bring the United States out of isolationism and onto the world stage. It would also change life on the American home front forever. A centralized government took control of American life in an unprecedented fashion by instating a mandatory military draft, controlling industries, initiating food and ration restrictions, and launching elaborate campaigns to encourage patriotism.
One of the most important, if temporary, changes brought by the war at home came from the stifled flow of labor, as men were pulled away by the draft and immigration slowed. The need for American labor provided second-class citizens, such as women and African Americans, a brief opportunity for better jobs. This glimpse would help foment in them a desire for more and equal opportunities after they were pulled away once more at war’s end.
Workers, Labor Unions, and the American Left in the 20th Century: Federal Records
A wide range of primary source collections documenting the American workers and labor unions in the 20th century, with a special emphasis on the interaction between workers and the U.S. federal government.
Workers, Labor, and Race: Records of the Fair Employment Practices Committee, 1941-1946
Created by Executive Order in 1941, the Fair Employment Practices Committee dealt with the needs of minority workers and had jurisdiction over complaints against the federal government, against employers and labor unions under contract with the federal government, and against employers and unions engaged in war production. Records of the Fair Employment Practices Committee consists of correspondence, case records, field reports from FEPC regional offices, minutes of FEPC meetings, internal studies, memoranda, and individual worker’s records.
This site is the most comprehensive bibliography of information, documents and links of U.S. labor history sites on the internet .It was developed by labor historian Rosemary Feurer for the Labor and Working Class History Association.
Outside of the United States:
The 'Sweated Trades': Working life in the early 20th Century
British document illustrating working life in the first quarter of the 20th century.
Children in Progressive-Era America
Reformers during the Progressive Era—a period of social activism and political reform across the United States between the 1890s and 1920s—took a great interest in child welfare. Through organizations and legislation, they sought to define what a happy and healthy childhood should be in the modern age. Immersion in nature was central to what the Progressives prescribed, and children’s organizations and camps offered a suitable combination of supervision and open spaces.
More than 4000 photographs depicting child labor in the first part of the 20th century.
National Child Labor Committee Collection
Collection of more than 5000 photographs by Lewis Hine documenting the working and living conditions of children in the U.S. between 1908-1921.
Women at Work during World War II: Rosie the Riveter and the Women's Army Corps
Women at Work during World War II consists of two major sets of records documenting the experience of American women during World War II: Records of the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor, and Correspondence of the Director of the Women's Army Corps. Records of the Women's Bureau consist of two major series. The first series documents the role of the Women's Bureau as an investigative agency, as a clearinghouse for proposed changes in working conditions, and as a source of public information and education. Items in this first series include reports of the bureau director to the secretary of labor, records of bureau-sponsored conferences, and speeches and articles by women officials of the bureau. The second series of Women's Bureau records consists of a detailed study on the treatment of women by unions in several midwestern industrial centers, complete with extensive background interviews and other research materials; community studies conducted nationwide on the influx of women to industrial centers during the war; and subject files and correspondence on women's work in war industries, including issues like equal pay and child care. The Correspondence of the Director of the Women's Army Corps dates from 1942–1946 and documents the women who joined and served in the Women's Army Corps (WAC, known as the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps [WAAC] from May 1942 until July 1943) during World War II. Every topic of importance to the WAC is covered in the correspondence, with an emphasis on issues such as recruiting, public support for the WAC, personnel matters like discipline and conduct, and race.
Digital collection of materials illustrating the history of women in medicine.
Collection of manuscripts, books, and photographs.
Tradeswomen Archives Project Collection
"This collection includes photographs and documents from the Tradeswomen Archives Project, which helps document the growth of the number of women working in construction and other non-traditional fields in Southern California, nationally, and around the world." Documents primarily from the 1990s and 2000s.