| Description |
1 online resource (257 pages) : illustrations |
|
text file PDF |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
Introduction : addicted : nicotine and working-class history -- Reformers, employers, and the dangers of working-class smoking -- Smoking bans and shop floor resistance during the early twentieth century -- Workers, management, and the right to smoke during World War II -- Thank you for not smoking : anti-smoking politics in postwar workplaces -- "Exiled smoking" and the making of smoke-free workplaces -- Organized labor and the problem of "smokers' rights" -- Conclusion : quitting smoking and the endurance of nicotine. |
| Summary |
In Clearing the Air, Gregory Wood examines smoking's importance to the social and cultural history of working people in the twentieth-century United States. Now that most workplaces in the United States are smoke-free, it may be difficult to imagine the influence that nicotine addiction once had on the politics of worker resistance, workplace management, occupational health, vice, moral reform, grassroots activism, and the labor movement. The experiences, social relations, demands, and disputes that accompanied smoking in the workplace in turn shaped the histories of antismoking politics and tobacco control.The steady expansion of cigarette smoking among men, women, and children during the first half of the twentieth century brought working people into sustained conflict with managers’ demands for diligent attention to labor processes and work rules. Addiction to nicotine led smokers to resist and challenge policies that coldly stood between them and the cigarettes they craved. Wood argues that workers’ varying abilities to smoke on the job stemmed from the success or failure of sustained opposition to employer policies that restricted or banned smoking. During World War II, workers in defense industries, for example, struck against workplace smoking bans. By the 1970s, opponents of smoking in workplaces began to organize, and changing medical knowledge and dwindling union power contributed further to the downfall of workplace smoking. The demise of the ability to smoke on the job over the past four decades serves as an important indicator of how the power of workers’ influence in labor-management relations has dwindled over the same period. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Language |
In English. |
| Subject |
Smoking in the workplace -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
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Smoking in the workplace. |
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United States. |
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History. |
| Chronological Term |
20th century |
| Subject |
Antismoking movement -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
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Antismoking movement. |
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Smoking -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
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Smoking -- Social aspects. |
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Smoking. |
| Chronological Term |
1900-1999 |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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History.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Wood, Gregory, 1973- Clearing the air. Ithaca : ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2016 9781501704826 (DLC) 2016012389 (OCoLC)944957855 |
| ISBN |
9781501706349 (electronic book) |
|
1501706349 (electronic book) |
|
9781501704826 |
|
1501704826 |
| Standard No. |
10.7591/9781501706349 |
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