The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System

A Worker-based Model for Community Investment

Glenn Beamer

The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System: A Worker-based Model for Community Investment articulates a new model for economic security based upon steelworkers’ pension provisions and labor politics after World War II. Labor’s collective bargaining agreements created interdependent commitments that sustained jobs and stabilized communities. The evidence in The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System includes an empirical analysis of United States steel towns and case studies of Weirton, West Virginia, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania. By understanding the politics that bound firms and workers together and adapting these commitments to the post-industrial economy, The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System offers a new means by which communities can provide workers security and economic growth. This new model, the Guaranteed Pension and Community Investment plan, provide workers with lifetime retirement annuities and communities with reliable investment capital.

University Press Copublishing Division / Lehigh University Press

Pages: 160 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61146-188-6 • Hardback • May 2016 • $92.00 • (£71.00)

978-1-61146-189-3 • eBook • May 2016 • $82.50 • (£63.00)

Subjects: Political Science / Labor & Industrial Relations, History / United States / 20th Century, Political Science / Public Policy / Economic Policy

The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System

A Worker-based Model for Community Investment

Hardback

eBook

Summary

The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System: A Worker-based Model for Community Investment articulates a new model for economic security based upon steelworkers’ pension provisions and labor politics after World War II. Labor’s collective bargaining agreements created interdependent commitments that sustained jobs and stabilized communities. The evidence in The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System includes an empirical analysis of United States steel towns and case studies of Weirton, West Virginia, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania. By understanding the politics that bound firms and workers together and adapting these commitments to the post-industrial economy, The Steelworkers' Retirement Security System offers a new means by which communities can provide workers security and economic growth. This new model, the Guaranteed Pension and Community Investment plan, provide workers with lifetime retirement annuities and communities with reliable investment capital.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Lehigh University Press

Pages: 160 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61146-188-6 • Hardback • May 2016 • $92.00 • (£71.00)

978-1-61146-189-3 • eBook • May 2016 • $82.50 • (£63.00)

Subjects: Political Science / Labor & Industrial Relations, History / United States / 20th Century, Political Science / Public Policy / Economic Policy

Author

Glenn Beamer is an associate professor in the Department of Health Administration & Interprofessional Education at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Steelworkers’ Model
3. The Employee Purchase of Weirton Steel
4. Resurgence & Sustenance in Bethlehem & Johnstown
5. A Worker-based Model for Retirement Security
6. A Worker-based Model for Community Investment
7. Connecting to the Public Sector: “Ford to City: Drop Dead”
8. Politics from the Ground Up
9. Selected Bibliography

Reviews

In this important book, Glenn Beamer explains exactly how labor built strong communities in the past—and how it might do so again in the future. Cities of Steel is forcefully written, meticulously researched and required reading for anyone concerned about America's future.
— James A. Morone, John Hazen White Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, Brown University