The role of employers in split labor markets: An event-structure analysis of racial conflict and AFL organizing, 1917-1919

This article focuses on employers' responses to AFL organizing efforts in the meatpacking industry in Chicago and the steel industry in Gary, Indiana, between 1917 and 1919. First, I develop a typology of split labor markets that incorporates the insights of the neo-Marxist divide-and-rule perspective. Second, I use event-structure analysis (ESA) to systematically examine causal sequences in the Chicago and Gary union campaigns. The analyses suggest that (I) both capitalist and state actors meditate conflicts between racial groups in the labor market and that (2) employers actively contribute to racial antagonism when emergent interracial coalitions threaten to increase labor costs and polarize class struggle. The revised split labor market theory explains how the features of industrial labor markets affect the strategies of employers as well as majority and minority workers.