Greek immigrants in the fur manufacturing industry in New York City, 1887 to 1943: Class and ethnicity at the workplace.
Item
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Title
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Greek immigrants in the fur manufacturing industry in New York City, 1887 to 1943: Class and ethnicity at the workplace.
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Identifier
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AAI9130332
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identifier
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9130332
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Creator
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Karvonides Nkosi, Joanna Electra.
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Contributor
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Eric Foner
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Date
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1991
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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History, United States | Economics, Labor | Sociology, Industrial and Labor Relations | Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
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Abstract
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This dissertation has examined Greek immigrant penetration of and concentration in both the ownership and the labor force of the fur manufacturing industry during the first half of this century. It has focused on: (1) the geographic and socio-economic background of Greek American immigrant furriers; (2) the economic factors which made fur manufacturing a business and employment opportunity for Greek immigrants; (3) how "cultural baggage," kinship networks and bonds, and the availability of coethnic labor facilitated business opportunities for immigrant entrepreneurs; (4) the role of ethnicity in shaping the relationships between coethnic employers and workers; and (5) how ethnicity shaped class solidarity among the workers.;The study found that the highly competitive economic structure of fur manufacturing facilitated immigrant enterprise in the business. The first Greeks in the industry had emigrated from Kastoria, already skilled in certain aspects of furriery. They had been able to penetrate the industry as a tightly knit group with strong communal bonds and networks and with the requisite technical skills and business experience needed to carve a niche for themselves. Their coethnic community provided a pool of cheap labor through which to survive the industry's extremely competitive conditions.;So long as the workers shared their employers' regional origins and could aspire to become businessmen, tensions between them could be resolved informally within the bounds of the community. Following the expansion of fur manufacturing during and after the First World War, the composition of the labor force in Greek-owned businesses broadened to include women and coethnics from diverse regional backgrounds whose conditions of employment and prospects for the future had changed. The ethnic community was no longer able to mediate tensions. Class considerations surfaced and the workers were open to collective action against employers in concert with other workers who shared the problems they faced at the workplace. Ethnic sentiment and allegiance also influenced the process of class unity among Greek fur workers. But ethnicity did not supplant class solidarity. Instead it became a medium through which ethnic workers could be effectively organized into a working class organization.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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History
