“Peace and Full Employment”: Labor Union Economic Conversion in the 1970s

My presentation underscores the tension that arose between the Cold War military industrial complex and the unions that relied on it for employment. The United Auto Workers and the International Association of machinist both organized hundreds of thousands of defense workers primarily, but not exclusively, through the aerospace sector. Leaders in both unions came to regret their relationship with defense contractors and conducted campaigns to convert their workers’ jobs from defense to civilian public works like transportation, healthcare, and alternative energies in the 1970s. These campaigns failed to affect large scale policy, but they demonstrate the contingencies in economic planning during the "pivotal decade" as well as an unappreciated source of dynamism within the labor movement.