World War I transformed shop stewards from union appointees into rank-and-file leaders

Evidence

Prior to 1914 the elected shop stewards were few, had limited representative tasks and belonged mainly to skilled organizations. With the war a new type of steward, unoffi cial (no longer appointed by trade unions, but chosen by groups of workers in each establishment) and with considerably wider powers, took the leadership in every industrial dispute within the trade. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1673

Categorization

• XREF: This rank-and-file steward innovation parallels the shop-floor militancy in Milgrom’s account of how institutions form bottom-up, and prefigures modern workplace democracy debates. — connects to: Rank-and-file shop committees turned strikes into organs of workers’ control — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 475; Settlement houses mainly transformed their wealthy service givers into national leaders — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1418