- "Joseph McCartin," Georgetown University
- Who's Who in America. 59th ed. New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who's Who, 2004. ISBN 0-8379-6982-4
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
Joseph A. McCartin | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 12, 1959 Chelsea, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Academic background | |
| Education | College of the Holy Cross (BA) Binghamton University (MA, PhD) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Labor history |
| Institutions | University of Rhode Island State University of New York at Geneseo Georgetown University |
Joseph A. McCartin (born May 12, 1959) is a professor of history at Georgetown University whose research focuses on labor unions in the United States. He also serves as the executive director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
McCartin was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1959. He is the son of Joseph and Marybeth McCartin. Joseph McCartin is of Irish descent, and resided in Troy, New York, as a child. In 1981, McCartin received his bachelor's degree in history from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1985, he received a master's degree from Binghamton University, where he would also complete his Doctor of Philosophy in 1990.
From 1990 to 1992, he was a lecturer at the University of Rhode Island. In 1992, he was appointed an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Geneseo. In 1998 he was promoted to associate professor, and in 1999, McCartin took a position at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he is now a professor and the executive director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
His brother is noted Catholic historian James McCartin.
McCartin is a historical institutionalist whose research focuses on the history of labor unions in the United States during the 20th century. McCartin is a strong advocate of industrial democracy, an economic arrangement in which workers share in the management of the workplace. He has challenged many of the labor movement's closely held beliefs, including the idea that the PATCO air traffic controllers' strike of 1981 began, rather than culminated, an attack on labor rights in the United States.[1] According to the review by Braham Dabscheck in a leading British scholarly journal, his Collision Course;[2]
provides a compelling and thorough account of the background to this dispute, its machinations and broader implications. It is a tour-de-force, an exemplary work of scholarship....he interviewed more than 100 people involved in the dispute....[He] hunted down official sources and documents as well as the records and memorabilia of PATCO and its members and supporters in various facilities across the nation. His narrative includes blow-by-blow accounts of meetings and negotiation sessions held, whether they are within PATCO, the FAA and the White House or across the bargaining table.
McCartin's 1997 book, Labor’s Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912-21, won the 1999 Philip Taft Labor History Book Award for the best book on labor history.
McCartin's article, " 'Fire the Hell Out of Them': Sanitation Workers' Struggles and the Normalization of the Striker Replacement Strategy in the 1970s", won the Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas prize as the best article on labor history published in 2005.
McCartin was named a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1993 and again in 2002. In 2003, he was named a Charles Warren Fellow at Harvard University.
