Meats, Markets, and Mergers is an oral history research project focusing on work experience and unionization among grocery store clerks and retail meat cutters in southern Wisconsin since the 1930s. Both the nature of food store work and the course of unionization among retail meat cutters and grocery clerks in these years were greatly affected by sweeping changes in the retail food industry. Between 1930 and 1980, the typical retail food outlet was transformed from a neighborhood grocery store and meat market, usually an independently-owned store in which clerks filled customer orders item-by-item, into a giant self-service supermarket located in a shopping center and most often part of a corporate chain or retail or wholesale buying cooperative. New products and marketing methods, together with management strategies and automated processes aimed at increasing “efficiency” and productivity, all fundamentally changed the nature of food store work. Yet these innovations also enabled retail unions to become larger and stronger, and to win substantial increases in wages and benefits for their members.
The objective of this project was to shed new light on these and related subjects. The primary goal was to produce “a volume of interpretive oral histories” of southern Wisconsin food store workers “together with a lengthy introductory essay placing these workers, unions, and interviews in a historical context.” To attain these ends, James A. Cavanaugh and Michael A. Gordon (1) conducted extensive primary and secondary research on the history of retail food stores and retail unions (the Retail Clerks International Union and the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America--both now merged into the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union); (2) identified and pre-interviewed potential interviewees; (3) conducted twenty interviews with long-time food store employees, former store owners and managers, and union officials; and (4) abstracted, transcribed, and edited the interviews. The goal of producing a published volume was not accomplished.
The project began on May 1, 1981. Work continued through 1982.
