"The 2005 and 1936 "labor ruptures" from the House of Labor occurred under parallel conditions that expressed and reaffirmed the model of universalistic industrial unionism in the U.S. This essay extracts from these parallels a sociological analysis of the recurring configuration of organizational, social, demographic, and economic conditions that have generated the fractious rebirthing of universalistic industrial unionism in the modern U.S. labor movement. The origins of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Congress of Industrial Organizations, and Change to Win illustrate this rebirthing. The recurring configuration of rebirthing conditions includes high rates of immigration, seismic restructuring of the national economy, the creation of a vulnerable and marginalized segment of the national labor force, heightened identity politics, sharpening income inequality, and a bureaucratized and stalled labor movement struggling to revitalize itself. Under these conditions, both labor ruptures expressed universalistic industrial unionism as a strategy for organizing the most marginalized groups of workers."

Support: Paper