Political Use of the United States Armed Forces, 1946-1976

1984 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Kaplan ◽  
Barry Blechman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Armed Forces

“The Army is a Service, Not a Job”: Unionization, Employment, and the Meaning of Military Service in the Late-Twentieth Century United States

2011 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Jennifer Mittelstadt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Military Personnel ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
American Federation ◽  
United States Armed Forces ◽  
Public Unions ◽  
Institutional Benefits

AbstractThis article tells the story of an often-forgotten attempt to unionize the United States armed forces in the 1970s. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), an AFL-CIO-affiliated union representing federal employees, voted to allow military personnel to join its union in 1976. Military personnel proved far more open to the bid than expected. Nursing grievances from threatened congressional cuts to their institutional benefits, between one-third and one-half welcomed the union. Though a worried Congress, a powerful military leadership, and skeptical public opinion quashed unionization within the year, the brief episode nevertheless left an influential legacy. Coming just after the difficult transition from the draft to the volunteer force, the union bid forced military leaders, soldiers, and supporters in Congress to defend both military service and military benefits from encroachments of an “occupational” model symbolized by unionization. Their successful distinction between military service and employment elevated the former as uniquely honorable and arduous—and thus deserving of unwavering congressional support. Public unions, the embodiment of the occupational threat to military service, emerged bruised by the comparisons to vaunted military service and endured a decades-long decline in membership and congressional protection.

165 Broadway – A crucial node in American Structural Linguistics

1991 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Hall
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
United States Armed Forces ◽  
Structural Linguistics ◽  
Second World

Summary During the Second World War, the United States Armed Forces Institute (USAFI) provided language teaching manuals and dictionaries for military and civilian use. From 1 July 1943 through 30 June 1945, this work was concentrated at an office which was located at 165 Broadway, New York City, and which was headed by a group of young, vigorous, and well trained linguists. The author provides a list of the personnel of this group and describes their activities and their relations with other developments in linguistics at that time and thereafter. Emphasis is placed on the crucial rôle of the ‘165 Broadway’ group in the application of structural linguistic analysis to the teaching of foreign languages in the United States in following decades.

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