Condensed Capitalism: Campbell Soup and the Pursuit of Cheap Production in the Twentieth Century by Daniel Sidorick (review)

In Condensed Capitalism, Daniel Sidorick confirms the validity of the old saw, "There's nothing new under the sun." Conventional wisdom among labor historians mark the 1970s as the decade during which the workplace social contract of economic security for labor, allegedly forged in the aftermath of World War II, was dissolved under the impact of a corporate-driven search for cheap production through outsourcing, work intensification, deindustrialization, and globalization—economic policies that remain in force today. Yet, as Sidorick observes in his excellent study of the Campbell Soup Company, the goal of cheap production lay at the core of management philosophy and labor relations at Campbell from the company's founding in Camden, New Jersey, in 1869. A half century later, John T. Dorrance, the inventor of condensed soup, introduced the "Campbell way," scientific management policies whose goal was to lower costs by speeding up labor and controlling production, a strategy that persisted until the soup company's shutdown in Camden in 1990. Yet Sidorick's explanation of the company's managerial labor policy accounts for only one part of what he accomplishes in this comprehensive account. Just as important for Sidorick are the unceasing efforts of Campbell workers to gain some control over their working lives and livelihoods, highlighted by their organizing of a militant union in 1940. Engaging in what Sidorick characterizes as "decades-long trench warfare," production workers persistently pushed back against Campbell's relentless pursuit of cheap labor (2-3).

Most Americans are familiar with the Campbell Soup Company's brand, the red-and-white cans of a business enterprise that has achieved annual revenues exceeding seven billion dollars. Dorrance, a chemist and the nephew of the company's president, came to Campbell in 1897 and quickly made condensing, that is, removing about half of the water from the can of soup, commercially viable. By the time the company introduced the "Campbell's Kids," in 1904, Campbell was selling sixteen million cans of soup annually. In 1927, Dorrance, now president of the company, introduced the Bedaux system, a more structured variant of scientific management initiated in England by Charles Bedaux. Based on the "B unit," the Bedaux system organized work to the fraction of a minute. Through the rest of the twentieth century, increased output and lower unit costs of production were achieved at Campbell through an aggressive mechanization of work processes; the segmentation of the workforce into seasonal and permanent sectors, as well as by gender and by race; a vicious antiunionism that was allied to a virulent anticommunism during and after the McCarthy era; and, later in the century, the movement of production to low-cost rural sites.

The organized protests of Campbell workers during the 1930s against pay cuts and the Bedaux system, although initially unsuccessful, led to the signing in 1940 of the workers' first union contract. During the next decade, as members of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), a left-wing industrial social-justice union, rank-and-file activists at Campbell built Local 80 into a militant and democratic union. Fighting against Campbell's labor management strategy of "divide and rule," Local 80 made unity and antidiscrimination cardinal union principles and continuously challenged the wage gap between female and male workers as well as between permanent and contingent employees. In the post-World War II era, Campbell intensified its efforts to produce its products as cheaply as possible by "scientifically" redesigning the labor process through automation. The company also announced plans to build new plants every five years in rural areas where there would be no union and labor would be cheap. In 1968, workers at Campbell responded by engaging in a "unity strike" with Campbell unions in other cities. They sought to achieve through coordinate bargaining a master contract that would have a common...