B. J. Widick

Branko John Widick ( born October 25, 1910 in Okučani, today in Croatia, † June 28, 2008 in Ann Arbor, Michigan) was an American political activist and trade unionist.

Life

Widick studied at the University of Akron in Ohio. In 1934 he received his degree in economics. In the same year he became a member of the Communist League of America, and in 1938 a member of the newly formed Socialist Workers Party. After a split in the SWP he supported in 1940 the Workers Party. He wrote for their leaves Labor Action and the New International, often under a pseudonym. After the Second World War he was union with the United Auto Workers. From the late 1960s he taught as a professor of labor studies at Wayne State University in Detroit and Columbia University in New York. In 1983, he sat down to rest.

Writings

• ( with Irving Howe ): The UAW and Walter Reuther. Random House, 1949
• Labor Today: The Triumphs and Failures of Unionism in the United States. Houghton, 1964
• Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence. Quadrangle, 1972; revised version: Wayne State University Press, 1989
• Auto Work and Its Discontents. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976