About

Ileen A. Devault is a Professor of Labor History at Cornell University’s ILR School in Ithaca, NY. She teaches classes on labor and working-class history, focusing on the interactions among gender, family, workplace, and community in US history. Her research examines the impact of workers’ family status on their workplace and union experiences between 1880 and 1930, as well as in the present. She is the author of two books, 'Sons and Daughters of Labor' and 'United Apart: Gender and the Rise of Craft Unionism,' and has published numerous articles and book chapters on related topics. Her current research involves analyzing how the meanings of 'family' changed as capital and workers came together in the logging industry of the Pacific Northwest, illustrating the complex ways in which family, gender, and labor intersected historically. Devault serves on several ILR committees and is a core faculty member of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, actively engaging in service and scholarly activities that explore labor history, gender, and social justice.

Research topics

• Computer science
• Sociology
• Environmental science
• Political science
• History

Selected publications

• 4. Ethnicity, Race, and Strikes

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2019-03-14

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• Preface

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2019-11-05

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• Sons and Daughters of Labor

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2019-11-05

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  Between 1870 and 1920, the clerical sector of the U.S. economy grew more rapidly than any other. As the development of large corporations affected both the scale and the content of office work, the accompanying sexual stratification of the clerical workforce blurred the relationship between the new clerical work and earlier perceptions of white-collar status. Sons and Daughters of Labor reassesses the existence and significance of the "collar line" between white-collar and blue-collar occupations during this period of clerical work's greatest expansion and the beginning of its feminization

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• On-Demand Platform Workers in New York State: The Challenges for Public Policy

  eCommons (Cornell University) · 2019-01-01 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  [Excerpt] This report examines one specific subset of New York state?s contingent workforce: on-demand workers who obtain work through online platforms or ?apps.? Often referred to popularly as ?gig? workers, we use the phrase ?on-demand platform workers? in an attempt to clarify the workers to whom we refer. Our research shows that on-demand platform workers: Are notoriously difficult to count, due to factors such as the part-time quality of their work, high turnover rates and confusion over the definition of terms; Experience low and unstable earnings and a lack of benefits, requiring reliance on second or third jobs, other family members? incomes, and various types of public aid; Experience a range of dangerous health and safety hazards on the job, most of which are uncompensated; Suffer from evaluations based primarily on consumer ratings of workers? performance, with no recourse for workers to appeal disciplinary actions; and Are negatively impacted by automated matching between workers and consumers and other communication asymmetries. Forms of control vary across different platforms, but in general platforms transfer or externalize risks onto workers, with those that use strict automated control systems (known as algorithmic management) maximizing their control over the labor process. On-demand platform work, like other forms of contingent and temporary employment, destabilizes industries, undermines worker protections and living standards, and significantly contributes to wealth and income inequality. Correct classification of workers is a core issue for labor standards in the ?on-demand? economy, in part because the impact of worker misclassification on New York state funds and tax revenues is severe. New York?s regulatory structure does not now provide the necessary level of oversight to curb abuse in the on-demand economy and protect worker, business, and taxpayer interests. Policymakers in New York state now have the opportunity to lead the way by making sure that on-demand platform workers will enjoy the same status and protections as all other workers in the state.

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• APPENDIX 2. 1900 Census Projects

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2019-03-14

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• APPENDIX 1. Strike Case Studies and Selected Bibliography

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2019-03-14

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• Immigrant Girl, Radical Woman

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2017-10-15

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• “Everybody Works but Father”: Why the Census Misdirected Historians of Women's Employment

  Social Science History · 2016-01-01

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  Because the US Census Bureau changed the way they reported workers’ marital status, the subfield of US women's labor history unwittingly perpetuated a key misinterpretation of women's labor force participation, allowing historians to believe that women in the workforce between 1880 and 1920 were overwhelmingly young and single women: the daughters of their families rather than the mothers and wives. This change in census reporting was reinforced and promulgated by Joseph A. Hill's 1929 work, Women in Gainful Occupations, 1870–1920. Why was this change made? This article argues that this change came about because of a confluence of various factors, including the Census Bureau's continual struggles with organizational and technological changes, the beginning of World War I, and reformers’ arguments about the efficacy of pushing for maternity insurance for women workers. The story of this change once again reminds us that statistics are never neutral nor apolitical.

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• Out in the Union: A Labor History of Queer America

  Journal of American History · 2015-06-01 · 27 citations

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  Journal Article Out in the Union: A Labor History of Queer America Get access Miriam Frank. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014. xviii, 221 pp. $54.50.) Journal of American History, Volume 102, Issue 1, June 2015, Pages 310–311, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav206 Published: 01 June 2015

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• Family wages: The roles of wives and mothers in U.S. working-class survival strategies, 1880–1930

  Labor History · 2013-01-28 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The common image of a female wage earner in the U.S. in the decades around the turn of the 20th century is that of a young, single woman: the daughter of her family. However, the wives and mothers of these families also made important economic contributions to their families' economies. This paper argues that we need to rethink our evaluation of the economic roles played by ever-married women in working-class families. Using a range of government reports as well as IPUMS, I document three ways in which working-class wives and mothers strove to bring cash into their family units: through formal workforce participation; through home work of various sorts; and through selling subsistence, providing in-home services to nonfamily members in exchange for cash. Unlike earlier works which focused on single locations or ethnic or racial groups or female occupations, I tell a national story of ever-married women's cash-producing work. Working-class wives and mothers filled in the economic gaps existing in the interactions of their families with the capitalist marketplace through a range of different methods. While early 20th-century unions called for the establishment of a “living wage” for male workers, the world in which those workers lived required both family wages and family strategies to bring in other forms of cash for their survival.

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Frequent coauthors

• David Montgomery

  149 shared

• John H. M. Laslett

  University of California, Los Angeles

  149 shared

• Steven J. Ross

  University of Florida

  149 shared

• Martin A. Miller

  Duke University

  149 shared

• Russell Cashdollar

  149 shared

• Joan Wallach Scott

  149 shared

• Robert Wheeler

  UES (United States)

  149 shared

• Gary Steenson

  Memorial University of Newfoundland

  149 shared

Awards & honors

• Cornell Class of 2017 Faculty Award (2017)
• Best Article Published in Labor History on a U.S. Topic (201…
• MacIntyre Award for Exemplary Teaching (2026)