Download or read book A New American Labor Movement written by William E. Scheuerman and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American labor movement isn't dead. It's just moving from the bargaining table to the streets. In A New American Labor Movement, William Scheuerman analyzes how the decline of unions and the emergence of these new direct-action movements are reshaping the American labor movement. Tens of thousands of exploited workers—from farm laborers and gig drivers to freelance artists and restaurant workers—have taken to the streets in a collective attempt to attain a living wage and decent working conditions, with or without the help of unions. This new worker militancy, expressed through mass demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins, political action, and similar activities, has already achieved much success and offers models for workers to exercise their power in the twenty-first century. Finally, Scheuerman notes, many of the strategies of the new direct-action groups share features with the sectoral bargaining model that dominates the European labor movement, suggesting that sectoral bargaining may become the foundation of a new American labor movement.

Download or read book Beaten Down Worked Up written by Steven Greenhouse and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A page-turning book that spans a century of worker strikes.... Engrossing, character-driven, panoramic.” —The New York Times Book Review We live in an era of soaring corporate profits and anemic wage gains, one in which low-paid jobs and blighted blue-collar communities have become a common feature of our nation’s landscape. Behind these trends lies a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power. Award-winning journalist and author Steven Greenhouse guides us through the key episodes and trends in history that are essential to understanding some of our nation’s most pressing problems, including increased income inequality, declining social mobility, and the concentration of political power in the hands of the wealthy few. He exposes the modern labor landscape with the stories of dozens of American workers, from GM employees to Uber drivers to underpaid schoolteachers. Their fight to take power back is crucial for America’s future, and Greenhouse proposes concrete, feasible ways in which workers’ collective power can be—and is being—rekindled and reimagined in the twenty-first century. Beaten Down, Worked Up is a stirring and essential look at labor in America, poised as it is between the tumultuous struggles of the past and the vital, hopeful struggles ahead. A PBS NewsHour Now Read This Book Club Pick

Download or read book The Future of the American Labor Movement written by Hoyt N. Wheeler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-09-16 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description

Download or read book L A Story written by Ruth Milkman and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2006-08-03 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sharp decreases in union membership over the last fifty years have caused many to dismiss organized labor as irrelevant in today's labor market. In the private sector, only 8 percent of workers today are union members, down from 24 percent as recently as 1973. Yet developments in Southern California—including the successful Justice for Janitors campaign—suggest that reports of organized labor's demise may have been exaggerated. In L.A. Story, sociologist and labor expert Ruth Milkman explains how Los Angeles, once known as a company town hostile to labor, became a hotbed for unionism, and how immigrant service workers emerged as the unlikely leaders in the battle for workers' rights. L.A. Story shatters many of the myths of modern labor with a close look at workers in four industries in Los Angeles: building maintenance, trucking, construction, and garment production. Though many blame deunionization and deteriorating working conditions on immigrants, Milkman shows that this conventional wisdom is wrong. Her analysis reveals that worsening work environments preceded the influx of foreign-born workers, who filled the positions only after native-born workers fled these suddenly undesirable jobs. Ironically, L.A. Story shows that immigrant workers, who many union leaders feared were incapable of being organized because of language constraints and fear of deportation, instead proved highly responsive to organizing efforts. As Milkman demonstrates, these mostly Latino workers came to their service jobs in the United States with a more group-oriented mentality than the American workers they replaced. Some also drew on experience in their native countries with labor and political struggles. This stock of fresh minds and new ideas, along with a physical distance from the east-coast centers of labor's old guard, made Los Angeles the center of a burgeoning workers' rights movement. Los Angeles' recent labor history highlights some of the key ingredients of the labor movement's resurgence—new leadership, latitude to experiment with organizing techniques, and a willingness to embrace both top-down and bottom-up strategies. L.A. Story's clear and thorough assessment of these developments points to an alternative, high-road national economic agenda that could provide workers with a way out of poverty and into the middle class.

Download or read book Hard Work written by Rick Fantasia and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-06-16 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description

Download or read book Future Of The American Labor Movement written by Hoyt N. Wheeler and published by Turtleback. This book was released on 2002-09-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes various strategies for American labor's survival in today's challenging globalized world economy.

Download or read book Reclaiming Our Future written by William W Winpisinger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-26 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book recounts the historic struggles of the American labor movement for safer workplaces, for a healthier environment, for corporate accountability, for equal rights for the majority who are women, and for civil rights for the minority who are not white.

Download or read book Rethinking the American Labor Movement written by Elizabeth Faue and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-04-28 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking the American Labor Movement tells the story of the various groups and incidents that make up what we think of as the "labor movement." While the efforts of the American labor force towards greater wealth parity have been rife with contention, the struggle has embraced a broad vision of a more equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth and a desire for workers to have greater control over their own lives. In this succinct and authoritative volume, Elizabeth Faue reconsiders the varied strains of the labor movement, situating them within the context of rapidly transforming twentieth-century American society to show how these efforts have formed a political and social movement that has shaped the trajectory of American life. Rethinking the American Labor Movement is indispensable reading for scholars and students interested in American labor in the twentieth century and in the interplay between labor, wealth, and power.

Download or read book The Death and Life of American Labor written by Stanley Aronowitz and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The decline of the American union movement—and how it can revive, by a leading analyst of labor Union membership in the United States has fallen below 11 percent, the lowest rate since before the New Deal. Labor activist and scholar of the American labor movement Stanley Aronowitz argues that the movement as we have known it for the last 100 years is effectively dead. And he explains how this death has been a long time coming—the organizing and political principles adopted by US unions at mid-century have taken a terrible toll. In the 1950s, Aronowitz was a factory metalworker. In the ’50s and ’60s, he directed organizing with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers. In 1963, he coordinated the labor participation for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Ten years later, the publication of his book False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness was a landmark in the study of the US working-class and workers’ movements. Aronowitz draws on this long personal history, reflecting on his continuing involvement in labor organizing, with groups such as the Professional Staff Congress of the City University. He brings a historian’s understanding of American workers’ struggles in taking the long view of the labor movement. Then, in a survey of current initiatives, strikes, organizations, and allies, Aronowitz analyzes the possibilities of labor’s rebirth, and sets out a program for a new, broad, radical workers’ movement.

Download or read book History of American Labor written by Joseph G. Rayback and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joseph Rayback’s history of the American labor movement. A compact and comprehensive chronicle of where labor has been and where it is today.

Download or read book Labor Rising written by Richard Greenwald and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Wisconsin governor Scott Walker threatened the collective bargaining rights of the state's public sector employees in early 2011, the massive protests that erupted inresponse put the labor movement back on the nation's front pages. It was a fleeting reminder of a not-so-distant past when the “labor question”—and the power of organized labor—was part and parcel of a century-long struggle for justice and equality in America. Now, on the heels of the expansive Occupy Wall Street movement and midterm election outcomes that are encouraging for the labor movement, the lessons of history are a vital handhold for the thousands of activists and citizens everywhere who sense that something has gone terribly wrong. This pithy and accessible volume provides readers with an understanding of the history that is directly relevant to the economic and political crises working people face today, and points the way to a revitalized twenty-first-century labor movement. With original contributions from leading labor historians, social critics, and activists, Labor Rising makes crucial connections between the past and present, and then looks forward, asking how we might imagine a different future for all Americans.

Download or read book Labor in America written by Melvyn Dubofsky and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-05-01 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, designed to give a survey history of American labor from colonial times to the present, is uniquely well suited to speak to the concerns of today’s teachers and students. As issues of growing inequality, stagnating incomes, declining unionization, and exacerbated job insecurity have increasingly come to define working life over the last 20 years, a new generation of students and teachers is beginning to seek to understand labor and its place and ponder seriously its future in American life. Like its predecessors, this ninth edition of our classic survey of American labor is designed to introduce readers to the subject in an engaging, accessible way.

Download or read book A History of America in Ten Strikes written by Erik Loomis and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recommended by The Nation, the New Republic, Current Affairs, Bustle, In These Times An “entertaining, tough-minded, and strenuously argued” (The Nation) account of ten moments when workers fought to change the balance of power in America “A brilliantly recounted American history through the prism of major labor struggles, with critically important lessons for those who seek a better future for working people and the world.” —Noam Chomsky Powerful and accessible, A History of America in Ten Strikes challenges all of our contemporary assumptions around labor, unions, and American workers. In this brilliant book, labor historian Erik Loomis recounts ten critical workers' strikes in American labor history that everyone needs to know about (and then provides an annotated list of the 150 most important moments in American labor history in the appendix). From the Lowell Mill Girls strike in the 1830s to Justice for Janitors in 1990, these labor uprisings do not just reflect the times in which they occurred, but speak directly to the present moment. For example, we often think that Lincoln ended slavery by proclaiming the slaves emancipated, but Loomis shows that they freed themselves during the Civil War by simply withdrawing their labor. He shows how the hopes and aspirations of a generation were made into demands at a GM plant in Lordstown in 1972. And he takes us to the forests of the Pacific Northwest in the early nineteenth century where the radical organizers known as the Wobblies made their biggest inroads against the power of bosses. But there were also moments when the movement was crushed by corporations and the government; Loomis helps us understand the present perilous condition of American workers and draws lessons from both the victories and defeats of the past. In crystalline narratives, labor historian Erik Loomis lifts the curtain on workers' struggles, giving us a fresh perspective on American history from the boots up. Strikes include: Lowell Mill Girls Strike (Massachusetts, 1830–40) Slaves on Strike (The Confederacy, 1861–65) The Eight-Hour Day Strikes (Chicago, 1886) The Anthracite Strike (Pennsylvania, 1902) The Bread and Roses Strike (Massachusetts, 1912) The Flint Sit-Down Strike (Michigan, 1937) The Oakland General Strike (California, 1946) Lordstown (Ohio, 1972) Air Traffic Controllers (1981) Justice for Janitors (Los Angeles, 1990)

Download or read book Staley written by Steven K. Ashby and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2009-03-13 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This on-the-ground labor history focuses on the bitterly contested labor conflict in the early 1990s at the A. E. Staley corn processing plant in Decatur, Illinois, where workers waged one of the most hard-fought struggles in recent labor history. Originally family-owned, A. E. Staley was bought out by the multinational conglomerate Tate & Lyle, which immediately launched a full-scale assault on its union workforce. Allied Industrial Workers Local 837 responded by educating and mobilizing its members, organizing strong support from the religious and black communities, building a national and international solidarity movement, and engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the plant gates. Drawing on seventy-five interviews, videotapes of every union meeting, and their own active involvement organizing with the Staley workers, Steven K. Ashby and C. J. Hawking bring the workers' voices to the fore and reveal their innovative tactics, such as work-to-rule and solidarity committees, that inform and strengthen today's labor movement.

Download or read book Only One Thing Can Save Us written by Thomas Geoghegan and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is labor's day over or is this the big moment? Acclaimed author Geoghegan asserts that only a new kind of labor movement can help the country switch course toward a future that is fair and prosperous for all Americans.

Download or read book A New New Deal written by Amy B. Dean and published by ILR Press. This book was released on 2011-05-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Century Foundation Book In A New New Deal, the labor movement leaders Amy B. Dean and David B. Reynolds offer a bold new plan to revitalize American labor activism and build a sense of common purpose between labor and community organizations. Dean and Reynolds demonstrate how alliances organized at the regional level are the most effective tool to build a voice for working people in the workplace, community, and halls of government. The authors draw on their own successes to offer in-depth, contemporary case studies of effective labor-community coalitions. They also outline a concrete strategy for building power at the regional level. This pioneering model presents the regional building blocks for national change. A diverse audience—both within the labor movement and among its allies—will welcome this clear, detailed, and inspiring presentation of regional power-building tactics, which include deep coalition-building, leadership development, policy research, and aggressive political action. A New New Deal explores successful coalitions forged in Los Angeles, Boston, Denver, San Jose, New Haven, and Atlanta toward goals such as universal health insurance for children and sensible redevelopment efforts that benefit workers as well as businesses. The authors view partnerships between labor and grassroots organizations as a mutually beneficial strategy based on shared goals, resulting in a broadened membership base and increased organizational capacity. They make the innovative argument that the labor movement can steward both industry and community and make manifest the ways in which workplace battles are not the parochial concerns of isolated workers, but a fundamental struggle for America's future. Drawing on historical parallels, the authors illustrate how long-term collaborations between labor and community organizations are sowing the seeds of a new New Deal.

Download or read book Hard Work written by Rick Fantasia and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-06-16 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This concise overview of the labor movement in the United States focuses on why American workers have failed to develop the powerful unions that exist in other industrialized countries. Packed with valuable analysis and information, Hard Work explores historical perspectives, examines social and political policies, and brings us inside today's unions, providing an excellent introduction to labor in America. Hard Work begins with a comparison of the very different conditions that prevail for labor in the United States and in Europe. What emerges is a picture of an American labor movement forced to operate on terrain shaped by powerful corporations, a weak state, and an inhospitable judicial system. What also emerges is a picture of an American worker that has virtually disappeared from the American social imagination. Recently, however, the authors find that a new kind of unionism—one that more closely resembles a social movement—has begun to develop from the shell of the old labor movement. Looking at the cities of Los Angeles and Las Vegas they point to new practices that are being developed by innovative unions to fight corporate domination, practices that may well signal a revival of unionism and the emergence of a new social imagination in the United States.