Download or read book We Can t Eat Prestige written by John P. Hoerr and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This story explodes the popular belief that women white-collar workers tend to reject unionization and accept a passive role in the workplace. On the contrary, the women workers of Harvard University created a powerful and unique union--one that emphasizes their own values and priorities as working women and rejects unwanted aspects of traditional unionism. The workers involved comprise Harvard's 3,600-member "support staff," which includes secretaries, library and laboratory assistants, dental hygienists, accounting clerks, and a myriad of other office workers who keep a great university functioning. Even at prestigious private universities like Harvard and Yale, these workers--mostly women--have had to put up with exploitive management policies that denied them respect and decent wages because they were women. But the women eventually rebelled, declaring that they could not live on "prestige" alone. Encouraged by the women's movement of the early 1970's, a group of women workers (and a few men) began what would become a 15-year struggle to organize staff employees at Harvard. The women persisted in the face of patronizing and sexist attitudes of university administrators and leaders of their own national unions. Unconscionably long legal delays foiled their efforts. But they developed innovative organizing methods, which merged feminist values with demands for union representation and a means of influencing workplace decisions. Out of adversity came an unorthodox form of unionism embodied in the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW). Its founding was marked by an absorbing human drama that pitted unknown workers, such as Kris Rondeau, a lab assistant who came to head the union, against famous educators such as Harvard President Derek Bok and a panoply of prestigious deans. Other characters caught up in the drama included Harvard's John T. Dunlop, the nation's foremost industrial relations scholar and former U.S. Secretary of Labor. The drama was played out in innumerable hearings before the National Labor Relations Board, in the streets of Cambridge, and on the walks of historic Harvard Yard, where union members marched and sang and employed new tactics like "ballooning," designed to communicate a message of joy and liberation rather than the traditional "hate-the-boss" hostility. John Hoerr tells this story from the perspective of both Harvard administrators and union organizers. With unusual access to its meetings, leaders, and files, he examines the unique culture of a female-led union from the inside. Photographs add to the impact of this dramatic narrative. Author note: John Hoerr, a freelance writer, has been a journalist for more than thirty years at newspapers, magazines, public television, and United Press International. A specialist in labor reportage, he is the author of And the Wolf Finally Came: The Decline of the American Steel Industry.
Download or read book Better Together written by Robert D. Putnam and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his acclaimed bestselling book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam described a thirty-year decline in America's social institutions. The book ended with the hope that new forms of social connection might be invented in order to revive our communities. In Better Together, Putnam and longtime civic activist Lewis Feldstein describe some of the diverse locations and most compelling ways in which civic renewal is taking place today. In response to civic crises and local problems, they say, hardworking, committed people are reweaving the social fabric all across America, often in innovative ways that may turn out to be appropriate for the twenty-first century. Better Together is a book of stories about people who are building communities to solve specific problems. The examples Putnam and Feldstein describe span the country from big cities such as Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Chicago to the Los Angeles suburbs, small Mississippi and Wisconsin towns, and quiet rural areas. The projects range from the strictly local to that of the men and women of UPS, who cover the nation. Bowling Alone looked at America from a broad and general perspective. Better Together takes us into Catherine Flannery's Roxbury, Massachusetts, living room, a UPS loading dock in Greensboro, North Carolina, a Philadelphia classroom, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, naval shipyard, and a Bay Area Web site. We meet activists driven by their visions, each of whom has chosen to succeed by building community: Mexican Americans in the Rio Grande Valley who want paved roads, running water, and decent schools; Harvard University clerical workers searching for respect and improved working conditions; Waupun, Wisconsin, schoolchildren organizing to improve safety at a local railroad crossing; and merchants in Tupelo, Mississippi, joining with farmers to improve their economic status. As the stories in Better Together demonstrate, bringing people together by building on personal relationships remains one of the most effective strategies to enhance America's social health.
Download or read book Rebel Rank and File written by Aaron Brenner and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often considered irredeemably conservative, the US working class actually has a rich history of revolt. Rebel Rank and File uncovers the hidden story of insurgency from below against employers and union bureaucrats in the late 1960s and 1970s. From the mid-1960s to 1981, rank-and-file workers in the United States engaged in a level of sustained militancy not seen since the Great Depression and World War II. Millions participated in one of the largest strike waves in US history. There were 5,716 stoppages in 1970 alone, involving more than 3 million workers. Contract rejections, collective insubordination, sabotage, organized slowdowns, and wildcat strikes were the order of the day. Workers targeted much of their activity at union leaders, forming caucuses to fight for more democratic and combative unions that would forcefully resist the mounting offensive from employers that appeared at the end of the postwar economic boom. It was a remarkable era in the history of US class struggle, one rich in lessons for today's labor movement.
Download or read book The Other Women s Movement written by Dorothy Sue Cobble and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American feminism has always been about more than the struggle for individual rights and equal treatment with men. There's also a vital and continuing tradition of women's reform that sought social as well as individual rights and argued for the dismantling of the masculine standard. In this much anticipated book, Dorothy Sue Cobble retrieves the forgotten feminism of the previous generations of working women, illuminating the ideas that inspired them and the reforms they secured from employers and the state. This socially and ethnically diverse movement for change emerged first from union halls and factory floors and spread to the "pink collar" domain of telephone operators, secretaries, and airline hostesses. From the 1930s to the 1980s, these women pursued answers to problems that are increasingly pressing today: how to balance work and family and how to address the growing economic inequalities that confront us. The Other Women's Movement traces their impact from the 1940s into the feminist movement of the present. The labor reformers whose stories are told in The Other Women's Movement wanted equality and "special benefits," and they did not see the two as incompatible. They argued that gender differences must be accommodated and that "equality" could not always be achieved by applying an identical standard of treatment to men and women. The reform agenda they championed--an end to unfair sex discrimination, just compensation for their waged labor, and the right to care for their families and communities--launched a revolution in employment practices that carries on today. Unique in its range and perspective, this is the first book to link the continuous tradition of social feminism to the leadership of labor women within that movement.
Download or read book Keywords written by John Patrick Leary and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A clever, even witty examination of the manipulation of language in these days of neoliberal or late stage capitalism” (Counterpunch). From Silicon Valley to the White House, from kindergarten to college, and from the factory floor to the church pulpit, we are all called to be innovators and entrepreneurs, to be curators of an ever-expanding roster of competencies, and to become resilient and flexible in the face of the insults and injuries we confront at work. In the midst of increasing inequality, these keywords teach us to thrive by applying the lessons of a competitive marketplace to every sphere of life. What’s more, by celebrating the values of grit, creativity, and passion at school and at work, they assure us that economic success is nothing less than a moral virtue. Organized alphabetically as a lexicon, Keywords explores the history and common usage of major terms in the everyday language of capitalism. Because these words have infiltrated everyday life, their meanings may seem self-evident, even benign. Who could be against empowerment, after all? Keywords uncovers the histories of words like innovation, which was once synonymous with “false prophecy” before it became the prevailing faith of Silicon Valley. Other words, like best practices and human capital, are relatively new coinages that subtly shape our way of thinking. As this book makes clear, the new language of capitalism burnishes hierarchy, competition, and exploitation as leadership, collaboration, and sharing, modeling for us the habits of the economically successful person: be visionary, be self-reliant—and never, ever stop working.
Download or read book And the Wolf Finally Came written by John Hoerr and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2014-07-22 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • Choice 1988 Outstanding Academic Book • Named one of the Best Business Books of 1988 by USA TodayA veteran reporter of American labor analyzes the spectacular and tragic collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s. John Hoerr's account of these events stretches from the industrywide barganing failures of 1982 to the crippling work stoppage at USX (U.S. Steel) in 1986-87. He interviewed scores of steelworkers, company managers at all levels, and union officials, and was present at many of the crucial events he describes. Using historical flashbacks to the origins of the steel industry, particularly in the Monongahela Valley of southwestern Pennsylvania, he shows how an obsolete and adversarial relationship between management and labor made it impossible for the industry to adapt to shattering changes in the global economy.
Download or read book Equal Value Comparable Worth in the UK and the USA written by Elizabeth Meehan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Including contributions by both British and American researchers, this book explores equal value developments in the two countries. Through thematic chapters and case studies, it examines legal developments, trade union activity, the operation of job evaluation, and the race and class politics of equal value. Both the possibilities and the limits of equal value reform are discussed.
Download or read book Workplace Justice written by Sharon Kurtz and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1991, Columbia University's one thousand clerical workers launched a successful campaign for justice in their workplace. This diverse union -- two-thirds black and Latina, three-fourths women -- was committed to creating an inclusive movement organization and to fighting for all kinds of justice. How could they address the many race and gender injustices members faced, avoid schism, and maintain the unity needed to win? Sharon Kurtz, an experienced union activist and former clerical worker herself, was welcomed into the union and pursued these questions. Using this case study and secondary studies of sister clerical unions at Yale and Harvard, she examines the challenges and potential of identity politics in labor movements. With the Columbia strike as a point of departure, Kurtz argues that identity politics are valuable for mobilizing groups, but often exclude members and their experiences of oppression. However, Kurtz believes that identity politics should not be abandoned as a component in building movements, but should be reframed -- as multi-identity politics. In the end she shows an approach to organizing with great potential impact not only for labor unions but for any social movement.
Download or read book The Economics of Inequality Poverty and Discrimination in the 21st Century written by Robert S. Rycroft and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading scholars examine the conflicting paradigms of affluence and destitution in the United States—as well as other free societies—and discuss the influence of education, race, and status on economic mobility. While recent catastrophic events in New Orleans and Haiti may have magnified issues of social inequity, leaders have debated over poverty and discrimination for decades. Are the poor disadvantaged by the institutions of society or by the choices they make? Through two insightful volumes, the author examines differing academic and political perspectives to help shed light on the causes of poverty and inequality; the role that gender, race, age, or sexual preference plays in determining opportunity; and the effectiveness of current social and economic policies in balancing the inequity among disparate groups. The Economics of Inequality, Poverty, and Discrimination in the 21st Century consists of 2 volumes containing 32 papers divided into 5 categories: measurement, inequality and mobility, institutions and choices, demographic groups and discrimination, and policy. The papers—written by economists, sociologists, philosophers and lawyers—deal with the extent of inequality in the United States and how it compares to other countries, and the newly emerging evidence on the relationship between inequality and mobility within a society.
Download or read book This Dummy Pulls His Own Strings written by Dwight E. Knuth and published by LifeRich Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-18 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the title suggests, Dwight is a bit of a non-conformist or as his wife called him, "A Rebel Without A Clue". He never got in any serious trouble but he liked to skate around the edge of it and occasionally his skates slipped and he fell into it. Dwight Knuth has always marched to his own drum while following a path through life lined with accomplishments, failures, joys, sorrows, and struggles. In sharing his fascinating true story that also reveals the history of his ancestors, Dwight hopes to encourage others to embrace their uniqueness and pursue happiness. Dwight begins with his misspent youth where he proclaims he was a rebel without a clue. While providing a glimpse of what it was like to live on the North Dakota prairie during the fifties, Dwight details youthful adventures that include hitchhiking across the United States at age sixteen, being jailed twice during the trip, and then riding on a freight train to return home. As his journey led him to become a Golden Glove boxer, serve in the military during the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam War, Dwight discloses how he faced and overcame many challenges that would later include his wifes battle with terminal breast cancer. Through it all, Dwight teaches through example that perseverance and faith are keys to surviving and even thriving amid lifes greatest difficulties. This Dummy Pulls His Own Strings shares one mans experiences as he learned to navigate through life and embrace every good, bad, and ugly moment in his own distinctive way.
Download or read book Congressional Record written by United States. Congress and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 1444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ripples Across the Bay written by Forthwrite The Forthwrite Writers Group and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2006-07 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of short stories written by the members of the Forthwrite Writer's Group in Dalgety Bay, Scotland. Nestled on the shore of the Forth Estuary and within sight of the Forth Rail Bridge, the community seems to engender a surprising number of tales. This collection attempts to bring some of the most intriguing to the light of day. They range from Margery finding a body in her garden to Lizzie desperate for a pair of snakeskin shoes; from Dancer, organizing a strike of Santa's reindeer to Khalid building a bunker in a lemon grove; from Hilda the Russian sleeper agent to a Balloon Man who knows Julia Roberts. Geographically, the ripples go out from the Forth to an infant school in Fife, on to a crematorium in Edinburgh, and then far out to the Middle East, and North and South America. Some of the stories are pure fiction, some are historical, and some more autobiographical in character. Some are simply good tales, destined to make you smile, but others will affect your view of the world and continue to ripple across your conscience. There is at least one story that is a must read for you.
Download or read book We Make Change written by Kristin Layng Szakos and published by Vanderbilt University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Community organizers work at their jobs because they are passionate, because they believe that change is possible, and because they enjoy working with people. Although it's not an occupation that leads to great wealth, community organizers can make a living at it. They get salaries, pensions and health insurance. They raise families. They do well by doing good. This book explores the world of community organizing through the voices of real people working in the field, in small towns and city neighborhoods--women and men of different races and economic backgrounds, ranging in age from those in their twenties to those in their sixties. Fourteen in-depth profiles tell the life stories of a cross-section of the diverse people who choose the life of an organizer. Other chapters, focused on issues of organizing, are tapestries of experience woven from the 81 interviews the authors conducted.
Download or read book The Leader Manager written by John N. Williamson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1986-02-18 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collected and interpreted literature on management in the changing corporate environment. Emphasizes the importance of dealing with change as a natural process of growth. Designed to assist managers in adapting to the new managerial strategies required in today's business environment. Provides a model of strategic management, and shows how the creativity and productivity of employees are the key assets of a business. Stresses and develops five management issues of prime importance: mission, goals, feedback, rewards, and support.
Download or read book The Hour of the Innocents written by Robert Paston and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Four young musicians are determined to escape a ravaged industrial landscape by playing rock and roll ... and they play it with a passion and brilliance that contrasts with their poverty. Music is the only hope they have. Set against a fleeting age when music seemed about to change the world, Robert Paston's The Hour of the Innocents tells the story of the band known as The Innocents and captures the true drama of the late 1960s-not the glitter of famous names, but the yearning of the heartland guitarists and drummers who believed ... and the lovers, friends, and lives crushed along the way"--Jacket.
Download or read book Knocking on Labor s Door written by Lane Windham and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The power of unions in workers' lives and in the American political system has declined dramatically since the 1970s. In recent years, many have argued that the crisis took root when unions stopped reaching out to workers and workers turned away from unions. But here Lane Windham tells a different story. Highlighting the integral, often-overlooked contributions of women, people of color, young workers, and southerners, Windham reveals how in the 1970s workers combined old working-class tools--like unions and labor law--with legislative gains from the civil and women's rights movements to help shore up their prospects. Through close-up studies of workers' campaigns in shipbuilding, textiles, retail, and service, Windham overturns widely held myths about labor's decline, showing instead how employers united to manipulate weak labor law and quash a new wave of worker organizing. Recounting how employees attempted to unionize against overwhelming odds, Knocking on Labor's Door dramatically refashions the narrative of working-class struggle during a crucial decade and shakes up current debates about labor's future. Windham's story inspires both hope and indignation, and will become a must-read in labor, civil rights, and women's history.
Download or read book The Next Upsurge written by Dan Clawson and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. labor movement may be on the verge of massive growth, according to Dan Clawson. He argues that unions don't grow slowly and incrementally, but rather in bursts. Even if the AFL-CIO could organize twice as many members per year as it now does, it would take thirty years to return to the levels of union membership that existed when Ronald Reagan was elected president. In contrast, labor membership more than quadrupled in the years from 1934 to 1945. For there to be a new upsurge, Clawson asserts, labor must fuse with social movements concerned with race, gender, and global justice.The new forms may create a labor movement that breaks down the boundaries between "union" and "community" or between work and family issues. Clawson finds that this is already happening in some parts of the labor movement: labor has endorsed global justice and opposed war in Iraq, student activists combat sweatshops, unions struggle for immigrant rights. Innovative campaigns of this sort, Clawson shows, create new strategies—determined by workers rather than union organizers—that redefine the very meaning of the labor movement. The Next Upsurge presents a range of examples from attempts to replace "macho" unions with more feminist models to campaigns linking labor and community issues and attempts to establish cross-border solidarity and a living wage.
