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Books on Labor

On the Global Waterfront

On the Global Waterfront
The Fight to Free the Charleston 5
by Suzan Erem and E. Paul Durrenbeger



On the Global Waterfront tells the story of how longshoremen in South Carolina confronted attempts to wipe out the state’s most powerful black organization. When a Danish shipping company began to shift their transportation to a nonunion firm in 1999, Local 1422 in Charleston, South Carolina, mobilized to protect their hard-won rights. What followed culminated in a protest in which 660 riot police arrayed against fifty dockworkers, a group that grew to 150 before the night was over. Four black and one white longshoreman—subsequently known as the Charleston 5—were held for twenty months under house arrest on trumped-up felony charges of inciting a riot.

Insurgent Images

Insurgent Images
The Agitprop Murals of Mike Alewitz
by Paul Buhle and Mike Alewitz


“A vibrant, full-color presentation of the vivid and powerfully themed mural artworks done by Alewitz, an outspoken labor activist since the 1970s. Presenting a strong political theme of worker's rights and solidarity, capturing the imagination with its outspoken message, and offered alongside a sensible commentary that places pieces in context to the labor and humanitarian issues they illustrated, Insurgent Images is a stunning collection of art created to serve showcase and advance the cause of worker and human rights.”—The Midwest Book Review

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Reclaiming the Ivory Tower

Reclaiming the Ivory Tower
Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education
by Joe Berry



Reclaiming the Ivory Tower examines the situation of adjunct professors in U.S. higher education today, describes the process of organizing them to improve their conditions of work, and puts forward and agenda around which adjunct labor can mobilize and transform the university system.

Labor and Monopoly Capital

Labor and Monopoly Capital
The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (25th Anniversary Ed.)
by Harry Braverman


“The best analysis of the division of labor between the design and the execution of industrial production.”—New York Review of Books

This widely acclaimed work, first published in 1974, overturned the reigning ideologies of academic sociology and became the standard text for many basic areas of sociological inquiry, including the science of managerial control, the relationship of technological innovation to social class, and the eradication of skill from work under capitalism.

  Labor Pains

Labor Pains
Inside America’s New Union Movement
by Suzan Erem





“I love it! It's about time somebody wrote about union organizing as the adventure it truly is! I hope this is the beginning of a whole new era in labor writing, which has historically been all too dry. Labor Pains is a great read.”—Barbara Ehrenreich

Labor Pains captures the complex hard love that working within today’s labor movement entails. Through Suzan Erem’s very readable stories we get a sometimes troubling, sometimes heartening, and mostly very real sense of the day to day struggles of a union trying to do right by its members and its vision, in an ever more challenging environment for workers and unions.…”—Kate Bronfenbrenner

Meatpackers

Meatpackers
An Oral History of Black Packinghouse Workers and Their Struggle for Racial and Economic Equality
by Rick Halpern and Roger Horowitz



“The stories are dramatically and richly told, and they offer insights no scholarly study can quite adequately provide.”—Journal of American History

“If ever there was a book our young needed, it is Meatpackers—it reveals an epoch in which trade unions fought and won whatever rights working people possess today. With these rights constantly imperiled, this book is mandatory reading.”—Studs Terkel

  Why Unions Matter

Why Unions Matter
by Michael D. Yates






“Written in a personal, anecdotal style, yet well documented, this book is particularly successful in the chapters that focus on the nuts and bolts of union activities (collective bargaining, structures, organizing), an area largely ignored by current business and political literature.”—Library Journal

“Summarizes current academic research in a refreshingly direct and readable style … Yates has provided valuable insights into the nuts-and-bolts challenges that face modern day unions and workers.”—Labor History

Not Automatic

Not Automatic
Women and the Left in the Forging of the Auto Workers' Union
by Sol Dollinger and Genora Johnson Dollinger



"This valuable work… makes an important contribution to our understanding of the formative years of the United Automobile Workers…”—Labor/Le Travail

  A New Labor Movement

A New Labor Movement for a New Century
edited by Gregory Mantsios




“An excellent source capturing progressive sentiment in a critical moment in organized labor’s history.”—Labor History

Taking Care of Business

Taking Care of Business
Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Tragedy of American Labor
by Paul Buhle



Taking Care of Business catapults the reader through a panorama of American and social and labor history of the past 125 years … Buhle’s knowledge of the American working class and the political forces it unleashed is encyclopedic. His synthesis of the work of recent generations of labor and social historians in documenting the lost opportunities for labor unions to address broad social concerns and remake themselves into vibrant and inclusive class organizations is impressive.”—New Labor Forum

 
  Rising from the Ashes

Rising from the Ashes
Labor in the Age of “Global” Capitalism
edited by Ellen Meiksins Wood Peter Meiksins, and Michael D. Yates


Rising from the Ashes? takes on the hottest issues being debated by scholars and labor activists, including the changing composition of the international working class, patterns of work under contemporary capitalism, the relationship of race and gender to class, the promise and limitations of recent eruptions of labor militancy, and the strategic options available to working people in an age “global” capitalism.