Strike!
-- Jeremy Brecher (suggested by nathanhj and kofu)
"Since its original publication in 1972, no book has done as much
as Jeremy Brecher's Strike! to bring American labor history to a wide
audience. Strike! narrates the dramatic story of repeated, massive,
and often violent revolts by ordinary working people in America."
Three
Strikes: Labor's Heartland Losses and What They Mean for Working Americans
-- Stephen Franklin (nathanhj)
"Chicago Tribune labor writer Franklin vividly describes the impact
of three strikes on union workers in Decatur, IL. Union members who
had worked their entire lives for Caterpillar, Staley, or Bridgestone/Firestone
were forced out on strike, threatened with permanent replacement, and,
if lucky, called back to work under a company-imposed contract full
of concessions. Franklin tells the story from the viewpoint of production
workers caught between aggressive corporations and an aging union bureaucracy."
Ravenswood:
The Steelworkers' Victory and the Revival of American Labor
-- Tom Juravich and Kate Bronfenbrenner (nathanhj)
"Over the past two decades, Americans have seen their workplaces
downsized and streamlined, their jobs out-sourced, sped up, and, all
too often, eliminated. Unions have seemed powerless to defend their
members, with big defeats in the strikes at PATCO, Eastern Airlines,
International Paper, and Hormel. Ravenswood recounts how the United
Steelworkers of America, in a battle waged over an aluminum plant in
West Virginia, proved that organized labor can still win--even against
a company controlled by one of the world's richest and most powerful
men."
From
the Ashes of the Old: From the Ashes of the Old: American Labor and
America's Future -- Stanley Aronowitz (nathanhj)
"In the last few years, histories have squeezed the most minute
details out of the rise and fall of the 20th-century labor movement.
Aronowitz (The Death and Rebirth of American Radicalism) takes the tack
that "the future of American labor is directly tied to America's
future" and, after extensive exposition of union diversity and
interaction, he finds future union potential in the millions of white-collar
workers and professionals and among production and service workers in
the South."
Poor
Workers' Unions -- Vanessa Tait (nathanhj)
"Finally, the book we've all been waiting for! With gripping tales
of grassroots experiments in social justice unionism from the 1960s
to the present, Vanessa Tait cracks wide open our concept of what a
labor movement looks like, and shows how it can be part and parcel of
movements for racial and gender justice."
Homestead:
The Glory and Tragedy of an American Steel Town -- William
Serrin (phillydem)
"A profoundly moving elegy on the death of a legendary Pennsylvania
steel town--and, by extension, the end of a century of Smokestack America--from
Serrin (Journalism/NYU), a former labor correspondent for The New York
Times. The Homestead Steel Works was the site of the epic 1892 strike
and lockout that saw steel chieftains Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay
Frick use the Pinkertons to crush the Amalgamated Association of Iron,
Steel, and Tin Workers and set back the cause of unionism several decades."
Wobblies!:
A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World
-- Paul Buhle (Editor), Nicole Schulman (Texas Nate)
"The Wobblies, as members of the Industrial Workers of the World
were known, were influential in the labor movement at the dawn of the
20th century. A grassroots organization that fought for equality and
safe working conditions, the Wobblies also had ties to women's rights
and socialism. This book attempts to encapsulate the rich history of
the movement through comics (and connective essays) by such contributors
as Peter Kuper, Harvey Pekar and Seth Tobocman."
Joe
Hill: The IWW & The Making Of A Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture
-- Franklin Rosemont (Texas Nate)
"A monumental work, expansive in scope, and not only the life,
times, and culture of that most famous of the Wobblies (songwriter,
poet, hobo, thinker, humorist, martyr), but crucially - and in great
detail - the issues that he raised then - capitalism, white supremacy,
gender, religion, wilderness, law, prison, industrial unionism - and
their enduring relevance, and impact in the century since his death."
Eugene
V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist -- Nick Salvatore (Texas
Nate)
"Eugene Victor Debs was one of the most prominent labor activists
of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was, perhaps, the most
admired openly radical public figure in America's history, running for
president on the Socialist ticket in five separate elections, including
a 1920 campaign conducted from prison."
The
Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America
-- Lawrence Goodwyn (Texas Nate)
"He was the largest landholder...in one county and Justice of the
Peace in the next and election commissioner in both, and hence the fountainhead
if not of law at least of advise and suggestion. ...He was a farmer,
a usurer, a veterinarian; Judge Benbow of Jefferson once said of him
that a milder mannered man never bled a mule or stuffed a ballot box."
Death
in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and
the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America -- James Green
(Texas Nate)
"As Green thoroughly documents, the bloody Haymarket riot of May
4, 1886, changed the history of American labor and created a panic among
Americans about (often foreign-born) "radicals and reformers"
and union activists. The Haymarket demonstration, to protest police
brutality during labor unrest in Chicago, remained peaceful until police
moved in, whereupon a bomb was thrown by an individual never positively
identified, killing seven policemen and wounding 60 others."
Which
Side Are You On? Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back
-- Thomas Geoghagen (Nathan Newman via eRobin)
"Based on his experiences as a Chicago labor lawyer, Geoghegan
contends persuasively that post-industrial Reaganomics have caused a
widening rift between the working and professional middle classes. In
related episodes, he demonstrates how the combined effects of steel
mill closings, leveraged buyouts and Third World competitive labor have
contributed to the decline of American organized labor."
Labor
Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor
-- Steve Fraser (Nathan Newman via eRobin)
"Onetime radical revolutionary from a Lithuanian village, Sidney
Hillman (1887-1946) eked out a living as a cutter in Chicago's garment
trade, then rose to become an influential labor leader and a member
of FDR's inner circle. Due to his efforts, the Democratic Party of the
mid-1930s came close to becoming the recognized party of organized labor."
Reds
or Rackets: The Making of Radical and Conservative Unions on the Waterfront
-- Howard Kimeldorf (Nathan Newman via eRobin)
"Kimeldorf's historical narrative manages to capture the tragedy
and romance of dock labor on our two principal coasts at the same time
as it provides an impressive analysis of the events. . . . An excellent
contribution to our literature on labor history."
The
Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American
Labor --Nelson Lichtenstein (Nathan Newman via eRobin)
"Onetime Ford Motor die-maker Walter Reuther launched a sit-down
strike in 1937 that forced General Motors to bargain with a multiplant
union. Another key strike against GM, led by the indefatigable, self-confident
United Automobile Workers (UAW) president from Wheeling, W.Va., ended
in 1946 in a Pyrrhic victory for labor, setting off a wage-price upward
spiral and marking the onset of the fragmentation of union power. Liberal,
ex-socialist Reuther (1907-1970), who, as Congress of Industrial Organizations
president, helped engineer that group's merger with the American Federation
of Labor in 1955, was a magnetic figure to the noncommunist left."
Working
Class New York -- Joshua B. Freeman (Nathan Newman via
eRobin)
"In this absorbing and beautifully detailed history, Freeman charts
the postwar rise and eventual fall of Manhattan working-class life and
culture: "a story of massive movements of population and industry,
tenacious struggle for rights and equality and ongoing discrimination
and inequity." In 1946, 2.6 million men and women (out of 3.3 million
employed) were working-class or blue-collar workers, many belonging
to strong unions."
The
Copper Crucible: : How the Arizona Miners' Strike of 1983 Recast Labor-Management
Relations in America (Nathan Newman via eRobin)
"The 1981 firing and replacing of striking air traffic controllers
by President Ronald Reagan is considered the start of labor's current
decline. Legal protection of employees' right to join unions is now
often ineffective and the strike, once labor's most potent weapon, has
been defanged by employers who use permanent replacements for striking
workers. In his first book, lawyer and journalist Rosenblum argues convincingly
that the crucial struggle over permanent replacements came not with
PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) but in the
lesser-known 1983-1986 strike by the United Steelworkers of America
against the Phelps Dodge copper company in Arizona and Texas."
Teamster
Rebellion -- Farrell Dobs (MikeB)
"The 1934 strikes that built the industrial union movement in Minneapolis
and helped pave the way for the CIO, recounted by a central leader of
that battle. The first in a four-volume series on the class-struggle
leadership of the strikes and organizing drives that transformed the
Teamsters union in much of the Midwest into a fighting social movement
and pointed the road toward independent labor political action."
The
Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs -- Ray
Ginger (MikeB)
"This moving biography presents the definitive story of the life
and legacy of the most eloquent spokesperson and leader of the US labor
and socialist movements."
Them
and Us: Struggles of a Rank-and-File Union -- James Matles
(MikeB)
no description given
John
L. Lewis: An Anauthorized Biography -- Saul David Alinsky
(MikeB)
no description given
