Embedded With Organized Labor

Embedded With Organized Labor:

Journalistic Reflections on the Class War
at Home

by Steve Early

ISBN: 978-1-58367-188-7
$17.95 paperback
288 pp.

Category: Labor

Join author Steve Early for a talk on the most pressing issues facing the U.S. labor movement today. Click here for a list of dates and locations.

Watch Steve Early interviewed by Laura Flanders on GRITtv:

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“Steve Early has long been a voice of distinctive clarity, honesty and intellectual seriousness in and about the labor movement. This collection performs a valuable service in bringing together a broad sample of his writing on class, politics, the trade union movement, its status and prospects. As always with Early’s work, these essays are grounded in concrete history and problems. To that extent, they also provide a unique window onto the last several decades of evolving American political history. At a time like this it is all the more important to have the benefit of a voice like his.”

—Adolph Reed Jr.
Professor of Political Science,
University of Pennsylvania

“Steve Early says things other people in the labor movement would like to say but don’t, because of protocol, fear of firing, or, if truth be told, fear of afflicting the comfortable.”

—Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes

“This is an exciting collection that respects workers enough to engage them in desperately needed discussions about union strategy. It presents a radical defense of the working class and an uncompromising critique of the labor movement as it exists today.”

—Sam Gindin, York University
Former Research Director,
Canadian Auto Workers

“For three decades, Steve Early has been in the forefront of the fight for worker power and union democracy. His experience as an organizer gives him rare insight into the problems that unions face.”

—Sal Rosselli
ex-President, SEIU/United
Health Care Workers-West

Embedded With Organized Labor describes how union members have organized successfully, on the job and in the community, in the face of employer opposition now and in the past. The author has produced a provocative series of essays—an unusual exercise in “participatory labor journalism” useful to any reader concerned about social and economic justice. As workers struggle to survive and the labor movement tries to revive during the current economic crisis, this book provides ideas and inspiration for union activists and friends of labor alike.

Steve Early has been an organizer, strike strategist, labor educator, and lawyer. He recently retired from his job as national staff member of the Communications Workers of America. Early’s articles, reviews, and op-ed pieces have appeared in The Nation, New Politics, CounterPunch, The Progressive, American Prospect, WorkingUSA, New Labor Forum, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and many other publications. He is currently completing a book on the role of 1960s activists in American unions.

More Praise for Steve Early and Embedded With Organized Labor:

“Steve Early’s collected works is a real treasure trove. The author’s astute analysis of labor’s historic struggles, its achievements and shortcomings, is spiced by a lively writing style and enriched by years of personal involvement in unions. This is a book that every labor activist should read and think about.”

—Harry Kelber
Editor, The Labor Educator

“For those of us who continue to believe that a revitalized labor movement remains the last best hope for social change in America, Early’s reporting is simply irreplaceable.”

—Rose Ann DeMoro
Executive Director,
California Nurses Association/NNOC

“There aren’t many people who could pull off Early’s hat trick. Here’s a full–time union representative with an academician’s smarts and education—and he can write. The result is a volume that will have long–time labor activists nodding their heads in recognition, union observers scribbling footnotes, and working people gaining a better appreciation of why unions are the way they are, for better and worse.”

—Andy Zipser
Editor, The Guild Reporter,
The Newspaper Guild/CWA

“Embedded With Organized Labor contains some very timely reflections on labor law reform and enforcement. As American unions try once again to seek changes in the National Labor Relations Act, they’d be well advised to consult this author’s account of how and why similar campaigns have failed in the past.”

—Lee Adler
Attorney and Labor Law Instructor,
Cornell ILR School and Labor Extension Program

“If organized labor is ever going to regain its clout in the era of globalization, it must, as this collection argues, embrace real cross–border solidarity and bottom–up organizing.”

—Ellen David-Friedman
Research Associate,
Harvard Labor & Worklife Program
Former Organizing Director, Vermont–NEA

“Steve Early has never left the front lines of labor. He challenges unions to trust in the members and their right to be heard. He’s relentless about the importance of workers’ power on the job and in the community.”

—Hetty Rosenstein
New Jersey Area Director,
Communications Workers of America

“This collection demonstrates Steve Early’s status as one of the leading organic intellectuals in labor. Early’s attention to what workers read, think, say, and do places them at the center of his work as the active agents of their own lives and futures.”

—Peter Rachleff
Professor of History, Macalester College,
and Minnesota labor activist

“Early combines a realistic understanding of union functioning with the passionate outrage of a union reformer.”

—Mike Parker
coauthor, Democracy is Power: Rebuilding
Unions from the Bottom

“Steve Early aided organizing drives, contract campaigns, bargaining sessions, and strikes involving CWA members for more than 25 years. His book gives us the benefit of his own experience and that of the many other authors and activists whose work is vividly described in this collection.”

—Peter Kellman
President, Southern Maine
Labor Council, AFL–CIO

“Steve Early is more than just a keen observer of labor and grassroots movements to revitalize it. He’s been an activist deeply engaged at the rank–and–file level, which gives his journalism special urgency and relevance.”

—Ken Paff
National Organizer,
Teamsters for a Democratic Union

“Telling truth to power is seldom easy. Embedded With Organized Labor describes unionism as it should be, not as it sometimes is. The author’s insistence on union democracy is a singular feature of his work.”

—Jerry Tucker
former United Auto Workers Regional Director,
IEB Member

“Steve Early’s own background in the labor movement makes this collection particularly insightful and worthwhile. He argues that unions must have a profoundly democratic vision if they want to be more effective as a force for progressive change.”

—Frank Emspak
Executive Producer, Workers Independent News
Emeritus Professor, University of Wisconsin School for Workers

“Steve Early’s book displays a balanced, clear–thinking approach to a wide range of working class issues, reflecting the author’s knowledge of labor history, his writing skill, and his unusual ability to connect with a broad audience of labor activists and intellectuals.”

—Marty Fishgold
Past President, International
Labor Communications Association

“I’m always eager to read Steve Early’s latest article, and now this book brings together many fine pieces about key issues facing the workers’ movement as well as past struggles that have lessons for us today. Highly recommended for activists and anyone who wants to understand U.S. labor.”

—David Camfield
Labour Studies, University of Manitoba

“I shudder to think what the labor movement would be like without Steve Early around to help us seek some accountability from those currently in charge.”

—Tom Leedham
Secretary–Treasurer, Teamsters Local 206
former IBT Warehouse Division, Director