Labor Fights Back
In early 2011, the nation was stunned to watch Wisconsin’s state capitol in Madison came under sudden and unexpected occupation by union members and their allies. The protests to defend collective bargaining rights were militant and practically unheard of in this era of declining union power. This timely book brings together some of the best labor journalists and scholars in the United States, many of whom were on the ground at the time, to examine the causes and impact of events, and suggest how the labor movement might proceed.… | more |
The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism
How Market Tyranny Stifles the Economy by Stunting Workers
Mainstream, or more formally, neoclassical, economics claims to be a science. But as Michael Perelman makes clear in his latest book, nothing could be further from the truth. While a science must be rooted in material reality, mainstream economics ignores or distorts the most fundamental aspect of this reality: that the vast majority of people must, out of necessity, labor on behalf of others, transformed into nothing but a means to the end of maximum profits for their employers. The nature of the work we do and the conditions under which we do it profoundly shape our lives. And yet, both of these factors are peripheral to mainstream economics.… | more |
Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home
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.… | more |
Why Unions Matter: Second Edition
10th Anniversary Update
In this new edition of Why Unions Matter, Michael D. Yates shows why unions still matter. Unions mean better pay, benefits, and working conditions for their members; they force employers to treat employees with dignity and respect; and at their best, they provide a way for workers to make society both more democratic and egalitarian. Yates uses simple language, clear data, and engaging examples to show why workers need unions, how unions are formed, how they operate, how collective bargaining works, the role of unions in politics, and what unions have done to bring workers together across the divides of race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation.… | more |
The Fight To Free The Charleston 5
Longshoremen stand at the nexus of the global economy, handling nearly every cargo container that enters or leaves any country. Even in the face of the “containerization” of cargo in the 70s and 80s, a development that decimated longshore unions, they have managed to win contracts that provide exceptional benefits and high wages.… | more |
Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education
In the last twenty years, higher education in the United States has been eroded by massive reliance on temporary academic labor—professors without tenure or the prospect of tenure, paid a fraction of the salaries of their tenured colleagues, working without benefits, offices, or research assistance, and often commuting between several campuses to make ends meet. Contingent instructors now constitute the majority of faculty at U.S. colleges and universities.… | more |
Technology, Jobs, and the Organization of Office Work
In this eye-opening book, Joan Greenbaum tells the story of changes in management policies, work organization, and the design of office information systems from the 1950s to the present. Windows on the Workplace takes us behind the news stories of the highly efficient, high-tech workplace and shows us the ways in which technologies—computers, mobile phones, the internet—have been adapted by management to reshape the way work is done. In tracing the introduction of new technologies, Greenbaum reveals how organizations use them to benefit from both increased profits and more intense control over the workforce.… | more |
Virtual Work in a Real World
The workplace has been changed in recent decades by the rise of digital technologies. Parts of a single labor process can be moved around the world, with implications not only for individual workplaces or firms, but for the working class as a whole. Computer operators in India process medical transcriptions for doctors in the United States at one-eighth of what U.S. computer operators would earn, and at four times the salary of an Indian schoolteacher.… | more |
Inequality and Work in the Global Economy
The economic boom of the 1990s created huge wealth for the bosses, but benefitted workers hardly at all. At the same time, the bosses were able to take the political initiative and even the moral high ground, while workers were often divided against each other. This new book by leading labor analyst Michael D. Yates seeks to explain how this happened, and what can be done about it.… | more |
The Agitprop Murals of Mike Alewitz
The most prolific U.S. labor muralist since the 1940s, Alewitz follows the traditions of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Siqueiros as well as the early painters of the Russian Revolution. With a demonstrated blend of artistic integrity and political commitment, Insurgent Images combines grand historical themes with enlivening detail, to illustrate the interplay between personality and event. Alewitz brings to this tradition his own rich sense of irony, humor, and fantasy to illuminate the hidden spaces where connections between the workforce of the U.S. and its extended relatives across the planet are to be found.… | more |