Organize! My Life as a Union Man PDF Download

Author: Wyndham Mortimer
Publisher: Boston : Beacon Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Author: Edward McClelland
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807039683
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Winner of the 2021 Midland Authors Book Award in History In a time of great inequality and a gutted middle class, the dramatic story of “the strike heard around the world” is a testament to what workers can gain when they stand up for their rights. The tumultuous Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937 was the birth of the United Auto Workers, which set the standard for wages in every industry. Midnight in Vehicle City tells the gripping story of how workers defeated General Motors, the largest industrial corporation in the world. Their victory ushered in the golden age of the American middle class and created a new kind of America, one in which every worker had a right to a share of the company’s wealth. The causes for which the strikers sat down—collective bargaining, secure retirement, better wages—enjoyed a half century of success. But now, the middle class is disappearing and economic inequality is at its highest since before the New Deal. Journalist and historian Edward McClelland brings the action-packed events of the strike back to life—through the voices of those who lived it. In vivid play-by-plays, McClelland narrates the dramatic scenes including of the takeovers of GM plants; violent showdowns between picketers and the police; Michigan governor Frank Murphy’s activation of the National Guard; the actions of the militaristic Women’s Emergency Brigade who carried billy clubs and vowed to protect strikers from police; and tense negotiations between labor leader John L. Lewis, GM chairman Alfred P. Sloan, and labor secretary Frances Perkins. The epic tale of the strike and its lasting legacy shows why the middle class is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century and will guide our understanding of what we will lose if we don’t revive it.

Author: John Atlas
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
ISBN: 0826517072
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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"There is more value on a single page of Seeds of Change than in a year's worth of Rush Limbaugh screeds combined with a lifetime of Sarah Palin sneers at community organizers." --Todd Gitlin Seeds of Change goes beyond the headlines of the last Presidential campaign to describe what really happened in ACORN's massive voter registration drives, why it triggered an unrelenting attack by Fox News and the Republican Party, and how it confronted its internal divisions and scandals. Based on Atlas's own eyewitness original reporting, as the only journalist to have access to ACORN's staff and board meetings, this book documents the critical transition from founder Wade Rathke, a white New Orleans radical to Bertha Lewis, a Brooklyn African American activist. The story begins in the 1970s, when a small group of young men and women, led by a charismatic college dropout, began a quest to help the powerless help themselves. In a tale full of unusual characters and dramatic conflicts, the book follows the ups and downs of ACORN's organizers and members as they confront big corporations and unresponsive government officials in Albuquerque, Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit, Little Rock, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and the Twin Cities. The author follows the course of local and national campaigns to organize unions, fight the subprime mortgage crisis, promote living wages for working people, struggle for affordable housing and against gentrification, and help Hurricane Katrina's survivors return to New Orleans. The book dispels the conservative myth that we can only help the poor through private soup kitchens and charity and the liberal myth that the solution rests simply with more government services. Seeds of Change, not only provides a gripping look at ACORN's four decades of effective organizing, but also offers a hopeful analysis of the potential for a revival of real American democracy. An offering of The Progressive Book Club.

Author: Larry Ceplair
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231065320
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Although deconstruction has become a popular catchword, as an intellectual movement it has never entirely caught on within the university. For some in the academy, deconstruction, and Jacques Derrida in particular, are responsible for the demise of accountability in the study of literature. Countering these facile dismissals of Derrida and deconstruction, Herman Rapaport explores the incoherence that has plagued critical theory since the 1960s and the resulting legitimacy crisis in the humanities. Against the backdrop of a rich, informed discussion of Derrida's writings--and how they have been misconstrued by critics and admirers alike--The Theory Mess investigates the vicissitudes of Anglo-American criticism over the past thirty years and proposes some possibilities for reform.

Author: Maurice Isserman
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252063367
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Author: Steve Babson
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814334966
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 600

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Biography of Ernie Goodman, a Detroit lawyer and political activist who played a key role in social justice cases. In a working life that spanned half a century, Ernie Goodman was one of the nation's preeminent defense attorneys for workers and the militant poor. His remarkable career put him at the center of the struggle for social justice in the twentieth century, from the sit-down strikes of the 1930s to the Red Scare of the 1950s to the freedom struggles, anti-war demonstrations, and ghetto rebellions of the 1960s and 1970s. The Color of Law: Ernie Goodman, Detroit, and the Struggle for Labor and Civil Rights traces Goodman's journey through these tumultuous events and highlights the many moments when changing perceptions of social justice clashed with legal precedent. Authors Steve Babson, Dave Riddle, and David Elsila tell Goodman's life story, beginning with his formative years as the son of immigrant parents in Detroit's Jewish ghetto, to his early ambitions as a corporate lawyer, and his conversion to socialism and labor law during the Great Depression. From Detroit to Mississippi, Goodman saw police and other officials giving the "color of law" to actions that stifled freedom of speech and nullified the rights of workers and minorities. The authors highlight Goodman's landmark cases in defense of labor and civil rights and examine the complex relationships he developed along the way with individuals like Supreme Court Justice and former Michigan governor Frank Murphy, UAW president Walter Reuther, Detroit mayor Coleman Young, and congressman George Crockett. Drawing from a rich collection of letters, oral histories, court records, and press accounts, the authors re-create the compelling story of Goodman's life. The Color of Law demonstrates that the abuse of power is non-partisan and that individuals who oppose injustice can change the course of events.

Author: Robert Forrant
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351842943
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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On February 4, 1986, the lives of thousands of workers changed in ways they could only begin to imagine. On that day, United Technologies Corporation ordered the closure of the 76-year-old American Bosch manufacturing plant in Springfield, Massachusetts, capping a nearly 32-year history of job loss and work relocation from the sprawling factory. The author, a former Bosch worker and the business agent for the union representing nearly 1,200 Bosch employees when the plant closed, interjects his personal recollections into the story.For more than 150 years Springfield stood at the center of a prosperous 200-mile industrial corridor along the Connecticut River, between Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Springfield, Vermont, populated with hundreds of machine tool and metalworking plants and thousands of workers. This book is a historical account of the profound economic collapse of the Connecticut River Valley region, with a particular focus on Bosch, its workers, and its union. The shutdown is placed in the context of the wider region's deindustrialization. The closure marked the watershed for large-firm metalworking and metalworking unions in the Connecticut River Valley. The book also describes how the United States, in a ten-year period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, went from being the world's leading exporter of machine tools to its leading importer, and how that sharp decline affected the region's leading city, Springfield, Massachusetts, which by 2005 was in danger of bankruptcy.

Author: Joyce Shaw Peterson
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780887065736
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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“The book is a first-rate social history of automobile workers in the pre-union era. I wish that I had written it.” — Stephen Meyer, University of Wisconsin-Parkside This book is a comprehensive history of automobile workers in the pre-union era. It covers changes in the kinds of workers who staffed the auto factories, developments in the labor process and in overall conditions of work, daily life outside the factories, informal responses of workers to routinized, monotonous, and highly structured work, and automobile worker unions before the creation of the United Automobile Workers. Although the 1920s were seen at the time as a period of peaceful and cooperative labor relations, author Joyce Peterson looks beneath the surface to discover the many ways in which auto workers expressed their displeasure with and attempted to fight against working conditions. The book also examines the Briggs strike of 1933, the first strike to significantly register the impact of the Great Depression upon the automobile industry and to mark the end of the pre-union era. The automobile industry was a model of twentieth century mass production techniques, of managerial organization, and of labor relations. Studying automobile workers in their historical and social setting explains a great deal about the nature of modern industry—how it affects the daily life and work of employees and how workers see themselves as individuals and members of a working class.

Author: United States. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Labor
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Publishes in-depth articles on labor subjects, current labor statistics, information about current labor contracts, and book reviews.

Author: Aaron Brenner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317457064
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1442

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Strikes have been part of American labor relations from colonial days to the present, reflecting the widespread class conflict that has run throughout the nation's history. Against employers and their goons, against the police, the National Guard, local, state, and national officials, against racist vigilantes, against their union leaders, and against each other, American workers have walked off the job for higher wages, better benefits, bargaining rights, legislation, job control, and just plain dignity. At times, their actions have motivated groundbreaking legislation, defining new rights for all citizens; at other times they have led to loss of workers' lives. This comprehensive encyclopedia is the first detailed collection of historical research on strikes in America. To provide the analytical tools for understanding strikes, the volume includes two types of essays - those focused on an industry or economic sector, and those focused on a theme. Each industry essay introduces a group of workers and their employers and places them in their economic, political, and community contexts. The essay then describes the industry's various strikes, including the main issues involved and outcomes achieved, and assesses the impact of the strikes on the industry over time. Thematic essays address questions that can only be answered by looking at a variety of strikes across industries, groups of workers, and time, such as, why the number of strikes has declined since the 1970s, or why there was a strike wave in 1946. The contributors include historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers, as well as current and past activists from unions and other social movement organizations. Photos, a Topic Finder, a bibliography, and name and subject indexes add to the works appeal.