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This title in other formats:Poor Workers' Unions: Rebuilding Labor from Belowby Vanessa Tait
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:"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. In the process, she does a stunning job of helping us imagine workers'movements that are creative, democratic, and, above all, build power from below-pointing the way to a vibrant future for labor."-Dana Frank, UC-Santa Cruz; author of Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism "A critical contribution to broadening our understanding of who and what is the labor movement in the USA. . . . Tait captures the dynamism of alternative forms of working class organization that have long been ignored. In formulating a new direction for organized labor in the USA, the history Tait addresses must become a recognized part of our foundation."-Bill Fletcher, Jr., President, TransAfrica Forum and former assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney "While the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions desperately try to figure out how to rebuild and energize the labor movement, this exceptional book reveals that poor workers have been showing the way for the past forty years. Utilizing original documents, Tait examines . . . a wide range of movements organized by poor workers to improve their circumstances and build a more just society, including the Revolutionary Union Movement, the National Welfare Rights Organization, ACORN's Unite Labor Unions, workfare unions, and independent workers'centers. She demonstrates that these movements were founded and developed upon principles of rank-and-file control, democracy, community involvement, and solidarity and aimed to improve all aspects of workers'lives. . . . Both labor activists and labor historians will learn much from this book."-Michael Yates, author of Why Unions Matter Book News Annotation:Journalist and labor activist Tait surveys some of the growing
movements in which workers too poor to interest the big-money unions
are organizing to improve their lives. Drawing on archives and
interviews, she looks at unionizing progressive movements, trade
union responses to the challenge, community organizing turning to
labor, reviving an activist culture, and other examples. As with many
leftists, she praises the work of ACORN without noticing how it
quashed efforts by its own workers to organize.
Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Review:"The most important contribution yet to the current debate over the smartest direction for the labor movement's future." David Swanson, International Labor Communications Association Review:"Poor Workers' Unions is an important and inspiring book about how workers of color and women workers are taking the lead in building democratic, grassroots labor and community movements even in today's hostile political climate." Karen Brodkin Sacks, professor of women's studies and anthropology, UCLA Review:"Poor Workers' Unions reminds us that participatory democracy, a concept that animated progressive activism in the 1960s, should not be abandoned in today's labor movement." Steve Early, Communications Workers of America Review:"Vanessa Tait's insightful documentation of poor people's organizing and the labor movement over the last fifty years reminds us of this important history. Poor Workers' Unions is evidence that activism is not dead but has been rejuvenated under a broader justice agenda that addresses women and men's everyday lives." Mary Romero, author of Maid in the U.S.A. Review:"Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic won't revive the labor movement. Poor Workers' Unions examines some of the most exciting and impressive attempts to develop new forms to incorporate workers whom unions have largely neglected. Vanessa Tait makes a valuable contribution to the new impulse by showing us the struggles already underway." Dan Clawson, author of The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements Review:"History has shown that periods of insurgence in the labor movement have been driven by workers who were formerly marginalized by the existing labor movement and that these workers have organized themselves and built institutions which differ markedly from existing unions. Tait's Poor Workers' Unions documents the contemporary recurrence of this historical pattern [and] offers hope to those of us who continue to anticipate a turnaround in the fortunes of the U.S. labor movement." Peter Rachleff, author of Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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