Beaten Down, Worked Up
Beaten Down, Worked Up

Author: Steven Greenhouse

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2019-08-06

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1101874430

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“A page-turning book that spans a century of worker strikes.... Engrossing, character-driven, panoramic.” —The New York Times Book Review We live in an era of soaring corporate profits and anemic wage gains, one in which low-paid jobs and blighted blue-collar communities have become a common feature of our nation’s landscape. Behind these trends lies a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power. Award-winning journalist and author Steven Greenhouse guides us through the key episodes and trends in history that are essential to understanding some of our nation’s most pressing problems, including increased income inequality, declining social mobility, and the concentration of political power in the hands of the wealthy few. He exposes the modern labor landscape with the stories of dozens of American workers, from GM employees to Uber drivers to underpaid schoolteachers. Their fight to take power back is crucial for America’s future, and Greenhouse proposes concrete, feasible ways in which workers’ collective power can be—and is being—rekindled and reimagined in the twenty-first century. Beaten Down, Worked Up is a stirring and essential look at labor in America, poised as it is between the tumultuous struggles of the past and the vital, hopeful struggles ahead. A PBS NewsHour Now Read This Book Club Pick

The Big Squeeze
The Big Squeeze

Author: Steven Greenhouse

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2009-02-10

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1400096529

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Why, in the world's most affluent nation, are so many corporations squeezing their employees dry? In this fresh, carefully researched book, New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse explores the economic, political, and social trends that are transforming America's workplaces, including the decline of the social contract that created the world's largest middle class and guaranteed job security and good pensions. We meet all kinds of workers—white-collar and blue-collar, high-tech and low-tech, middle-class and low-income—as we see shocking examples of injustice, including employees who are locked in during a hurricane or fired after suffering debilitating, on-the-job injuries. With pragmatic recommendations on what government, business and labor should do to alleviate the economic crunch, The Big Squeeze is a balanced, consistently revealing look at a major American crisis.

Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell)
Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell)

Author: Jane McAlevey

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2014-05-06

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1781683158

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This “breath-taking trip through the union-organizing scene of America in the 21st century” reveals the victories and unconventional strategies of a renowned—and notorious—militant union organizer (Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed) In 1995, in the first contested election in the history of the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney won the presidency of the nation’s largest labor federation, promising renewal and resurgence. Today, less than 7 percent of American private-sector workers belong to a union, the lowest percentage since the beginning of the twentieth century, and public employee collective bargaining has been dealt devastating blows in Wisconsin and elsewhere. What happened? Jane McAlevey is famous—and notorious—in the American labor movement as the hard-charging organizer who racked up a string of victories at a time when union leaders said winning wasn’t possible. Then she was bounced from the movement, a victim of the high-level internecine warfare that has torn apart organized labor. In this engrossing and funny narrative—that reflects the personality of its charismatic, wisecracking author—McAlevey tells the story of a number of dramatic organizing and contract victories, and the unconventional strategies that helped achieve them. Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) argues that labor can be revived, but only if the movement acknowledges its mistakes and fully commits to deep organizing, participatory education, militancy, and an approach to workers and their communities that more resembles the campaigns of the 1930s—in short, social movement unionism that involves raising workers’ expectations (while raising hell).

Summary of Steven Greenhouse's Beaten Down, Worked Up
Summary of Steven Greenhouse's Beaten Down, Worked Up

Author: Everest Media,

Publisher: Everest Media LLC

Published: 2022-05-24T22:59:00Z

Total Pages: 50

ISBN-13:

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Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 Some workers, like Jorge Porras, were not paid for the hours they worked. When they complained, their employer fired them. #2 Laura Fox, an elementary school music teacher in Phoenix, Arizona, was having a hard time making ends meet. She took a twenty-hour-a-week job at McDonald’s. #3 Something is fundamentally wrong in the way many American employers treat their workers. Too often, they fail to show workers basic respect, and they fail to heed workers’ most fundamental concerns. #4 American workers have been frustrated with their stagnant wages and shuttered factories, and this was a major reason behind Trump’s victory in the 2016 election. Trump has continued to undermine labor unions and workers’ rights.

Beaten Down, Worked Up
Beaten Down, Worked Up

Author: Steven Greenhouse

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2020-07-21

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 1101872799

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“A page-turning book that spans a century of worker strikes.... Engrossing, character-driven, panoramic.” —The New York Times Book Review We live in an era of soaring corporate profits and anemic wage gains, one in which low-paid jobs and blighted blue-collar communities have become a common feature of our nation’s landscape. Behind these trends lies a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power. Award-winning journalist and author Steven Greenhouse guides us through the key episodes and trends in history that are essential to understanding some of our nation’s most pressing problems, including increased income inequality, declining social mobility, and the concentration of political power in the hands of the wealthy few. He exposes the modern labor landscape with the stories of dozens of American workers, from GM employees to Uber drivers to underpaid schoolteachers. Their fight to take power back is crucial for America’s future, and Greenhouse proposes concrete, feasible ways in which workers’ collective power can be—and is being—rekindled and reimagined in the twenty-first century. Beaten Down, Worked Up is a stirring and essential look at labor in America, poised as it is between the tumultuous struggles of the past and the vital, hopeful struggles ahead. A PBS NewsHour Now Read This Book Club Pick

The Work of the Future
The Work of the Future

Author: David H. Autor

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-06-21

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 0262367742

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Why the United States lags behind other industrialized countries in sharing the benefits of innovation with workers and how we can remedy the problem. The United States has too many low-quality, low-wage jobs. Every country has its share, but those in the United States are especially poorly paid and often without benefits. Meanwhile, overall productivity increases steadily and new technology has transformed large parts of the economy, enhancing the skills and paychecks of higher paid knowledge workers. What’s wrong with this picture? Why have so many workers benefited so little from decades of growth? The Work of the Future shows that technology is neither the problem nor the solution. We can build better jobs if we create institutions that leverage technological innovation and also support workers though long cycles of technological transformation. Building on findings from the multiyear MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, the book argues that we must foster institutional innovations that complement technological change. Skills programs that emphasize work-based and hybrid learning (in person and online), for example, empower workers to become and remain productive in a continuously evolving workplace. Industries fueled by new technology that augments workers can supply good jobs, and federal investment in R&D can help make these industries worker-friendly. We must act to ensure that the labor market of the future offers benefits, opportunity, and a measure of economic security to all.

For Labor To Build Upon
For Labor To Build Upon

Author: William B. Gould IV

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-06-02

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 1009179691

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One of the enduring legacies of the United States Civil War is that democracy in the workforce is an essential part of societal democracy. But the past century has seen a marked decline in the number of unionized employees, a trend that has increased with the rise of the internet and low-paying, gig-economy jobs that lack union protection. William B. Gould IV takes stock of this history and finds that unions, frequently providing inadequate energy and resources in organizing the unorganized, have a mixed record in dealing with many public-policy issues, particularly involving race. But Gould argues that unions, notwithstanding these failures, are still the best means to protect essential workers in health, groceries, food processing, agriculture, and the meatpacking industry, and that the law, when properly deployed, can be a remedy not only for trade union-employer relationships, but also for the ailments of democracy itself.

The UAW's Southern Gamble
The UAW's Southern Gamble

Author: Stephen J. Silvia

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2023-05-15

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 1501769715

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The UAW's Southern Gamble is the first in-depth assessment of the United Auto Workers' efforts to organize foreign vehicle plants (Daimler-Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Volkswagen) in the American South since 1989, an era when union membership declined precipitously. Stephen J. Silvia chronicles transnational union cooperation between the UAW and its counterparts in Brazil, France, Germany, and Japan and documents the development of employer strategies that have proven increasingly effective at thwarting unionization. Silvia shows that when organizing, unions must now fight on three fronts: at the worksite; in the corporate boardroom; and in the political realm. The UAW's Southern Gamble makes clear that the UAW's failed campaigns in the South can teach hard-won lessons about challenging the structural and legal roadblocks to union participation and effectively organizing workers within and beyond the auto industry.

A Great Disorder
A Great Disorder

Author: Richard Slotkin

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2024-03-05

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 0674297024

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Longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award in Nonfiction “Sweeping...A new way to make sense not only of the past, but of the contemporary culture wars.” —New York Times Book Review “A provocative culmination of Slotkin’s field-defining arguments on the place of violence in creating America.” —Kathleen Belew “Brisk, bold, and thought-provoking.” —Daniel Lazare, Arts Fuse “[An] exciting and detailed new decoder ring of a book...While it is usually hyperbolic to claim that a book will change your life, this one may well have a permanent effect on how you consume and think about American political news.” —Tom Zoellner, Los Angeles Review of Books Red America and Blue America are so divided they could be two different countries, with wildly diverging views of why government exists and who counts as American. Their ideologies are grounded in different versions of American history, endorsing irreconcilable visions of patriotism and national identity. A Great Disorder is a bold, urgent work that helps us make sense of today’s culture wars through a brilliant reconsideration of America’s foundational myths and their use in contemporary politics. Richard Slotkin identifies five key narratives that have shaped our conception of what it means to be American: the myths of the Frontier, the Founding, the Civil War (with dueling views of it as Liberation or the Lost Cause), and the Good War. Today, Slotkin argues, Trump and his MAGA followers play up a frontier-inspired hostility to the federal government and rally around Confederate symbols to champion a racially exclusive definition of American nationality; meanwhile, Blue America takes its cue from the protest movements of the 1960s, envisioning a limitlessly pluralistic country in which the federal government is the ultimate enforcer of rights and opportunities. With these opposing perspectives, American history—and the foundations of our democracy—has become a battleground. It remains to be seen which vision will prevail.

Issues for Debate in American Public Policy
Issues for Debate in American Public Policy

Author: CQ Researcher,

Publisher: CQ Press

Published: 2021-08-26

Total Pages: 439

ISBN-13: 1071835262

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Written by award-winning CQ Researcher journalists, this collection of non-partisan reports offers an in-depth examination of today’s most pressing policy issues.