Industrial relations, occupational health Books

Book SynopsisThis practical guide—and popular reference—helps you evaluate the efficiency of your company's current safety and health processes and make fact-based decisions that continually improve overall performance. Newly updated, this edition now also shows you how to incorporate safety management system components into your safety performance program and provides you with additional techniques for analyzing safety performance data. Written for safety professionals with limited exposure to statistics and safety-performance-measurement strategies, this comprehensive book shows you how to assess trends, inconsistencies, data, safety climates, and training in your workplace so you can identify areas that need corrective actions before an accident or injury occurs. To help you develop an effective safety metrics program, the author includes both an overview of safety metrics, data collection, and analysis and a set of detailed procedures for collecting data, analyzing it, and presenting it. You'll examine a comprehensive collection of tools and techniques that includes run charts and control charts, trending and forecasting, benchmarking, insurance rating systems, performance indices, the Baldrige Model, and six sigma. In addition, you'll find exercises and questions in each chapter that allow you to practice and review what you've learned. All answers are provided in an appendix. Techniques and tools discussed in this book include descriptive and inferential statistics, cause and effect analyses, measures of variability, and probability. Safety metric program development, implementation, and evaluation techniques are presented as well.Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Managing Safety Performance Chapter 3 Safety Goals and Objectives Chapter 4 Developing Safety Performance Indicators Chapter 5 Defining Safety Metrics Chapter 6 Implementing the Safety Performance Program Chapter 7 Statistical Methods in Safety Metrics Chapter 8 Run Charts and Control Charts Chapter 9 Trending and Forecasting Chapter 10 Effective Data Presentation Chapter 11 Auditing Safety Performance Chapter 12 Behavior Based Safety Metrics Chapter 13 Measuring Safety Training Performance Chapter 14 Assessment Techniques Chapter 15 Voluntary and National Consensus Standards

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Book SynopsisAn insightful and timely analysis of how global economic restructuring will impact workers' struggles in the US. On New Terrain challenges conventional wisdom about a disappearing working class and the inevitability of a two-party political structure as the only framework for struggle. Through in-depth study of the economic and political shifts at the top of society, Moody shows how recent developments in capitalist production impact the working class and its power to resist the status quo.Trade Review“[A] masterful and much-needed book.” —Solidarity "Kim Moody's provocative work 'On New Terrain' immediately shakes the reader by offering a hard hitting, concrete and sober analysis of the transformation of both the capitalist and working classes of the USA. His analysis lays the foundation for the development of theory to situate a 21st century working class reawakening. Moody offers the reader a pole of opinion which helps to advance a badly needed debate that has profound implications for the creation of a movement for socialism." -Bill Fletcher, Jr., coauthor of "Solidarity Divided"; author of "'They're Bankrupting Us' - And Twenty Other Myths about Unions" "Moody's "new terrain" is not a world, as most would have it, where globalization has left U.S. workers helpless. It shows how corporations' inevitable push for profits actually opens up new vulnerabilities—if only unions can get their act together. He explodes myths about the gig economy and the potential to transform the Democratic Party. Readers will put the book down convinced that there is a way for workers to win." -Jane Slaughter, LaborNotes "Kim Moody, whose books and articles have for more than forty years provided essential analysis and strategy for the labor left, continues this indispensable work in his new book, On New Terrain: How Capital is Reshaping the Battleground of Class War. Arguing that capital has created a new and more advantageous terrain for working class struggle, he suggests that capital is more vulnerable, but the labor and social movements must be able to make the most of the situation. And Moody suggests how they might do so. The working class, he argues, also has the potential to create its own political force, but only if it can avoid the cul-de-sac of the Democratic Party. Every labor activist and all of those who want to build a powerful left in America will want to get this book." – Dan La Botz, New Politics “This is a detailed and provocative study of how capital has changed since the 1980s and its effects on the working class and political parties in the USA and across the world. It rejects the notion that we live in a post-capitalist world or that the ‘gig economy’ dominates industrial relations. Instead, it presents a classical Marxist analysis that painstakingly shows how the composition of the ‘core working class’ has changed in its occupational, industrial and ethno/racial composition under changing business practices since the 1980s.” –Scottish Left Review “Kim Moody, has been one most of the most experienced working-class organisers in the US over the past few decades. His latest book On New Terrain seeks to rethink both our understanding of capitalism today, and how the workers can respond.” –Monthly Review “Veteran US activist and author, Kim Moody, offers a timely antidote to despair about the potential of America’s working class to play a central role both in resisting the Trump agenda and the neo-liberal brand of capitalism that paved ‘The Donald’s’ path to the White House.” –Labour Briefing “Moody’s argument not only insists the working class still exists but that its structural capacity to organise and paralyse production has grown as the restructuring and consolidation of capital has created a “new terrain” for the class struggle. Such a case is highly welcome to socialists who argue that workers possess the collective power to not just challenge capital but to break it.” –Socialist Review “The best recent work on the history and the contemporary promise of the move from Ford to Tesco.” –Red Pepper “Despite the election of Trump and the rise of the alt-right, the huge support for Bernie Sander’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic Presidential nomination, the Black Lives Matter movement and the wave of teachers’ strikes show that there is plenty of anger among US workers. Moody’s welcome and important book shows that they still have the power to resist and how socialists can build a mass movement of opposition to neoliberalism in its heartland.” –International Socialism JournalTable of ContentsPart I: Re-Making of the US Working Class Chapter 1 The Roots of Change Chapter 2 How Precarious is Work? Chapter 3 A More Diverse Working Class Part II: The Changing Terrain of Class Struggle Chapter 4 Consolidation of Capital Chapter 5 Capital’s Supply Chain Gang Chapter 6 The Next Upsurge? Part III: The Changed Political Terrain Chapter 7 Capital and The Rise of State Politics Chapter 8 Prisoners of the American Scheme Chapter 9 The Democratic Party Cul de Sac Chapter 10 Electoral Politics from a Socialist Perspective Conclusion: Pulling the Analysis Together

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Book SynopsisBased on interviews and other archival materials, this graphic history illustrates how Hamilton workers translated their experience of work and organizing in the 1930s and early 1940s into a new kind of unionism and a new North American society in the decades following World War II.

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Book SynopsisTurbocharge employee engagement through health and safetyHealth and safety' has regained its rightful place at the heart of the organization, alongside wellbeing and other people issues. Keeping it there, however, is tricky, and returns on investment are difficult to quantify. At the same time, companies yearn for new ways to engage their employees.Karen J. Hewitt urges us to switch gears on health and safety from systems and compliance to inspiration and engagement. With her simple three-step formula (Build, Buzz, Bake), she offers us her recipe for building employee engagement through health and safety, with significant gains for the business overall.

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Book SynopsisThirteen months after Trump allegedly captured the allegiance of "the white working class," a strike wave-the first in over four decades-rocked the United States. Inspired by the wildcat victory in West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and across the country walked off their jobs and shut down their schools to demand better pay for educators, more funding for students, and an end to years of austerity.Confounding all expectations, these working-class rebellions erupted in regions with Republican electorates, weak unions, and bans on public sector strikes. By mobilizing to take their destinies into their own hands, red state school workers posed a clear alternative to politics-as-usual. And with similar actions now gaining steam in Los Angeles, Oakland, Denver, and Virginia, there is no sign that this upsurge will be short-lived. Red State Revolt is a compelling analysis of the emergence and development of this historic strike wave, with an eye to extracting its main strategic lessons for educators, labor organizers, and radicals across the country. A former high school teacher and longtime activist, Eric Blanc embedded himself into the rank-and-file leaderships of the walkouts, where he was given access to internal organizing meetings and secret Facebook groups inaccessible to most journalists. The result is one of the richest portraits of the labor movement to date, a story populated with the voices of school workers who are winning the fight for the soul of public education-and redrawing the political map of the country at large.Trade ReviewComprehensive and excellent -- Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, an education policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University. She is the author of Reign of ErrorIf you've not been reading Eric Blanc's reporting on the teacher strikes, you've been missing out. Far and away the smartest writing out there on the topic. -- Corey Robin, author of the Reactionary Mindhas anyone in American labor history ever covered a strike wave so closely? Has a labor writer ever been on the scene of so many different upsurges in so many geographically far-flight places in such a short amount of time? Has anyone ever covered these conflicts in a way that both captures the incredible sense of possibility that these strikes have put on the table while also remaining sober about what the strikers have achieved and failed to achieve, with both a bird's-eye view as an observer and a commitment to hearing from workers in their own words? Eric's work on these strikes has been superb. -- Micah Uetricht, author of Strike for AmericaBefore 2018, strikes had become so rare in this country that hardly anyone knew what they were. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, they began. Not in left-wing cities but in the reddest of red states. Not of white men in factories but of teachers, many of them women, many of them of color. Eric Blanc spent months with the strikers, talking to them on picket lines, listening to them in meetings, sharing with them on Facebook threads, and more. Like Orwell in Barcelona, he's given us a first-hand report from the front lines, making sense of the most improbable political story of an improbable decade. This is exhilarating reading about a movement that will be shaping politics for decades to come. -- Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald TrumpEric Blanc has written the best on-the-ground description and explanation of the red state teachers' revolt. He was there and he understands that what happened is historic. The brave teachers who walked out in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, and other red states started a powerful trend. They give hope that the reactionary politics of the past forty years may be reversed by working people who realize that 'enough is enough.' Blanc's enthralling description of their struggles is a chronicle that should be widely read. -- Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School SystemRead this book to understand the many important lessons educators so powerfully taught about what it will take to rebuild a working-class movement, defeat Trumpism, and take on the billionaires. -- Jane McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded AgeEric Blanc's compelling new book, "Red State Revolt", is a thoroughly researched and eloquently written story of one of the most powerful social movements of our time. His incisive reporting shows how teachers, through labor organizing and strategic strikes, are protecting and strengthening public education, the great equalizing force of any democratic society. -- Amy Goodman, Host & Executive Producer, Democracy Now!Read Eric Blanc's book! -- Sara Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA[T]here could be real potential in a national campaign around basic needs like public education. For thinking through how to go about building that movement-how to connect struggles by the workers who provide such public goods to the communities that depend upon them, and above all how to deploy the power of our best weapon, the strike-Red State Revolt is indispensable. -- Samir Sonti * New Labor Forum 2019, Vol. 28(3) 107–119 *

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Book SynopsisOvertime is about the politics of time, and specifically the amount of time that we spend labouring within capitalist society. It argues that reactivating the longstanding demand for shorter working hours should be central to any progressive trajectory in the years ahead.This book explains what a shorter working week means, as well as its history and its political implications. Will Stronge and Kyle Lewis examine the idea of reducing the time we all spend labouring for other on both a theoretical and political level, and offer an analysis rooted in the radical traditions from which the idea first emerged. Throughout, the reader is introduced to key theorists of work and working time alongside the relevant research regarding our contemporary 'crisis of work', to which the authors' proposal of a shorter working week responds.Trade ReviewThis is a vital contribution to the growing debate around free time and reducing the working week.With millions saying they would like to work shorter hours, and millions of others without a job or wanting more hours, it's essential that we consider how we address the problems in the labour market as well as preparing for the future challenges of automation. * John McDonnell, Labour Shadow Chancellor [praise for the authors' report on the shorter working week] *This is a path-breaking report on one of the most promising ideas of our time * Rutger Bregman, historian and author of Utopia for Realists [praise for the authors' report on the shorter working week] *In this terrific book, Will Stronge and Kyle Lewis present a remarkably clear and powerfully compelling case for shorter working hours as a path to greater sustainability, equality, and freedom. -- Kathi Weeks, author of The Problem With WorkOvertime is a stirring call to action in the fight for a shorter working week. Crucially, Lewis and Stronge remind us that no victories for workers have ever been won without struggle. Overtime is a critical text for socialists seeking to understand how the world of work has changed, and how to imagine a world in which our lives are no longer dominated by it. -- Grace Blakeley, author of The Corona CrashThe centuries old struggle by workers to free themselves from the dictatorship of work has emerged once more. Freedom from drudgery and the reduction in working hours have never been won without a fight. This book will prove invaluable in arming not only those who want to understand that struggle but also more importantly those who want to engage in it. -- John McDonnell, MPIt's no longer enough for the left to just shout jobs, jobs, jobs. Overtime not only shows why shorter working weeks need to be an integral part of a new deal for all workers, but also how it will be won. -- Ellie Mae O'Hagan, Director of CLASS think tankFocusing on a work-obsessed society, the failure of labor-saving technology to reduce work hours, the undervaluing of women's work, and the toll of work on the environment, Overtime brings both hope and despair. * Booklist *A compelling case for shortening the current work week, a policy that could see less overworking, more jobs, gender equality and a greener future. -- Ella Glover * Huck *Timely ... reveals the urgency of the conversion to a shorter working week. -- Adele Walton * gal-dem *

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Book SynopsisPublished on behalf of The Watt Committee on EnergyTable of ContentsList of the Chernobyl accident Working Group members, Foreword, Background Section 1 Introduction 1.1 General description of a nuclear power system 1.2 Fuel meltdown incidents 1.3 Energy in the Soviet Union Section 2 The design of the Chernobyl Unit 4 reactor Section 3 Description of the Chernobyl accident Section 4 The radioactive release from Chernobyl and its effects Section 5 Accident management in the USSR and the United Kingdom Section 6 United Kingdom and USSR reactor types Section 7 Reactor operation and operator training in the United Kingdom Section 8 International dimensions of the implications of the Chernobyl accident for the United Kingdom Section 9 Comments, recommendations and conclusions

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Book SynopsisThe British trade unionist and Labour MP A. A. Purcell (1872-1935) once enjoyed international notoriety. An outspoken champion of Soviet Russia, he nevertheless performed the highest labour movement responsibilities and was a leading figure on the TUC General Council. Purcell was a member of the earliest British labour delegations to Russia and his presidency of the International Federation of Trade Unions coincided with the TUC's energetic promotion of the cause of Anglo-Russian trade union unity, culminating in the publication of a glowing TUC report on the Soviets in 1925. However, as a leading TUC 'left' his credibility was badly dented by the failure of the General Strike in 1926, and the following year he lost his position with the IFTU. He ended his career in the relative obscurity of the Manchester and Salford Trades Council.Table of Contents1 Around a life 2 Syndicalism, internationalism and the furnishing trades 2.1 Syndicalists without syndicalism? 2.2 Socialist and syndicalist 2.3 Syndicalism and the Furnishing Trades 2.4 'An international class' 2.5 War, revolution 3 Roads to freedom in the 1920s 3.1 The swing of the pendulum 3.2 Non-party communist 3.3 Guild socialist 3.4 Parliamentary socialist 3.5 The persistency of syndicalism 4 Labour's Russian delegations 4.1 Insular internationalists 4.2 Russia 1920 4.3 'Getting together' 4.4 Russia 1924 4.5 Social anti-imperialism 5 'Swimming against a flood': Emma Goldman in London 5.1 A habit of truth-telling 5.2 That damn fake Purcelle 5.3 Anarchism and the English psychology 5.4 A nation of shopkeepers 5.5 The Russian superstition 6 The other future? 6.1 The future in America? 6.2 Fordism and the left 6.3 Workers vs robots 6.4 Cultural critique 6.5 Purcell in America 7 The General Strike 7.1 The strike as social myth 7.2 The dynamics of solidarity 7.3 Strike discussions 7.4 The nine days 7.5 A melancholy comparison 8 Democracy or dictatorship? 8.1 The 'Congress of Reckoning' 8.2 Citrine as new exemplar Epilogue: A claim-making performer

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Book SynopsisGrunwick was the strike that changed the rules of the game.It changed the way the unions thought about race, about their own core values, and about the best way to organise among the new immigrant communities coming to Britain in the 1970s. Moreover, it changed the way unions thought about the law, and raised big questions about their will to win.In the beginning, Grunwick wasn't a strike about wages - it was about something much more important than that. It was about dignity at work. And, for the small band of Asian women strikers, who braved sun, rain and snow month-in and month-out on the picket-lines, from August 1976 to July 1978, rights in the workplace and pride at work, were far more important than any amount of money.At the time, this book was the seminal account of the dispute, providing the workers' own story in their own words and told by two of the leading participants in the strike. Now, forty years later, its themes still resonate, making this book vital reading for all of those who seek to organise within their own communities and workplaces.Table of ContentsNote on the textList of Illustrations'We are the Lions, Mr. Manager!', TimRoacheGrunwick: The Workers' Story -Foreword, Jack DromeyIntroduction, Graham Taylor1978 ForewordChronology1. Inside 'the Zoo'2. On the Track3. The Strike Breaks Out4. 'The Happy Family'5. The Movement Mobilises6. The Struggle Begins7. 'NAFF v. the Unions - Who Wins?'8. NAFF Wins9. 'Company Police'10. 'Honey on Your Elbow'11. The Road to the Mass Picket12. The Battle for Chapter Road13. 11 July: the Beautiful Morning14. The Scarman Court of Inquiry15. The Last BattleConclusionIndex

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Book SynopsisAn account of the assault on the Union at Grangemouth in 2013, when workers were forced to accept cuts in their pay andconditions by the owner's threat of closure. Written by the Grangemouth convenor, The Battle of Grangemouth is a vital storyin trying times, and demonstrates why, now more than ever, being organised is vital for the defense of basic right at work. Published in association with Unite the Union.This book tells the story of the industrial dispute at Grangemouth in 2013, when the owner threatened to close a large part of the complex unless the workforce accepted severe cuts to their wages and conditions. The events at Grangemouth represented, in very acute form, the disaster of contemporary approaches to running the economy. What was once a publicly owned and well-run national asset has been allowed to fall into the hands of a company controlled by one man - Jim Ratcliffe - who thus has been able to exert immense power over the future of a vital national resource.Ratcliffe conducted a relentless campaign against the union at the site, with the intention of removing its main organisers, partly through exploiting the row in Falkirk Labour Party over candidate selection. Through these endeavours he succeeded in inflicting considerable hardship on a large number of people, but he did not destroy the strong union organisation at Grangemouth, which remains committed to defending the workforce and local community from his depredations.Trade Review'This is a story of a fight for working people told from the workers' point of view. I commend this enthralling book to everyone.' - Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party

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Book SynopsisIn recent years, international business disputes have increasingly been resolved through private arbitration. This book details how an elite group of transnational lawyers constructed an autonomous legal field that has given them a central and powerful role in the global marketplace.

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Book SynopsisMichael Goldfield challenges standard explanations for union decline, arguing that the major causes are to be found in the changing relations between classes. Goldfield combines innovative use of National Labor Relations Board certification election data, which serve as an accurate measure of new union growth in the private sector, with a sophisticated analysis of the standard explanations of union decline. By understanding the decline of U.S. labor unions, he maintains, it is possible to begin to understand the conditions necessary for their future rebirth and resurgence.

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Book SynopsisThe work contained in this volume helps create a clearer view of today's immigration and employment environment, and offers a fresh foundation for continued research.

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Book SynopsisWorkers at Risk is a powerful and moving documentary of workers routinely exposed to toxic chemicals. Products and services we all depend onglass bottles, computers, processed foods and fresh flowers, dry cleaning, medicines, even sculpture and silkscreened toysare produced by workers in constant contact with more than 63,000 commercial chemicals. For many of them, the risk of death is a way of life. More than seventy of them speak here of their jobs, their health, and the difficult choices they face in coming to grips with the responsibilities, risks, fears, and satisfactions of their work. Some struggle for information and acknowledgment of their health risks; others struggle to put out of their minds the dangers they know too well. Through extensive interviews, the authors have captured in these voices that double bind of the chemical worker: If I had known that it would be that lethal, that it could give me or one of my children cancer, I would have refused to work. But it's a matter of survival and we just don't consider all these things. Meanwhile, we've got to make money to survive.

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Book SynopsisThe near meltdown in 1979 at Three Mile Island, America, created a crisis of confidence over safety nuclear power industry. This work analyzes how the industry stabilized itself through a complete transformation in the safety standards, operation and management of nuclear facilities in America.

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Book SynopsisFor one week in late July of 1877, America shook with anger and fear as a variety of urban residents, mostly working class, attacked railroad property in dozens of towns and cities. The Great Strike of 1877 was one of the largest and most violent urban uprisings in American history. Whereas most historians treat the event solely as a massive labor strike that targeted the railroads, David O. Stowell examines America's predicament more broadly to uncover the roots of this rebellion. He studies the urban origins of the Strike in three upstate New York citiesBuffalo, Albany, and Syracuse. He finds that locomotives rumbled through crowded urban spaces, sending panicked horses and their wagons careening through streets. Hundreds of people were killed and injured with appalling regularity. The trains also disrupted street traffic and obstructed certain forms of commerce. For these reasons, Stowell argues, The Great Strike was not simply an uprising fueled by disgruntled workers. Rather, it

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Book SynopsisSurveys the relationships of workers and trade unions to the state in Egypt, bringing to light the often overlooked effect of workers' collective actions in shaping public policy.

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Book SynopsisAnalyzes organized labor's political activities, its coalitions with other interest groups, and its influence on voter turnout, election results, and votes in Congress. This book examines the effects of Sweeney's embrace of progressive causes and labor's increasing willingness to challenge Democrats who vote against labor's interests.Trade ReviewA must read. -- Marick F. Masters Journal of Labor Research Francia's book should be read by all. -- Gerald Friedman Labor HistoryTable of ContentsPreface 1. Introduction 2. A Different Direction for Organized Labor? 3. Strength in Numbers: Organizing and Mobilizing Union Members 4. Countering Business: Union Campaigning in Congressional Elections 5. The Air War: The AFL-CIO Advertising Campaign 6. Laboring for a "Working Family" Agenda 7. Conclusion: The Significance of Union Renewal 8. Postscript: The 2004 Election Appendix Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisAdam Reich and Peter Bearman examine how Walmart workers make sense of their jobs in order to consider the nature of contemporary low-wage work, as well as the obstacles and opportunities such workplaces present for social and economic justice. Working for Respect makes important contributions to debates on labor and inequality.Trade ReviewI am obsessed with this book! The prose is riveting. The blend of disparate methods is spectacular. The sheer adventure of student organizers fanning out across the country in a manner reminiscent of Freedom Summer will keep you turning the pages. Taken together, the portrait wrought is simply devastating. Walmart not only demands your labor and your loyalty, it claims your pride and strips you of dignity. -- Kathryn Edin, coauthor of $2 a Day: The Art of Living on Virtually Nothing in AmericaWalmart—the largest U.S. employer—is a symbol for high inequality in America. Its many shop-floor employees are paid as little as possible and have never shared in the huge success and profits of the company. Why can’t Walmart workers get a bigger share of the pie they helped create? This book, based on extensive interviews with Walmart workers, helps us understand why a job at Walmart might be the least bad option for many, how workers make sense of their job, and the challenges of organizing work at Walmart. Working for Respect is essential reading for a rich sociological understanding of the struggles of low-paid workers pitted against all-powerful corporations in America today. -- Emmanuel Saez, University of California, BerkeleyHow do people find and flex their own power to improve their workplaces? What lessons can all of us learn from dogged and creative efforts to organize workers at Walmart, the biggest private employer in the world? What kinds of relationships between organizers and their communities are most likely to lead to organizing breakthroughs? Working for Respect is a gripping read—a thoughtful, perceptive, and accessible work that takes a multi-layered approach, from in-depth interviews with Walmart workers to brain scans to a crash course in front-line organizing and beyond. This is a book for students of organizing, for academics interested in helping to counter rampant economic inequality, and for anyone who cares about winning material gains and respect for all workers in the age of Trump. -- Anna Galland, Executive Director, MoveOn.orgWorking for Respect is an extraordinary book, both in its deft and original intertwining of multiple research methods and in the insights it generates. -- Erik Olin Wright, author of Envisioning Real UtopiasWorking for Respect is at once a brilliant analysis of the lives of Walmart workers and an original effort to bridge the tension between scholarly work and activism. Along the way, Reich and Bearman raise the bar for mixed-method research in the social sciences. -- Mitchell Duneier, Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology, Princeton UniversityWorking for Respect is an engaging read that bristles with fresh insights into both the experience of low-wage service sector work and the dilemmas facing the labor movement. It offers an ethnography of what the authors dub 'Walmartism' as well as an argument about the ways in which social ties centered on trust have the potential to jumpstart social change. A must-read for any sociologist of labor. -- Ruth Milkman, CUNY Graduate CenterWith Working for Respect, Adam Reich and Peter Bearman issue a rare invitation. To go with them to Walmart, to listen with them to the workers and to the managers who roam the stores, to take in the culture of low-wage work in America, and also to listen to the students who participated in what became the Summer for Respect. This is a gripping book about the relationship between social ties and social change, remarkable for its intelligence and the subtlety of its distinctions. We learn that in the end it is trust rather than good feeling that inspires collective action for social change. -- Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different VoiceWhile Walmart plays enormous economic, symbolic, and employment roles nationwide, the interplay of these dynamics has not been fully explored. Working for Respect makes great progress in understanding Walmart as a social institution and therefore in understanding work at Walmart as a unique bellwether of contemporary work. -- Andrew Perrin, University of North CarolinaThe use of interview excerpts amplifies the voices of low-wage workers not often heard in public discourse. This is an insightful examination of the inner workings of the 'country's largest corporate employer.' * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *No one has analyzed the experiences and aspirations of Walmart workers as thoughtfully as Adam Reich and Peter Bearman do in their captivating new book. * American Prospect *What differentiates and recommends it for close reading are the anecdotes and perspectives of workers who face down enormous personal and social challenges and barriers, only to have their goals to contribute and thrive in American society tempered or more often dashed by what they (and the authors) see as corporate measures of compliance, coercion, and control. * Choice *The labor movement still has life, and Reich and Bearman provide a valuable reminder regarding where we need to look to find it. * Social Forces *A vital perspective. Analytically exhilarating. Fascinating. * Contemporary Sociology *A compelling case study of one of the most important labor organizing efforts in twenty‐first‐century America. . . . Working for Respect will pique the interest of scholars, students, and activists keyed into the economic contradictions of late neoliberalism and searching for both explanations and practical solutions. * British Journal of Sociology *Adam Reich and Peter Bearman provide insight for both the conditions and experiences of working at a place like Walmart, as well as the relationship between community engagement and feelings of social solidarity. * Sociological Forum *Table of ContentsList of FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Real, Real Walmart1. Pathways2. The Shop Floor3. The Structure of Domination and Control4. Making Contact5. Social Ties and Social Change6. OUR Walmart on the Line7. Our WalmartAppendix: The Neural Signatures of Group LifeNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisAdam Reich and Peter Bearman examine how Walmart workers make sense of their jobs in order to consider the nature of contemporary low-wage work, as well as the obstacles and opportunities such workplaces present for social and economic justice. Working for Respect makes important contributions to debates on labor and inequality.Trade ReviewI am obsessed with this book! The prose is riveting. The blend of disparate methods is spectacular. The sheer adventure of student organizers fanning out across the country in a manner reminiscent of Freedom Summer will keep you turning the pages. Taken together, the portrait wrought is simply devastating. Walmart not only demands your labor and your loyalty, it claims your pride and strips you of dignity. -- Kathryn Edin, coauthor of $2 a Day: The Art of Living on Virtually Nothing in AmericaWalmart—the largest U.S. employer—is a symbol for high inequality in America. Its many shop-floor employees are paid as little as possible and have never shared in the huge success and profits of the company. Why can’t Walmart workers get a bigger share of the pie they helped create? This book, based on extensive interviews with Walmart workers, helps us understand why a job at Walmart might be the least bad option for many, how workers make sense of their job, and the challenges of organizing work at Walmart. Working for Respect is essential reading for a rich sociological understanding of the struggles of low-paid workers pitted against all-powerful corporations in America today. -- Emmanuel Saez, University of California, BerkeleyHow do people find and flex their own power to improve their workplaces? What lessons can all of us learn from dogged and creative efforts to organize workers at Walmart, the biggest private employer in the world? What kinds of relationships between organizers and their communities are most likely to lead to organizing breakthroughs? Working for Respect is a gripping read—a thoughtful, perceptive, and accessible work that takes a multi-layered approach, from in-depth interviews with Walmart workers to brain scans to a crash course in front-line organizing and beyond. This is a book for students of organizing, for academics interested in helping to counter rampant economic inequality, and for anyone who cares about winning material gains and respect for all workers in the age of Trump. -- Anna Galland, Executive Director, MoveOn.orgWorking for Respect is an extraordinary book, both in its deft and original intertwining of multiple research methods and in the insights it generates. -- Erik Olin Wright, author of Envisioning Real UtopiasWorking for Respect is at once a brilliant analysis of the lives of Walmart workers and an original effort to bridge the tension between scholarly work and activism. Along the way, Reich and Bearman raise the bar for mixed-method research in the social sciences. -- Mitchell Duneier, Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology, Princeton UniversityWorking for Respect is an engaging read that bristles with fresh insights into both the experience of low-wage service sector work and the dilemmas facing the labor movement. It offers an ethnography of what the authors dub 'Walmartism' as well as an argument about the ways in which social ties centered on trust have the potential to jumpstart social change. A must-read for any sociologist of labor. -- Ruth Milkman, CUNY Graduate CenterWith Working for Respect, Adam Reich and Peter Bearman issue a rare invitation. To go with them to Walmart, to listen with them to the workers and to the managers who roam the stores, to take in the culture of low-wage work in America, and also to listen to the students who participated in what became the Summer for Respect. This is a gripping book about the relationship between social ties and social change, remarkable for its intelligence and the subtlety of its distinctions. We learn that in the end it is trust rather than good feeling that inspires collective action for social change. -- Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different VoiceWhile Walmart plays enormous economic, symbolic, and employment roles nationwide, the interplay of these dynamics has not been fully explored. Working for Respect makes great progress in understanding Walmart as a social institution and therefore in understanding work at Walmart as a unique bellwether of contemporary work. -- Andrew Perrin, University of North CarolinaThe use of interview excerpts amplifies the voices of low-wage workers not often heard in public discourse. This is an insightful examination of the inner workings of the 'country's largest corporate employer.' * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *No one has analyzed the experiences and aspirations of Walmart workers as thoughtfully as Adam Reich and Peter Bearman do in their captivating new book. * American Prospect *What differentiates and recommends it for close reading are the anecdotes and perspectives of workers who face down enormous personal and social challenges and barriers, only to have their goals to contribute and thrive in American society tempered or more often dashed by what they (and the authors) see as corporate measures of compliance, coercion, and control. * Choice *The labor movement still has life, and Reich and Bearman provide a valuable reminder regarding where we need to look to find it. * Social Forces *A vital perspective. Analytically exhilarating. Fascinating. * Contemporary Sociology *A compelling case study of one of the most important labor organizing efforts in twenty‐first‐century America. . . . Working for Respect will pique the interest of scholars, students, and activists keyed into the economic contradictions of late neoliberalism and searching for both explanations and practical solutions. * British Journal of Sociology *Adam Reich and Peter Bearman provide insight for both the conditions and experiences of working at a place like Walmart, as well as the relationship between community engagement and feelings of social solidarity. * Sociological Forum *Table of ContentsList of FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Real, Real Walmart1. Pathways2. The Shop Floor3. The Structure of Domination and Control4. Making Contact5. Social Ties and Social Change6. OUR Walmart on the Line7. Our WalmartAppendix: The Neural Signatures of Group LifeNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisLainey Newman and Theda Skocpol provide timely insight into the relationship between the decline of unions and the shift of working-class voters away from Democrats.Trade ReviewWhen workers decades ago spoke the words, 'This is a union town!' they were describing not just a statistical fact but, more importantly, a lived and embedded reality. Unions, as Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol write, represented 'a dense social web of interconnected workers, family members and neighbors.' Rust Belt Union Blues is an immensely important book, both for politics and for the social sciences. Politically, it explains why many white workers strayed from their old Democratic loyalties not because their views changed radically but because of transformations in their reference points and the ways they answered the need for community. Rust Belt Union Blues also calls on social scientists to enrich and go beyond survey research by paying far more attention to the networks people build and the lives they live. This book deserves wide readership—and may it encourage more volumes like it. -- E.J. Dionne Jr., author of Why the Right Went Wrong, coauthor of 100% DemocracyIn recent decades many working-class voters have turned away from the Democratic Party, especially in the country's former industrial regions. Rust Belt Union Blues shows how the decline of labor unions contributed to this trend. Unions historically built solidarity around shared values in working-class communities; the erosion of union strength has weakened these communities and this solidarity, profoundly changing working-class life. Rust Belt Union Blues is fascinating and important reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of working-class politics in America. -- Jeffry Frieden, author of Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century and Its Stumbles in the Twenty-FirstHow refreshing to read a challenging account of how and why the Democratic Party lost a major constituency that attends to the people themselves, their communities, their organizations, and their struggles to make meaning of a politics that ceased to see them, hear them, or value them—to even respect them. For once, the authors enable us to hear the voices of human beings—not data points, utility functions, ideological categories, or labels. This work challenges us to focus on what a real constituency is—not a 'base' to be managed, but people who learn to stand together, work together, decide together, and act together. -- Marshall Ganz, Harvard Kennedy SchoolRead this book to better understand the roots of today’s political polarization. Newman and Skocpol document local unions’ historical role in the social life of manufacturing communities and show how deindustrialization and the disappearance of local unions helped turn these communities from blue to red. -- Frank Levy, MITA more granular look at the pre-Biden Democrats’ abandonment of working-class America...that illuminates the decline of an economic, social, and political world that once bolstered progressive and Democratic prospects. * American Prospect *Newman and Skocpol’s diagnosis of the causes and basic solution to the problem of working-class dealignment in the rust belt is right on the mark. * Jacobin *Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsList of Figures and Tables1. Understanding Social and Political Change in the Rust Belt2. The Social Underpinnings of the “Union Man”3. The Economic Breakdown of Big Labor from Without and Within4. Union Membership Transformed5. From Union Blue to Trump Red6. On Union Decline and the Potential for ResurgenceAppendix A. Voting Patterns in Western PennsylvaniaAppendix B. Sample Interview QuestionsAppendix C. Photographs in IBEW and USW NewslettersAppendix D. Local Union Mentions in IBEW and USW NewslettersNotesGlossaryIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Essential for any study of the 1937 sit-down strike in Flint... Communists and socialists were the shop floor cadre of the CIO drive, and it seems appropriate that a radical close to those events be one of the historians." -- Nelson Lichenstein, author of Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The pick of a growing crop of studies on the American working class."--The Nation"An important work, the best of several recent volumes on the Knights."--American Historical ReviewTable of ContentsPreface xi 1 Working-Class Radicalism in the Gilded Age: Defining a Political Culture 3 2 The Uses of Political Power: The Knights of Labor and the State 18 3 When Cleon Comes to Rule: Popular Organization and Political Development. Part 1: Rochester, New Hampshire 38 4 When Cleon Comes to Rule: Popular Organization and Political Development. Part 2: Rutland, Vermont 66 5 City-Building and Social Reform: Urban Workers within the Two-Party System, Kansas City, Kansas 112 6 Together but Unequal: Southern Knights and the Dilemmas of Race and Politics, Richmond, Virginia 149 7 Bullets and Ballots: Worker Mobilization and the Path to Municipal Socialism, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 178 8 Labor, Party Politics, and American Exceptionalism 219 Selected Bibliography: Primary Sources 234 Index 239

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Book SynopsisFrom the union''s formation in 1937 until the 1960s, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) was the largest and most influential teachers'' union in the country. John F. Lyons examines the role of public schoolteachers and the CTU in shaping the policies and practices of public education in Chicago. Examining teachers'' unions and public education from the bottom up, Lyons shows how the CTU and its members sought rigorous reforms. A combination of political action, public relations campaigns, and community alliances helped the CTU to achieve better salaries and benefits, increased school budgets, reformed curricula, and greater equality for women within the public education system. But its agenda was also constrained by internal divisions over race and gender and by ongoing external disputes with the school administration, politicians, and business and civic organizations. Detailed and informed by rich interviews, Teachers and Reform: Chicago Public Education, 1929-1970 teTrade Review"Lyons's monograph is clearly written, impeccably organized, and . . . cogently argued. Grounded in an impressive array of archival, print, and oral sources, Teachers and Reform is an important contribution to the field."--Journal of Illinois History"This powerful book is a detailed account of 40 years in the history of Chicago schools. . . . Recommended."--Choice“Extremely useful for labor historians interested in the institutional development of the nation’s first and most prominent teachers’ union. . . . Lyons's book offers a roadmap to how one city got us here, laying out, in as clear a manner as possible, the dense thicket of issues at stake and at play in the teacher union movement.”--H-Urban“This book is one the best histories of public-sector unionism yet. It is an excellent study of teachers’ unions in Chicago and also a fine piece of local political history, with interesting interpolations of race, gender, and education policy issues as well.”--American Historical Review"In his engaging case study ... Lyons captures the seedy side of school politics and the ambiguous, often disappointing role that unions have played in educational reform."--The Journal of American History"A masterful scholarly study of Chicago teacher unionism."--Labour/Le Travail"A straightforward, well-written study of education in a major U.S. city."--H-Education"Teachers and Reform provides an excellent narrative of teachers' unionization in Chicago from 1929-70. Lyons makes effective connections between city politics and the rise of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and between the rise of black political consciousness and the crisis of the CTU."--James R. Barrett, author of William Z. Foster and the Tragedy of American Radicalism "A welcome contribution to the historical literature on teachers' unions that speaks also to contemporary teacher unionism. The focus on the Chicago Teachers Union and its major early leader, John Fewkes, during and after the Depression corrects an imbalance in the literature that has favored the Chicago Teachers Federation and Margaret Haley. Lyons's thorough analysis of the CTU raises important questions about the contours of union conservatism and its interaction with race and collective bargaining."--Wayne J. Urban, associate director and professor, Education Policy Center, University of AlabamaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations xiii Introduction 1 1. The Formation of the Chicago Teachers Union, 1929-1937 9 2. Struggling for an Identity, 1937-1941 49 3. World War II, Accommodation, and the Struggle for Equal Pay, 1941-1947 81 4. The Cold War in the Chicago Public Schools, 1947-1957 107 5. The Campaign for Collective Bargaining Rights and the Civil Rights Movement, 1957-1966 133 6. Teacher Power and Black Power Reform the Public Education System, 1966-1970 171 Conclusion 207 Notes 217 Index 271

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Book SynopsisOrganizing the "unorganizable"Trade Review"Lisa Phillips has written a first-rate account exploring the history of District 65 (originally Wholesale and Dry Good Workers, or WDGW). From the union's early days during the Depression in the 1930s, District 65 sought to navigate the complexities of American politics and provide a voice for low wage workers. Activists and students of labor history and politics should definitely read this book!"--American Historical Review"An interesting case study of Local 65 in New York from the Depression years through the 1960s. This 'renegade union' attempted to organize and improve the lives of low-wage workers (often African American and Jewish men and women). The book is meticulously researched, offers a unique case study, and is very well worth a close reading."--The Historian"A Renegade Union presents a much needed perspective on an array of topics that have received scant attention by scholars. With great flair and insightful details Philips places the history of District 65 and several other radical unions at the center of this analysis of the Civil Right Movement. . . . lucidly written and path-breaking. . . . Phillips makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature on labor organizing, civil rights campaigns, and community activism."--The Journal of African American History"The book is meticulously researched, offers a unique case study, and is very well worth a close reading."--The Historian"Phillips has presented a crucial study on how left-wing unionism not only survived the Cold War but also rebuilt momentum during the 1960s and 1970s to maintain their relevance in an increasingly hostile economic environment."--The Journal of American History"A Renegade Union deepens our understanding of how left-led unions in the mid-twentieth century distinguished themselves from other unions, and helps us see the possibilities for social movement unionism. Lisa Phillips's well-told story of District 65 will be welcomed by labor historians, civil rights scholars, labor activists, and interested general readers."--Rosemary Feurer, author of Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900–1950Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix List of Acronyms xiii Introduction 1 1. Community-Based, "Catch-All" Organizing on New York's Lower East Side 15 2. Getting beyond Racial, Ethnic, Religious, and Skill-Based Divisions 42 3. "Like a Scab over an Infected Sore": Full and Fair Employment during and after World War II 66 4. Attached from the Right and the Left: Community-Organizing, Civic Unionism during the Early Years of the Cold War 91 5. A Third Labor Federation? The Distributive, Processing, and Office Workers of America (DPO) 114 6. Community Organizing under the AFL-CIO Umbrella 137 Conclusion 167 Abbreviated Chronology 187 Notes 189 Index 221

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Book SynopsisExplores the history of actors' unionism in the United States from the late nineteenth century to the onset of the Great Depression.Trade Review"The book entertains as much as it educates. . . . a superlative read."--Journal of American Studies"By tracing the contentious relationship between theatre managers and actors in the early 1900s, examining the performative elements of the actors’ strike in 1919, and investigating the failure of the AEA to claim a stake in Hollywood, Holmes plots an engaging historical analysis that offers thorough detail and compelling examples."--Journal of American Culture"Sean P. Holmes spins a lively, well-researched yarn about how actors decided to take matters into their own hands, giving birth to the union that survives today: Actors' Equity Association (AEA). . . . a clear and smart study."--Labour/Le Travail“With his attention to actors as both producers and embodiments of what they produce, the unique gender dynamics of theater as workplace, and the structure of the theater industry, Holmes has done a great job of writing the history of a union that challenges conventional labor history understandings of unionism and extends the scope of American theater history.”--Journal of American History"Sean P. Holmes has given us a thoughtful, lively, clearly written, and cogently argued book about AEA's early years. . . . This admirable book begins to fill a vacuum in scholarship on the AEA and should inspire more work that accounts for what AEA meant--and means--to the American stage."--Theatre Survey"The stage has long been recognized as a site of consumption and of battles over the moral order. But Sean P. Holmes reminds us that it was also a workplace. . . . A substantial contribution to the historiography of the Progressive Era and the 1920s."--H-Net Reviews"A very rich study. . . . For labor educators and union organizers, Holmes' excellent book could be used to begin new conversations about how to connect creativity to labor action."--Labor Studies Journal"A compelling story that needs to be told. This history of unionization within the theatrical profession provides crucial insights into theater management and the industrialization of the entertainment industry."--Gillian M. Rodger, author of Champagne Charlie and Pretty Jemima: Variety Theater in the Nineteenth Century "With active and engaging prose, this volume traces the history of the Actors' Equity Association from late-nineteenth century transformations in the theatrical industry. An excellent contribution to theater history, labor studies, American cultural studies, and gender studies."--Kathryn J. Oberdeck, author of The Evangelist and the Impresario: Religion, Entertainment, and Cultural Politics in America, 1884-1914

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewDavid Montgomery Award, Organization of American Historians (OAH), 2016. "Elizabeth and Ken Fones-Wolf have produced the best book yet written on southern religious culture and its fateful intersection with the American labor movement during the crucial years when the twentieth-century fate of organized labor hung in the balance. This book is a treasure." --Joseph A. McCartin, author of Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America"A stunning social history of working-class southerners in the postwar South. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice"Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South, is a brilliant addition to this increasingly robust body of scholarship...The Fones-Wolfs' book will be of obvious interest to labor and religious historians, but it also deserves al a wide audience among the "new" historians of capitalism."--The Journal of Southern Religion"Elizabeth and Ken Fones-Wolf provide an outstanding account of the role of religion in the Congress of Industrial Organization's (CIO) campaign to organize industrial workers in the South after World War II… By weaving together the strands of American labor and religious history, the Fones-Wolfs have done the signal service of requiring students of both to take them up."--American Historical Review"Elizabeth and Ken Fones-Wolf have written an engaging book that explores the post-World War II labour movement in the US south through the lens of religious culture… A major intervention in southern and labour history, this book promises to influence how historians understand and analyze the intersections of religion and class in social justice movements and in the lives of working people."--Labour/Le Travail"Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and Ken Fones-Wolf have written a nuanced, well-argued monograph on the role of religion in Operation Dixie, the attempt by the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) to organize southern workers after World War II… An illuminating study for a variety of historians."--Journal of American History"Grounded in a wealth of archival sources, ranging from oral and local histories to the records of churches and unions, the Fones-Wolfs' multifaceted text is a brilliant and timely intervention in the scholarship, and a pleasure to read."-- Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"The Fones-Wolfs' masterful analysis is essential reading for understanding the dynamics of these conflicts."--North Carolina Historical Review "Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South is a unique take on an all-too-familiar story."--Journal of Religion "A landmark study. The authors use this insightful and often surprising history to shed new light on the failure of Operation Dixie between 1946 and 1953. In doing so, they deepen our understanding of the relationship between evangelical Christianity and southern labor history, as well as between religion and working-class conservatism, race relations, and anti-unionism."--Jarod Roll, author of Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South "The authors have accomplished the rare feat of gracefully combining labor, social, and religious history into a seamless whole, and in the process explaining a story and a tragedy has cried out for such an explanation. This will be essential reading for those interested in southern, labor, and American religious history, and for those who want to think hard about how religious traditions interact with movements for social justice."--Paul Harvey, co-author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewHerbert G. Gutman Award, Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), 2009. "Through portraits of industrial accidents, political funerals, and burial rituals, this compelling reinterpretation of working-class culture and the making of labor solidarity highlights how bodies in their gendered, class, and ethnic valences matter--in death as well as life."--Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara"A tantalizing and well-researched glimpse into the rituals of death for workers whose lives held little value outside their own communities in industrializing America."--Annals of Iowa"Rosenow is to be congratulated on his mastery of diverse literatures and his rigorous argument. Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865-1920 demonstrates that wageworker's rituals--and the industrial violence that engendered them--were foundational to the formation of working-class identities and organizations."--American Historical Review"In his thoughtfully conceived and clearly developed study, Michael K. Rosenow shows that in death as in life, American workers existed on anything but a level playing field."--The Journal of American History"For scholars seeking insight into the formation of class identity among the industrial workforce and an intellectually creative use of methodologies to examine the links between religion, ethnicity, and class, Rosenow's study provides an evocative study of social transformation as well as introducing a rich field for further research."--H-Net"This award-winning book (it won the Herbert G. Gutman Prize from the Labor and Working Class History Association) helps us understand the complex ways the working class has responded to death on the job and expands our notions of American ways of caring for—and about—the dead."--Journal of Social History"Rosenow's book offers rich insight into how the working class of the early twentieth century approached death within their historical and situational context."--Working USA"Engaging, thoughtful, and very readable . . . It adds to our knowledge of how Americans responded to the changes brought by industrialization in the second half of the nineteenth century."--Robert V. Wells, author of Life Flows On in Endless Song: Folk Songs and American History "Rosenow usefully extends a now-rich literature on American memorial practices to the northern industrial working classes from the Civil War to World War I. . . . This pioneering study deserves wide attention."--Leon Fink, author of Sweatshops at Sea: Merchant Seamen in the World's First Globalized Industry, from 1812 to the Present

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"An illuminating and persuasive retelling of the Civil War from the bottom up." --Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society"Mark A. Lause's deeply researched study of labor during the Civil War is an ambitious effort to change how we understand the significance of the Civil War and the history of the American labor movement, together."--Journal of American History"Historian Lause (Univ. of Cincinnati) significantly helps expand knowledge of the US labor movement in the period up to, during, and immediately after the Civil War. Highly recommended,"--Choice"Lause's book presents an impressive array of original scholarship. The immense detail he provides on little-known aspects of the Civil War-era labour movement will prove especially valuable as a resource to future researchers… by joining the history of the labour movement and the history of the war, Lause has filled a long-neglected gap in the literature on the mid-19th-century United States."--Labour/ Le Travail"An excellent synthesis of the daily struggles of working people during the war."--Journal of Southern History"Free Labor: The Civil War and the Making of an American Working Class stands as a major achievement, filling a huge gap in the literature and revising our understanding of nineteenth-century labor history and the history of the Civil War."--H-Net Reviews"Mark Lause has written a deeply researched and broad-ranging exploration of Civil War labor history for the twentieth-first century. . . . This is an important study that labor historians will build on for years to come."--North Carolina Historical Review"A major contribution in tying together the disparate labor movements throughout the United States in the Civil War years and in showing the continued strength of antebellum labor radicalism tied to abolition."--Gerald Friedman, author of Reigniting the Labor Movement: Restoring Means to Ends in a Democratic Labor Movement "Lause's study grapples with an almost infinite number of organizations, crafts, tactics, and settings. He focuses not only upon widely known leaders and theoreticians, but resurrects ordinary workers who struggled on the battlefield and the picket line. His ability to follow individuals from union organizations to the battlefield frankly made my jaw drop."--Adam Tuchinsky, author of Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune: Civil War Era-Socialism and the Crisis of Free Labor "In his book Free Labor, Mark Lause has answered so many questions about how the trade union movement and free labor advocates participated in the American Civil War and navigated its sea changes. He demonstrates how in the words of one Iowa harnessmaker, the war 'was a great labor movement.' As the history of ideology, Lause shows how the malleable idea of free labor served as the aspiration of slaves and other workers as well. As social history, the book serves as an important bridge to connect the extensive literature on laborers in the early American republic to that on post-war railroad unions. Lause shows how trade union proponents in skilled trades went to war in leadership positions and battle in the Federal Union army. At home, during the war, working men and women continued to press for shorter working hours and wages to keep up with the rising prices that the war produced. He identifies how working people fared and pushed for reforms during the four critical war years. By analyzing the digitized newspaper collections, Lause has found the many lost pockets of strike activity, such as the great slave strike, and he documents which strikes won and which lost. From the navy yards to the print shops, collective action continued during the war. This book contains treasures." --Lea S. VanderVelde, author of Redemption Songs: Suing for Freedom before Dred Scott

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Zimmer has produced a powerful text that brings to life numerous forgotten rebels and significantly expands our understanding of anti-statist social movements in the first half of the twentieth century… This immaculately researched and carefully composed monograph thus sets a new bar for the study of anarchism."--Anarchist Studies"Most students of US radicalism have long assumed that anarchism was brought to the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. Zimmer demonstrates that the real story is more complicated. Recommended."--Choice"Zimmer's archival research is impressive… a fascinating examination of the interplay of individuals of various ethnicities… involved with anarchism and its sympathizers in San Francisco."--International Review of Social History"Well researched and eloquent."--Jewish Book Council"This is likely to be an essential work on immigrant anarchism for years to come."--H-Net Reviews"Drawing on an impressive and unprecedented array of Yiddish- and Italian-language sources, Zimmer details both the ideological connections and ethnocultural obstacles that supported and separated anarchist communities. . . . Zimmer's research and scope is encyclopedic. . . . Zimmer's fine book is indispensable."--The Journal of American History"Immigrants against the State breaks new ground in anarchist history and offers a timely contribution to the knowledge of immigrant radicalism, past and present. It is essential reading for students and scholars of radical and immigration history, and for anyone interested in exploring immigrant lives marked by a transnational collective identity that embraced diversity regardless of the national, ethnic and racial divides.--Labour History"A vitally important transnational work that makes significant interventions into the historiography of immigration, anarchism, labor and the working class, and late-nineteenth to early twentieth-century politics."--American Historical Review "An extraordinarily well-documented and stimulating read."--Italian American Review "A beautiful, exceptionally well-researched work of transnational history."--Canadian Journal of History "Admirably, the author uses Italian- and Yiddish-language sources to produce one of the most extensive accounts of anarchism in twentieth-century America. One of the best histories of anarchism in the United States."--Tony Michels, author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York "I have been waiting for a book like this for a long time, one that tells of the multiethnic and transnational world of early twentieth-century anarchism, not just from the perspective of the notorious figures, but from the grass roots. Zimmer is both a highly gifted storyteller and a meticulous, careful researcher whose account follows this history through a truly astonishing range of sources in Yiddish, Italian, Spanish, German, and English, from archives across the globe. This is the new generation of transnational working-class history at its very best."--Jennifer Guglielmo, author of Living the Revolution: Italian Women's Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880–1945 "A century ago, anarchists were everywhere, a movement in constant movement. Having mastered the languages of the two largest groups of immigrant anarchists in the United States, Kenyon Zimmer paints intimate portraits of their Yiddish- and Italian-speaking worlds. The book will be required reading for all scholars of immigrant radicalism. More broadly, anyone interested in the complex intersections of class, mobility, and culture in our own times will find much to ponder in the cosmopolitanism and internationalism immigrants created as they responded to the violent nationalist politics of their own times."--Donna R. Gabaccia, author of Immigration and American Diversity: A Social and Cultural History

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewHonorable mention, David Montgomery Award, Organization of American Historians (OAH), 2016 "Novel and compelling. . . . Sheds new light on the overlooked historical experiences of rural-industrial workers."--Journal of Southern History"Smokestacks in the Hills contributes to our understanding of Appalachia and how it diverged from many of the traditional norms of American labor history."--Journal of Appalachian Studies"Martin's historical analysis of working life in Hancock County provides a perspective that is both relevant and illuminating."--Labour "Lou Martin has produced a deeply researched and expertly crafted history of rural workers in an Appalachian county, a study that reveals how experiences on the countryside shaped class identities and social relations in industrial workplaces. Martin's sensitive portrait of West Virginia potters and steel workers goes a long way toward correcting the big city bias in our labor and industrial history, and it helps us understand why values like independence and self help shaped how rural folk asserted their own preferences when faced with national forces in the form of corporate welfare programs, CIO unions, New Deal programs, and the impacts of deindustrialization. Smokestacks in the Hills is a pathbreaking book."--James Green, author of The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia's Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom"Smokestacks in the Hills: Rural-Industrial Workers in West Virginia is excellent scholarship that will be of lasting value to labor historians as well as business leaders interested in how past entrepreneurs were able to develop, in rural settings, nationally prominent manufacturing facilities in the steel and pottery industries and to do so in a manner that allowed for more local control of both the marketplace and the communities surrounding the industrial development… Much more than just a traditional labor history tome. Although this is a scholarly work of considerable repute, it is easy to read and is worth the attention of business leaders interested in the development of a distinctive economy in West Virginia."--The State Journal, Charleston, WV"Smokestacks in the Hills stands as an excellent corrective to more urban-oriented studies and represents a strong addition to the literature of American working-class history."--West Virginia History"Martin's Smokestacks in the Hills historicizes and raises important questions about class solidarity, agency, and power, especially when rooted in localized institutions and cultural norms. The significance of the book is in Martin's primary focus on a sometimes unexplored layer of analysis--the importance of place--to scholarship grappling with class identity and its expression through class-based organizations."--Business History Review"Martin artfully weaves discussions of the technical aspects of pottery and tinplate production with a broader reading of gender and politics at the workplace."--Journal of Social History "Lucidly written with equal attention to the big picture and the small, demographic/economic statistics and the diverse voices of workers recounting their experiences and what they make of them, Smokestacks in the Hills is both an elegy for a brief moment of rural industrial stability and a cogent analysis of the strengths and limits of a working-class culture of 'making do.' A wonderful book--a sad story that somehow heartens."--Jack Metzgar, author of Striking Steel: Solidarity Remembered "Martin's wonderful book alerts all twentieth-century U.S. labor historians that we are telling only half the story if we ignore rural industrial workers and their local orientations forged through connections to land, place, family, and community."--Lisa M. Fine, author of The Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U.S.A. "An interesting explanation for the conservatism and occasionally antiunion sentiments of a group of industrial workers that contrasts with the philosophies and sentiments most commonly chronicled among urban workers."--Brooks Blevins, author of Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South

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Book SynopsisDuring the 1950s and 1960s, labor leaders Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway championed a new kind of labor movement that regarded workers as total persons interested in both workplace affairs and the exercise of effective citizenship in their communities. Working through Teamsters Local 688 and viewing the city of St. Louis as their laboratory, this remarkable interracial duo forged a dynamic political alliance that placed their citizen members on the front lines of epic battles for urban revitalization, improved public services, and the advancement of racial and economic justice. Parallel to their political partnership, Gibbons functioned as a top Teamsters Union leader and Calloway as an influential figure in St. Louis''s civil rights movement. Their pioneering efforts not only altered St. Louis''s social and political landscape but also raised fundamental questions about the fate of the post-industrial city, the meaning of citizenship, and the role of unions in shaping AmericaTrade Review"A captivating must-read for historians of postwar labor and civil rights movements as well as for present-day union officials and community organizers."--Journal of Southern History"Advocates of a powerful vision of what unions could and should do, Ernest Calloway and Harold Gibbons of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters pioneered a “total person unionism” that engaged rank-and-file energies in the workplace and broader community. In this important and highly readable joint biography, Robert Bussel breaks new ground that helps us rethink the politics of postwar labor at the local level.--Eric Arnesen, editor of The Black Worker: Race, Labor, and Civil Rights since Emancipation "The collaborative work of Calloway and Gibbons provides insight into labor at its post war best, and the path we must reclaim today. Total Person Unionism is a wonderful effort to reclaim that ground not only for historians but for all of us committed to economic justice and democracy today."--Larry Cohen, former president, Communications Workers of America"Bussel's careful and caring effort with Gibbons and Calloway deserves a much larger audience than labor historians alone; Fighting for Total Person Unionism is a must read for union leadership and staff and, especially, labor educators."--Labor Studies Journal"Robert Bussel makes a signal contribution to this emerging historiography in his dual biography of Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway, St. Louis labor leaders, one white and one black, who struggled against employer power, organized crime, and the city's culture of white supremacy."-Missouri Historical Review"As Robert Bussel's important recent book Fighting for Total Person Unionism: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway, and Working-Class Citizenship (2015) reminds us, this tradition carried into postwar St. Louis where the Teamsters developed an innovative community steward program."--Dissent"Bussel paints a vivid portrait of two very complex--and often contradictory--union leaders. Fighting For Total Unionism: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway, and Working Class Citizenship holds many important lessons for unionists today, and deserves to be read widely."--People's World"Bussel makes an important contribution to scholarship on the intersections of the labor and civil rights movements-- it challenges a postwar labor declension narrative by showcasing how progressive unionism transcended narrow conceptualization."--Pacific Historical Review"The book is a significant contribution to the history of the postwar labor movement."--Journal of American History "Bussel does a remarkable job researching and reporting on these men and their union, and his language is likely meant to inspire readers with the promise of old ideas that might have fresh relevance for the challenges of today."--Labour/Le Travail "Bussel's Fighting for Total Person Unionism is a fine addition to the growing scholarly and historical literature on St. Louis as well as the historiography of labor and civil rights history."--American Historical Review "Fighting for Total Person Unionism is a thoroughly researched, elegantly constructed, and marvelously engaging study of two long-time labor activists. But it’s more than that, really. Through the braided story of Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway, Bob Bussel recreates the social vision that animated much of the post-World War II labor movement--and reminds us how much we’ve lost in our age of rampant individualism."--Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age "The collaborative work of Calloway and Gibbons provides insight into labor at its post war best, and the path we must reclaim today. Total Person Unionism is a wonderful effort to reclaim that ground not only for historians but for all of us committed to economic justice and democracy today."--Larry Cohen, former president, Communications Workers of America "Bussel is offering us a unique perspective on the nation's largest union in an era when it was at its peak of influence. He also asserts that the careers of these two men offer important lessons to organized labor today, of tactics and approaches that would help the movement regain its lost relevance."--David Witwer, author of Shadow of the Racketeer: Scandal in Organized Labor

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewHerbert G. Gutman Prize, Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), 2011 "Remes is among the vanguard of the new disaster historians, motivated by the twenty-first century wave of disasters to search out antecedents that help us understand the formation of a modern state that 'manages' (or does not manage) disasters like Hurricane Katrina. . . . A tour de force of method for the new disaster history, and hopefully a portent of things to come in this emerging field."--American Historical Review"Remes' impressive research demonstrates throughout that even though the actions of working-class people drew on tight social bonds and a deep reservoir of local knowledge, their behavior was often illegible to the ascendant class of relief managers and government experts."--Journal of American History"Disaster Citizenship is an impressive accomplishment that offers a great deal to those interested in social history, the history of the working class, the history of progressivism, urban history, state building in the Progressive Era, the US-Canada borderlands, and comparative approaches to the study of history."--H-Net Review"Jacob A. C. Remes has shed new light over a broad terrain of Progressive Era historiography through this richly researched, sensitive, transnational comparison of the 1914 Salem, Massachusetts fire and the 1917 Halifax, Nova Scotia explosion."--New England Quarterly"An excellent historical study rooted in high quality research. Remes' management of the two case studies successfully supports his central arguments relating to the state, the people, and ways of forming citizenship at times of crisis and relief, and his methodologies encourage us to look at disasters, both past and present, in new ways."--Labour/Le Travail"Remes's excellent and engaging book contributes to long-running debates about the nature of working-class life, to more recent discussions of transnational progressive reform and state-society relations and to current conversations--both popular and scholarly--about events such as Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy."--Labor: Studies in Working Class History"This is a thoughtful, robust work of history, exactly the kind of study that we need to revitalize the history of working people."--Canadian Historical Review"A striking juxtaposition of the hierarchical order of experts and vernacular order created by victims themselves, Remes's finely grained comparison of two major turn-of-the-century disasters in Halifax and Salem represents a major contribution to our understanding of the dynamics and effects of spontaneous order in a crisis. Meticulously researched, gripping, and important."--James C. Scott, author of Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed "In his meticulously researched and intelligently argued book, Disaster Citizenship, Jacob Remes has advanced and perfected the kind of deep social history pioneered by Herbert Gutman and Linda Gordon in their studies of working people’s lives. More than any other historian writing in this tradition, Remes has revealed the power of the informal networks and solidarities that existed in poorer communities, particularly during disasters, and he has highlighted the ways agents of state intervention failed to understand these strengths and their democratic significance. Scholars will find in this excellent study a model of transnational history and other readers, especially officials in charge of disaster relief, will discover a new way of thinking about the people they are attempting to 'rescue.'"--James Green, author of The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom "Disaster Citizenship provides a rich, original, and sensitive account of responses to two urban catastrophes, the Great Salem Fire (1914) and the 1917 Halifax explosion. Remes sets a new standard for transnational continental history as the everyday solidarity of working people is contrasted with the progressive state, civic institutions, and emergent welfare professionals."--Suzanne Morton, author of Wisdom, Justice, and Charity: Canadian Social Welfare through the Life of Jane B Wisdom, 1884–1975

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Book Synopsis The Pew and the Picket Line collects works from a new generation of scholars working at the nexus where religious history and working-class history converge. Focusing on Christianity and its unique purchase in America, the contributors use in-depth local histories to illustrate how Americans male and female, rural and urban, and from a range of ethnic backgrounds dwelt in a space between the church and the shop floor. Their vivid essays show Pentecostal miners preaching prosperity while seeking miracles in the depths of the earth, while aboveground black sharecroppers and white Protestants establish credit unions to pursue a joint vision of cooperative capitalism. Innovative and essential, The Pew and the Picket Line reframes venerable debates as it maps the dynamic contours of a landscape sculpted by the powerful forces of Christianity and capitalism. Contributors: Christopher D. Cantwell, Heath W. Carter, Janine Giordano Drake, Ken Fones-Wolf, Erik Gellman, Alison Collis GreeneTrade Review"This is an important collection of essays that for all its many strengths certainly represents only the beginning of what in the coming years promises to be a flood of books on labor and religion."--Labor: Studies in Working-Class History"Taken as a whole, the articles provide a rich sense of possibilities inherent in the cross-fertilization of labor and religious histories. For the social and cultural historian as well, this is a collection well worth reading."--Journal of American History"The Pew and the Picket Line is an example of a collection done right. With an outstanding introductory essay on the historiography of religion and labor by Cantwell, Carter, and Drake, along with cutting-edge research throughout the rest of the book, this collection should be essential reading for historians of American religion and labor."--Annals of Iowa“With this diverse collection of essays, Cantwell, Carter, and Drake admirably succeed in merging the histories of religion and the working class. Without exception the work is sharply focused and impeccably researched.”—History News Network"Together, the excellent scholars highlight the exciting possibilities and future studies of the histories of religions and labor in the US. This book covers wide ground temporally, geographically, methodologically, and theoretically. For the study of both US Christianities and US Capitalisms, this is a must read... Highly recommended."--Choice"The Pew and the Picket Line is a useful addition to the recent literature that seeks to examine the historical interplay of religion and labor. What distinguishes this book from some others in the field is its focus on the working class itself--those in the pew--rather than leadership. The contributors' willingness to engage seriously with the religious beliefs of their subjects is to be commended, as well as their attention to race, gender, ethnicity, class, place, and denomination."--Labour/ Le Travail"Readers of all stripes will be pleased with the collection assembled by Cantwell, Carter, and Drake. Its essays are a valuable addition to the canon."--Fides et Historia"These essays are a welcome addition to a burgeoning field of research. They are a wonderful starting point for examining that what happens between the pew and the picket line often occurs more so in the hearts of believers than in the precepts of religious leaders." --Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society "This is a terrific collection. In treating the religious commitments of American working people seriously, it offers a more holistic perspective of these men and women that reflects their very humanity." --Nick Salvatore, author of Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist "Fully attentive to the historical scholarship and political theory upon which the volume’s scholarship builds, Cantwell, Carter, and Drake also take the necessary steps in their historiographical introduction to reopen all questions about how work, race, gender, ethnicity, region, and religion have intersected in the American past, and to suggest provocative new ones. The richly textured historical case studies that follow more than fulfill the agenda the editors set. This is a superb work of collective history by some of the most creative younger historians working on the subject today."--Robert Orsi, author of The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950 "The coeditors have assembled a tremendous and diverse team for this volume. Each essay is by itself a significant contribution, and some provide brilliant and pioneering analysis and the introduction is definitely the best historiographical overview, survey, and analysis of scholarship in the field that I have ever read. It sets the standard for the next generation of scholarship."--Paul Harvey, coauthor of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America "Navigating a wide spectrum of time and workspaces, racial and ethnic expressions, and blue-collar gospels, this brilliantly conceived and superbly executed volume demands that historians shift their gaze from the much examined corporate to under-scrutinized labor side of modern American Christianity and capitalism. Fifty years after its delivery, Herbert Gutman's plea for historians to take seriously the authentic and empowering qualities of working-class belief has finally been addressed, head on, with critical empathy and care, in an accessible manner. This is a timely and significant scholarly intervention." --Darren Dochuk, author of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Fischer expands our perspective of anti-communism temporally, shifting it to these late nineteenth-century roots, and deepens our understanding of it to contain clearly, and from its earliest origins, a laissez faire, open shop agenda. . . . This book will be welcomed and appreciated by those interested not only in the history of communism but also in understanding the limits of American politics in the twentieth century."--American Communist History "Fischer's sweep is broad; his results are impressive. Recommended."--Choice"Refreshingly original."--New York Review of Books"Fischer has produced a very original, well-researched and well-written account of how a relatively small but highly influential group of interlocking elites, including political and military intelligence officials, wealthy businessmen, members of 'patriotic' societies, and other conservatives, worked successfully to keep alive highly exaggerated fears of communism that had caused a national panic during the 1919-20 'red scare.'"--Robert Justin Goldstein, author of Political Repression in Modern America"Spider Web turns out to be a well-researched and thoughtful interdisciplinary work that intertwiningly uses perspectives of history, political science, sociology, and media studies. . . . Fischer's research is extensive, and in many aspects pioneering. Not only does he sum up the previous findings on American anticommunism, but also adds new information and, more importantly, provides new analytical perspectives."--Americana"Nick Fischer makes a major contribution to the growing literature on American antisubversive organizations. Spider Web establishes, through rigorous and original research, that anticommunism was intimately connected with private and public networks that promoted antilabor laws, eugenics, and immigration restriction."--Phillip Deery, author of Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War New York

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Book SynopsisRuth Milkman''s groundbreaking research in women''s labor history has contributed important perspectives on work and unionism in the United States. On Gender, Labor, and Inequality presents four decades of Milkman''s essential writings, tracing the parallel evolutions of her ideas and the field she helped define. Milkman''s introduction frames a career-spanning scholarly project: her interrogation of historical and contemporary intersections of class and gender inequalities in the workplace, and the efforts to challenge those inequalities. Early chapters focus on her pioneering work on women''s labor during the Great Depression and the World War II years. In the book''s second half, Milkman turns to the past fifty years, a period that saw a dramatic decline in gender inequality even as growing class imbalances created greater-than-ever class disparity among women. She concludes with a previously unpublished essay comparing the impact of the Great Depression and the Great ReceTrade Review"Milkman's book is a must read, not only to remind those of us influenced by her excellent work how significant her scholarship was and is, but also for new scholars who can trace the intellectual evolution of a labor studies author whose writing has always been grounded in painstaking empirical research, and simultaneously dedicated to analyzing the origins and operation of social inequality, even as specific topics, theories, and approaches have shifted over time."--Labour/ Le Travail"Milkman's collection will well serve scholars of the Great Plains with its comprehensive coverage, from a 1976 study of Great Depression female workers to an essay written for this volume that reprises the same questions for the 2008 Great Recession. The 11 essays constitute a history of women's relationships to both the workforce and unions across the twentieth century. . . . Milkman's decades of study provide a solid foundation for new work in Great Plains labor history."--Great Plains Quarterly "A fascinating and timely set of articles. . . What Milkman's four decades of illuminating scholarship reveals is both the uphill battle the movement will face precisely because many of these fast-growing occupations have been sex-typed as 'women's work.' But there is hope in these chapters too."--Dissent "This volume illuminates mechanisms of gendered inequality in the work force, illustrating how class inequality and gendered inequality are inextricably linked. Students and scholars of gendered dynamics of labor and society will appreciate the breadth and abundance of macrosociological research as well as Milkman's accessible and effective writing style."--Labor: Studies in Working-Class History"What a pleasure to have in a single volume these brilliant, eye-opening essays by Ruth Milkman. It's all here--her stunning 1970s rethinking of Marx and sex-segregated labor markets to her recent revelatory studies of the stark class divides separating women today. Each essay is a gem, rigorous analytically and elegant in formation. A remarkable, intellectual game-changer of a collection."--Dorothy Sue Cobble, co-author of Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women's Movements"Throughout her distinguished career as a scholar-activist, Ruth Milkman has focused attention on the struggles of wage-earning women. An antidote to Lean In, her collection of essays explains why the fight for gender equality in a capitalist society typically only benefits elite women. When feminism focuses on the needs of working-class women, everyone wins."--Christine Williams, author of Inside Toyland: Working, Shopping, and Social Inequality

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Pehl is to be commended for his multivalent work, and for the important contributions he makes to both The Working Class in American History series and to the study of America's religious history."--Anglican Theological Review"The value of Pehl's wonderful book is that it helps us reimagine the currents of faith that ebb and flow in American society and interact with changing political and economic circumstances. This is a book that belongs on the shelves of historians." --American Historical Review"Pehl's work makes a number of important contributions to our thinking about religion within labor history. . . . He expertly weaves together the thoughts of religious leaders and rank-and-file workers and shows the intersections of these processes among Protestants and Catholics, and African American and white workers."--Journal of American History"The Making of Working Class Religion is an important read for both scholars of labor and scholars of religion as a methodological model for advancing the study of religion, labor, and class. . . . Pehl's book teaches its readers--whether they be scholars, labor organizers, or graduate or undergraduate students--how to recover and interpret critically and empathetically, the religious worlds of working-class people."--Labour/Le Travail"This book is well-written, concise, and highly recommended to all audiences."--The Michigan Historical Review"Highly Recommended."--Choice"Matthew Pehl's subtle and stunning book describes the remarkable moments when working class identities and religion remarkably converged in America's quintessential manufacturing city--Detroit--first from the 1920s to the 1940s, then as they fractured amidst the racial, ethnic, gender, and political shifts after World War II. Pehl incisively describes the possibilities and tensions, and achievements and failures, that encouraged and undermined bonds between religion and the working classes in an uneasily complex American city. A terrific achievement and enthralling read."--Jon Butler, author of Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People"A signal contribution to the resurgence of historical interest in the religious worlds of working class men and women. Pehl shows how 'work' had religious significance in Detroit's working class neighborhoods and in doing so he helps restore the realities and exigencies of daily toil to American religious history. The Making of Working Class Religion is also an exciting religious history of modern Detroit. With its huge cast of historical actors--Detroit's white and black, Protestant and Catholic workers, Elijah Muhammad, Reinhold Niebuhr, Father Charles Coughlin, and many others--the book goes a long way towards establishing the city's importance as a place of religious innovation and public engagement. This is dynamic and powerful history."--Robert Orsi, author of The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950

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