Publishers Weekly
★ 11/04/2019
Labor activist McAlevey (Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell)) delivers a persuasive argument that the power of “strong, democratic” trade unions can fix many of America’s social problems this timely cri de coeur. Sketching the history of the labor movement from the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which guaranteed the right to collective bargaining; through the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which banned sympathy strikes, legalized corporate campaigns against unionization, and created “right-to-work” laws; and the “union-busting effects of globalization” beginning in the 1970s, McAlevey contends that the weakening of private- and public-sector unions over the past 80 years is directly responsible for increased income and political inequality. Yet unions can be successful even in a diminished state, McAlevey notes, pointing to recent strikes in the education, health-care, and hospitality industries that led to improved contracts. She offers a useful primer on how labor organizing works, and effectively refutes common assumptions about unions, including that they discriminate against women and are inherently corrupt. Well-run unions, she contends, can achieve better schools, stronger environmental protections, and increased racial and gender equality. McAlevey’s caustic humor (“We don’t need robots to care for the aging population. We need the rich to pay their taxes”) and contagious confidence in the efficacy of organized labor give this succinct volume an outsize impact. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
An introduction to the world of unions and their enemies. . . . McAlevey’s writing is an attempt to circulate organizers’ skills, breathing life into the long-quiescent labor movement. . . . A Collective Bargain, like the rest of McAlevey’s work, is indispensable.” —Alex Press, Bookforum — Alex Press, Bookforum
“Incisive, brilliant, combined with trenchant strategic analysis. If we had more organizers like Jane McAlevey, we’d be winning.” — Van Jones, CNN host and author of Beyond the Messy Truth
“A half century ago, the Koch family targeted workers’ collective power with so-called right-to-work laws. Now they and their allies have expanded their agenda to shackling democracy writ large... McAlevey shows us how workplaces provided a laboratory for this audacious project of domination—and better still, she explains how following the strategies and tactics of savvy union organizers could help save America from an ever more ruthless right...This empowering book could not be more timely.” — Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
“Jane McAlevey has devoted her life to reigning the destructive power of concentrated wealth and she is consumed with one over-arching question: How do we win? In this essential book, she draws on decades of organizing experience to make an overwhelming case that the new face of working-class power is female and fiercely feminist. It’s past time to listen up.” — Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything
“Jane McAlevey is a brilliant strategist, rousing organizer, and razor-sharp critic inside the labor movement. In this critical moment when labor is resurgent, McAlevey’s small “d” democratic spirit, and her humane, and deeply informed reporting and analysis is needed more than ever.” — Katrina vanden Heuval, Editorial Director & Publisher, The Nation
“Read this book! It’s full of effective strategies for overcoming voter suppression against even the stiffest odds. Jane McAlevey is the type of experienced organizer the current White House fears.” — Benjamin Todd Jealous, Former National President and CEO of the NAACP
“A battle cry for union rights in a time hostile to labor organizations.” —Kirkus — Kirkus Reviews
“Labor activist McAlevey delivers a persuasive argument that the power of ‘strong, democratic’ trade unions can fix many of America’s social problems in this timely cri de coeur. . . . She offers a useful primer on how labor organizing works, and effectively refutes common assumptions about unions. . . . McAlevey’s . . . humor and contagious confidence in the efficacy of organized labor give this succinct volume an outsize impact.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Alex Press
An introduction to the world of unions and their enemies. . . . McAlevey’s writing is an attempt to circulate organizers’ skills, breathing life into the long-quiescent labor movement. . . . A Collective Bargain, like the rest of McAlevey’s work, is indispensable.” —Alex Press, Bookforum
Naomi Klein
Jane McAlevey has devoted her life to reigning the destructive power of concentrated wealth and she is consumed with one over-arching question: How do we win? In this essential book, she draws on decades of organizing experience to make an overwhelming case that the new face of working-class power is female and fiercely feminist. It’s past time to listen up.”
Katrina vanden Heuval
Jane McAlevey is a brilliant strategist, rousing organizer, and razor-sharp critic inside the labor movement. In this critical moment when labor is resurgent, McAlevey’s small “d” democratic spirit, and her humane, and deeply informed reporting and analysis is needed more than ever.”
Benjamin Todd Jealous
Read this book! It’s full of effective strategies for overcoming voter suppression against even the stiffest odds. Jane McAlevey is the type of experienced organizer the current White House fears.”
Van Jones
Incisive, brilliant, combined with trenchant strategic analysis. If we had more organizers like Jane McAlevey, we’d be winning.
Nancy MacLean
A half century ago, the Koch family targeted workers’ collective power with so-called right-to-work laws. Now they and their allies have expanded their agenda to shackling democracy writ large... McAlevey shows us how workplaces provided a laboratory for this audacious project of domination—and better still, she explains how following the strategies and tactics of savvy union organizers could help save America from an ever more ruthless right...This empowering book could not be more timely.
Library Journal
12/01/2019
Labor activist McAlevey (No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age) pairs her urgent, impassioned account of the current state of labor unions with her optimistic recipe for their future success. She bluntly contrasts the sad state of unions at the end of the 20th century with two earlier periods of growth when they gained support from not only workers but also government acting to foster union membership. Focusing on both public and private sector unions, McAlevey identifies factors that caused the decline of unions. While she places much blame on the changing economic and political climate that allowed the rise of fierce employer resistance, she also faults unions for failing to recognize the need for a new militancy and organizational tactics. The author's remedies take the form of several case studies of successful labor organization in recent decades, which she attributes to willingness to merge the cause of labor organization with efforts to address gender and racial harassment and inequality, wealth disparity, and other current challenges facing society. VERDICT This book will appeal to readers seeking inspiration to address problems facing both organized labor and individual workers.—Charles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato
Kirkus Reviews
2019-10-14
A battle cry for union rights in a time hostile to labor organizations.
Longtime union organizer McAlevey (Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement, 2012) is nothing if not a tough talker; her first chapter closes with the provocative phrase, "As the Parkland youth say, I call bullshit." The objection is to the prevailing narratives about unions and the causes of their decline—the notion, say, that unions are immaterial in an age of robotics and globalism or the charge that unions are racist, sexist, and corrupt. "Of course," writes the author, "some unions are sexist for the same reasons that they are racist: union formation is a product of a sexist society." She adds that women and people of color fare better economically with unions than without them. Even as she points out some inconvenient truths about certain elements of unions and the tactic of striking, she ably demonstrates how there is nothing quite like a strike to get the juices flowing, as when the 20,000 teachers of West Virginia recently went out on strike and, in the end, emerged with higher pay not just for themselves, but also for 14,000 nonteaching staff—and, still more, gave "the state police, roads workers, and everyone else on the state payroll a raise those workers could not have won because they did not strike." Union busting is a big business, she writes, because unions are the capitalist's greatest fear: Whole Foods may appear fresh and organic, but its methods in this regard would please John D. Rockefeller, and even the Democratic Party, she writes, has cast its lot with the enemies of their base: "When it comes to public education and teachers' unions, Democrats don't look much different from red-state Republicans."
Tough talk for tough times and a welcome guide for labor activists.
