Real World Labor

Edited by Immanuel Ness, Amy Offner, and Chris Sturr

Real World Labor cover
Edition:
1st
Date of publication:
August 2009
Pages:
380
ISBN:
978-1-878585-55-4
Price:
$34.95


In this time of rapid economic change, the power of organized labor seems to be in decline. But new organizing strategies are emerging to challenge corporate power and the globalization of capital. Real World Labor examines the most pressing issues facing workers today: fundamental changes in the nature of work; new legal impediments to union organizing; the persistence of racial and gender discrimination; migrant workers’ struggle for dignity; militarism and its effects on the working class; workers’ responses to the global financial meltdown; and new forms of rank–and–file organizing and resistance.

Real World Labor provides up–to–date, accessible, and penetrating analysis of the most significant theoretical, historical, and practical issues confronting labor unions and workers on a national and global level. This collection includes 70 authoritative essays by leading writers and scholars of the labor movement, drawn from the pages of Dollars & Sense and WorkingUSA.

Praise for Real World Labor:

“Real World Labor, like decades of Dollars & Sense books, is bound to be a great guide to labor issues with a wide range of perspectives for both union members and students.”
—LARRY COHEN, President, Communications Workers of America

“Real World Labor is an antidote to the misinformation, false arguments, and faulty analysis so common in the mainstream media and among orthodox economists. An excellent classroom resource.”
—MICHAEL YATES, author of Why Unions Matter and Associate Editor, Monthly Review

“For any labor studies course, Real World Labor is the most comprehensive and accessible book available today. Written by authoritative scholars of the labor movement in the United States and worldwide, no book compares to this work in its breadth of coverage and scope of analysis. This is the only collection that provides an in–depth overview of labor issues in an accessible manner to anyone interested in understanding the most significant issues facing workers and the contemporary labor movement. I highly recommend this book to all!”
—THOMAS J. KRIGER, Provost, National Labor College

“Only a Dollars & Sense reader could fit between its covers organizing against Starbucks, wage theft, the political economy of unemployment, globalization, sexual harassment, democratic alternatives to capitalism, the music of the Dropkick Murphys, and much much more—and have it all make sense. Real World Labor is an ideal text both for newcomers to labor studies and to old hands. In one volume, it provides students with invaluable historical background, up-to-the-minute analysis of current labor politics, and many compelling stories about both workers being exploited and workers fighting back. Equally important, it provides an analytical framework for understanding the assault on labor over the past generation and how this has impacted the American economy as a whole. Combining excellent journalism and excellent analysis, Real World Labor provides both a compelling critique of the American political economy and cutting-edge commentary on the direction labor and economic justice movements must take in the years ahead”
—THAD WILLIAMSON, Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond