Аннотация

Exposing the roots of modern “business unionism” and the causes of its decline. Over the past decade American labor has faced a tidal wave of wage cuts, plant closures and broken strikes. In this first comprehensive history of the labor movement from Truman to Reagan, Kim Moody shows how the AFL-CIO’s conservative ideology of “business unionism” effectively disarmed unions in the face of a domestic right turn and an epochal shift to globalized production. Eschewing alliances with new social forces in favor of its old Cold War liaisons and illusory compacts with big business, the AFL-CIO under George Meany and Lane Kirkland has been forced to surrender many of its post-war gains. With extraordinary attention to the viewpoints of rank-and-file workers, Moody chronicles the major, but largely unreported, efforts of labor’s grassroots to find its way out of the crisis. In case studies of auto, steel, meatpacking and trucking, he traces the rise of “anti-concession” movements and in other case studies describes the formidable obstacles to the “organization of the unorganized” in the service sector. A detailed analysis of the Rainbow Coalition’s potential to unite labor with other progressive groups follows, together with a pathbreaking consideration of the possibilities of a new “labor internationalism.”

Аннотация

As the economic crisis continues to ravage the globe, increasing numbers are looking for alternatives to the market.The Chicago Teachers Union, Walmart workers, Longshoreman on the West Coast, and many other labor struggles have recently broken out across the US. This has sent many searching for a better understanding of labor history, Marxism , and the future of of the labor movement. A social media campaign will be launched in support of the book. Reviews will be sought in left publications such as the Nation, the Indypendent, and In These TimesPolemics around the rank-and-file