Labor Pains: Inside America's New Union Movement - Exploring Worker Rights & Modern Labor Struggles | Workplace Advocacy & Employee Empowerment Insights
Delivery & Return:Free shipping on all orders over $50
Estimated Delivery:7-15 days international
People:26 people viewing this product right now!
Easy Returns:Enjoy hassle-free returns within 30 days!
Payment:Secure checkout
SKU:97061309
Product Description
Labor Pains is an insider's account of the struggle to rebuild a vibrant and powerful trade union movement in the United States. It takes as its starting point the daily experience of a union organizer, and brings that experience to life. It enables us to grasp how the conflicting demands of race, class, and gender are lived in the new union movement. The role of the unions is defined mainly by larger economic and political agendas. While keeping these agendas clearly in sight, Erem focuses primarily on aspects of the life of the union which often remain hidden. The personal crises of union members become entangled in the work of the union. The energies of the union are focused not only on winning gains from bosses but also on maintaining internal cohesion and morale among workers. Barriers of race, age and gender are constantly negotiated and overcome, and conflicts flare up across them at moments of tension. And union life goes on not only when the workers have made their point, or won a victory, but after defeat as well. The personalities and ambitions of union organizers converge at times and become a source of tension at others. Each individual within the larger collective has their own task of finding a viable balance between public and private selves. These intersecting lines of force are imaginatively recreated in this book. Erem writes as a woman in a union movement which is dominated by men; as the child of immigrants in a movement whose members are increasingly immigrants themselves; as one who finds herself in the racial no man's land between black and white. While never underestimating the obstacles in the way of the union movement, she makes a powerful and passionate case for organizing the disorganized and empowering the powerless.
Customer Reviews
Ever since John Sweeny displaced the old guard at the AFL-CI0 and began to revive a moribund but important labor movement, we've read a great deal about this new face of labor. We've read about the focus on service employees -- who are predominantly women and people of color -- we've learned about aggressive organizing tactics and corporate campaigns, we've seen the leaders of the movement featured in labor publications and we've even heard about the members, activists and staffers who are the ground troops in this war.Suzan Erem's book, Labor Pains, is unusual in that it makes us live through the beginnings of that movement. We don't just read about it; Erem's writing has the ability to bring you into it and you see if from the inside -- warts and all.She does this by conncecting with reader not as an activist or leader -- but as a human being. The labor movement is made up of human beings who have the same problems and concerns that everyone else has, including raising children, paying the rent and even keeping warm during the long Chicago winter. It has been a shortcoming of writing about labor that the authors seem to think that the only humans are the "objects" of the organizing drives, the potential and actual bargaining unit employees, except, of course, when they have something bad to say about the leaders.Erem doesn't have something bad to say -- or something good, for that matter. She just tells it as it is. Yes, the movement is made up of men and women struggling to create a better world, but these men and women can -- like everyone else -- be motivated by racism or nationalism, sexism and careerism. Not to say that is to patronize the reader and to call into question all of the "happy" truths of the movement. Those interested in the new labor movement can balance the truth about our humanity with the fact of our commitment.I especially recommend this book to those many young people who come to the movement with high hopes of making a difference. It says that you have good reason for those hopes, but here are some landmines to avoid. These readers will all thank Erem for sharing the shortcomings of our activists and our movement -- including her own --with them, while also confirming that their hope to make a difference by organizing working people into unions is still well placed.
