recommend me a book on the history of labor/organized labor in the US

thx

me too, thanks for starting this.

I haven't read this yet, but it is supposed to be good:

http://www.amazon.com/There-Is-Power-Union-America/dp/0307389766/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Very soon I will be starting my first non-union construction job. I'm a little nervous but looking forward to finding out if everything I've been told from the union is true about non-union work, ie differences and short comings. It's a test run. Meanwhile I've been wanting to read a thorough non-biased history of labor unions.

this reminds me, where is a hoos? :(

oh wow how'd i never see this

i've always said the best 1-2 punch on american labor history is

1 - there is power in a union
2 - stayin alive: the 1970s and the last days of the working class
http://www.amazon.com/Stayin%C2%92-Alive-1970s-Working-Class/dp/1595587071/ref=pd_sim_b_8?ie=UTF8&refRID=0RPRVPHR4K2HJJKS8F9M

have only perused this one, but it's well worth a look:

http://www.amazon.com/Labors-Untold-Story-Adventure-Betrayals/dp/0916180018

Joe Hill executed 100 years ago

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/joe-hill-songs-utah-iww-union-labor-haywood/

I owned the Joe Hill songbook, officially issued by the IWW, back in high school. One of my buddies joined up and last I heard was still a wobbly.

"I don’t want to be found dead in Utah."

i feel like j0rdan would really like stayin' alive. one of my favourite books full stop

Very soon I will be starting my first non-union construction job. I'm a little nervous but looking forward to finding out if everything I've been told from the union is true about non-union work, ie differences and short comings. It's a test run. Meanwhile I've been wanting to read a thorough non-biased history of labor unions.

― JacobSanders, Monday, September 10, 2012 11:30 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how did the new job go?

haven't come across a thorough non-biased history of labor unions yet. i think the topic is in that spot of too controversial and also too tedious to research (understanding endless stream of NLRB rulings, learning all the union acronyms) where only partisans could be bothered to write extensively about it. not that jefferson cowey is so partisan, but you can tell which "side" he's on, and he makes you feel his warmth in the writing. jeremy brecher is more partisan (i'm not even sure if it's widely read, my communist friend recommended it to me) but "strike!" was still worth reading imo. i still haven't read "there is power in a union", maybe that's the one we're missing

i've been thinking about meeting with one of my employment's union rep's lately, just to pick his / her brain and find out what their actual deal is. it feels weird though! they're seen as kind of a necessary evil, i think, by a lot of employees, and obvi as great $atan by a significant portion of Americans

stayin alive is remarkably good shit

only found out about this now but i wish someone had recommended this to me right after i finished stayin' alive when i was thirsting to read about what happened next Thomas Geoghegan - Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back

learned of it from this fivebooks.com interview with a historian who wrote a book about reagan

Your next choice is a book about organized labor, Which Side Are you On? Trying to be for Labor When it’s Flat on its Back…

Of all these books, this one might be the best reading experience. It’s a rollicking ride, a sometimes profane journey through the underworld of organized labor in the 1980s. Not that the author, Geoghegan, is profane, but he reproduces profanities uttered by others. It’s a lament for a dying subculture. In the 1980s, organized labor was ‘the real counterculture’, it was almost a kind of ‘outlaw culture’, as Geoghegan calls it. Geoghegan writes, at the beginning of his book, about the overwhelming presence of individualism as a social ideal during the Reagan era — expressed in slogans like ‘Whoever dies with the most toys wins.’ The idea that these paunchy, middle-aged men would stand around singing Solidarity Forever appeared absurd to many Americans at the time. Organized labor was basically caught in a death spiral, but, even so, it was still alive as a kind of underground culture. Who would think these middle-aged working class men would be the real counter-culture rather than hip young people? But Geoghegan has got a strong case to make that they were. It’s a movement that was raging against the dying of the light. It’s important to remember the losers, just in the way EP Thompson wrote about the importance of resisting ‘the enormous condescension of posterity’ in The Making of the English Working Class. And Geoghegan really is writing about the losers of the era, who saw their legacy and their dreams and hopes for security ground down. It’s a marvellous read and to someone like me, who didn’t grow up knowing anything about organized labor, it was quite educational.

One of the reviews said it was comic.

Yes, there’s a great deal of humor in it, even through it’s a very wry, sorrowful kind of humor.

ordered a copy of TIPIAU, too

that spot of too controversial and also too tedious to research

like reading abt the history of marxist/socialist/anarchist thought then haha

yup lol

i gotta get in on that

I tried contacting my union rep twice through my personal e-mail and once via my work account, to complete silence. Maybe if I had a specific grievance, rather than just being an interested party, there would've been a better response. Not really feeling in the mood to pursue it further so I ordered that Stayin Alive book instead.

ordered a copy of TIPIAU, too

― flopson

which one is this?

oh..."There Is Power in a Union"

it came in the mail last week. it's a thick fn tome, not sure when i'll get around to reading it

yeah its big as hell, i've been intimidated out of reading it

coworker is trying to start a "only one thing can save us" book club, that might finally get me reading it.

at first i thought you meant that was the theme of the club

like for every book