Summer reading, summer viewing

By Joe Twarog
Associate Director, Labor Education & Training

Here is a selection of labor-focused books—just the thing to take to the beach! They range from biographies to labor history and accounts of classic struggles that helped to shape our society and country. Also included is a series of suggested short videos that are available on YouTube.com.

Ravenswood: The Steelworkers’ Victory and the Revival of American Labor by Tom Juravich and Kate Bronfenbrenner. An account of United Steelworkers successful struggle with the Ravenswood Aluminum Corp. in the early 1990s. The union employed a strategy of in-depth financial and corporate research, community organizing, coalitionbuilding and a multi-national trade union pressure campaign that united workers in West Virginia with trade unionists around the world. In the process, the union also exposed the real culprit behind the fight— world fugitive billionaire Marc Rich.

Copper Crucible: How the Arizona Miners’ Strike of 1983 Recast Labor-Management Relations in America by Jonathan D. Rosenbloom. The sad history of a bitter Arizona mining strike in 1983-86 in which the employer, Phelps Dodge, introduced the use of replacement workers to crush a strike led by the Steelworkers union.

The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor by Nelson Lichtenstein. The biography of a true labor visionary who was committed to workers’ rights and improving their standard of living. He helped organize the Ford Motor Company and built the United Auto Workers union into a force for social justice and civil rights.

Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class by Larry Tye. The story of the brave and courageous Pullman porters who challenged racism and segregation following the Civil War. This account also covers the legacy of A. Philip Randolph who led the porters into the first successful black trade union—the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters that succeeded despite the Pullman Company’s bitter and vicious opposition.

Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America by James Green. Green, professor of labor history at the UMass Boston has written a book detailing the rise of the first great labor union movement in the wake of the Civil War and the 20-year battle for the eight-hour work day and the story of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago.

Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Women in America by Elliott J. Gorn. This is the story of the celebrated union organizer and agitator Mary Jones (1837-1930) who became known as “Mother Jones.” She delivered moving speeches and creative street theatre to move common people into action to challenge the injustices she observed and experienced, including: child labor; working family poverty; and the destruction of American freedoms.

Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle. The author writes about the tragic fire in March 1911 in New York’s Greenwich Village when 146 garment workers lost their lives. Most of these workers were young immigrant seamstresses who were about to leave work for the day as a raging fire consumed the building’s upper three stories in minutes. Many died from jumping to escape the flames from the ninth story. This was New York’s worst workplace disaster until the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Not Your Father’s Union Movement: Inside the AFL-CIO edited by Jo-Ann Mort. This book is a collection of articles written about the labor movement’s efforts to re-energize itself. The articles cover issues including: women in labor; working women’s view of the economy; organizing immigrant workers; union political action; women’s rights in the global economy; plus reviews of labor campaigns as “union cities” and “America need a Raise,” plus more. A great resource for all interested in progressive social change in America today.

Framed! Labor and the Corporate Media by Christopher R. Martin. A study on how the mainstream corporate media “covers” the American labor movement with all of its anti-union bias. Martin argues persuasively that the media fails to focus on the real and legitimate workplace issues in the labor-management relationship in favor of trivializing organized labor.

Why Unions Matter by Michael D. Yates. A good, short, basic introduction to the labor movement. Provides irrefutable statistics and persuasive analysis that unionized workers in every part of the economy gets more pay and better benefits than employees who do comparable work but do not belong to a union.

Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream by Bruce Watson. An account of the classic 1912 strike in the Lawrence textile mills that involved 23,000 mainly immigrant workers. The strike became a symbol and inspiration for workers fighting for their rights around the world. This should be required reading in our schools.

YouTube labor videos
The Web site YouTube.com has many excellent videos. They can be viewed by entering the name of the video in the search function.

• Busting A Union Buster from SheetMetalWorkers
• U1TV—Union Busting 101: “Fear,” Episode 1 from dawilli1
• U1TV—Why Unions Matter from dawilli1
• U1TV—We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants: Labor Version 2 from dawilli1
• Secret Ballot In Name Only from SheetMetalWorkers
• U1TV—Want a Fair Day’s Pay? Organize a Union! from dawilli1
• Labor Day Union Parade from peteyk411
• Radical Labor Day Video from robrobbins
• Kathy Geroux’s Staffing Story from unitednursesoflegacy
• Informational Picket Line at Tobey Hospital from gsmlaborcouncil
• Solidarity Tv Solidarnosc 1985 r. from 4kwadra
• CEO Pay from AmericansUnited
• Solidarity Forever (Pete Seeger) from RedCeltic
• 1904 Labor Day Parade from dawilli1
• Bruce Springsteen: This Land is Your Land from OberstKrautwaschl
• Union Maid – Pete Seerge & Arlo Guthrie from wongyoho
• Joe Hill from supermax1776