Hard work : remaking the American labor movement / Rick Fantasia, Kim Voss.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fantasia, Rick.

Contributor:

Voss, Kim.

Standardized Title:

Des syndicats domestiqués. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Labor movement--United States.

Labor movement.

Labor unions--Social aspects--United States.

Labor unions.

Labor unions--United States--Management.

Industrial relations--United States.

Industrial relations.

Bureaucracy--United States.

Bureaucracy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (261 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This concise overview of the labor movement in the United States focuses on why American workers have failed to develop the powerful unions that exist in other industrialized countries. Packed with valuable analysis and information, Hard Work explores historical perspectives, examines social and political policies, and brings us inside today's unions, providing an excellent introduction to labor in America. Hard Work begins with a comparison of the very different conditions that prevail for labor in the United States and in Europe. What emerges is a picture of an American labor movement forced to operate on terrain shaped by powerful corporations, a weak state, and an inhospitable judicial system. What also emerges is a picture of an American worker that has virtually disappeared from the American social imagination. Recently, however, the authors find that a new kind of unionism-one that more closely resembles a social movement-has begun to develop from the shell of the old labor movement. Looking at the cities of Los Angeles and Las Vegas they point to new practices that are being developed by innovative unions to fight corporate domination, practices that may well signal a revival of unionism and the emergence of a new social imagination in the United States.

Contents:

Why labor matters: the underside of the "American model"

An exceptionally hostile terrain

Bureaucrats, "strongmen," militants, and intellectuals

Practices and possibilities of social movement unionism.

Notes:

Revised and enlarged edition of Des syndicats domestiques, which was originally written in English, then translated into French and published in Paris by Raisons d'agir, 2002.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-228) and index.

ISBN:

9786612763007

9781282763005

1282763008

9781597346474

1597346470

9780520937710

0520937716

OCLC:

475929442