Epitaph for American Labor: How Union Leaders Lost Touch With America - Hardcover

Green, Max

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0844739960 ISBN 13: 9780844739960

Publisher: UNKNO, 1996

Synopsis

A former director of the Young People's Socialist League and former representative for the United Federation of Teachers criticizes today's American labor movement as reactionary leftism that opposes American values and interests. He bemoans the transition of labor from an integral part of American civil society to a left-wing interest group, in chapters on the philosophy of the movement, the defeat of communism, the radicalization of labor's economic policy, and the struggle against free trade. For general readers. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

About this title

Review

It is hard to imagine a time when the union was as American an institution as apple pie. But between the 1930s and 1960s, Big Labor formed a status-quo triumvirate with Big Business and Big Government. Although the three sometimes clashed, they were seen as largely working together to advance the interests of ordinary Americans. But union membership has dwindled severely. Max Green shows how this drift has coincided with labor abandoning the political center for the political left, and how its traditional approval of capitalism has turned into an unhealthy skepticism of market forces that is increasingly out-of-touch with the modern world.

From the Back Cover

The existence of this book testifies to a reversal of my own thinking. I began my adult life as a dedicated democratic socialist and a firm believer in the AFL- CIO and spent ten years working for the teachers' union in New York City.

Edition details

• Publisher: UNKNO
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0844739960
• ISBN 13: 9780844739960
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 207