The Unfinished Struggle - Softcover

Babson, Steve

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0847688291 ISBN 13: 9780847688296

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999

Synopsis

The Unfinished Struggle is one of the most concise, comprehensive, and accessible histories of the modern American labor movement ever written. Labor scholar and activist Steve Babson's dramatic narrative examines the numerous attempts to organize workers from the Great Uprising of 1877 to the _sitdown_ strikes of the 1930s to the present day. Babson illuminates the tumultuous past, evolving agenda, and continuing conflicts of the labor movement. He carefully identifies the causes of labor's decline in recent decades and explains union leaders' attempts to revive their organizations. Most important, Babson shows readers how the fortunes of organized labor are tied to larger trends in American history.

About this title

About the Author:

Steve Babson is a labor program specialist at the Labor Studies Center, Wayne State University. He is the author of Building the Union: Skilled Workers and Anglo-Gaelic Immigrants in the Rise of the UAW and Working Detroit: The Making of a Union Town, as well as the editor of Lean Work: Empowerment and Exploitation in the Global Auto Industry.

Review:

A crisply written, authoritative, and engaging overview of the struggles of American workers. Babson is both balanced and judicious while at the same time conveying a sense of the passion and commitment that makes the history of American labor so fascinating. Sensitive to the voices and concerns of the people of the past, The Unfinished Struggle also is relevant to the concerns of a contemporary labor movement struggling toward rebirth as we approach the 21st century. (Robert Zieger, University of Florida)

An engaging narrative account of the fluctuating fortunes of the American labor movement up to the present day. . . . The book does a good job of setting events in their broader historical and economic context. (J. L. Rosenbloom, University of Kansas CHOICE)

An extremely readable book. (Robert Cherry Journal of Economic History)

For those searching for a short history of the American labor movement, Babson's The Unfinished Struggle is exceptional. Babson draws on the ever-expanding vibrant scholarship of the last thirty years on the interplay among issues of class, race, and gender in the American labor movement. And he does not shy away from laying bare the weaknesses, errors, racism, sexism, and internal conflicts within organized labor over the past century. It is by far the best discussion of the contemporary labor movement you will find, and it should be widely used in sociology, political science, American history, and labor studies course discussing contemporary labor-management relations and organized labor. (Steven K. Ashby, Indiana University Journal of American History)

Babson's account is refreshingly strong in documenting the struggle of black workers to organize against the hostility of the state, employers and craft unions. ...provided such rich and exciting detail in his highly readable and accessible text. (Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations)

"This is a spirited, intelligent, and comprehensive history that offers readers a highly readable sense of the nation's working class movement. Babson's book is notable for its effortless mastery of the contemporary scholarship, for its accessibility, and for its lively use of story and dialogue." (Nelson Lichtenstein, University of Virginia)

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0847688291
• ISBN 13: 9780847688296
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224