Rebuilding Labor

Milkman, Ruth

ISBN 10: 0801489024 / ISBN 13: 9780801489020

Published by Cornell University Press, 2004

About this Item

Editor(s): Milkman, Ruth; Voss, Kim. Num Pages: 320 pages, 38. BIC Classification: KCF; KNXB2. Category: (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 160 x 236 x 21. Weight in Grams: 502. . 2004. Illustrated. Paperback. . . . .

Seller Inventory # V9780801489020

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Rebuilding Labor
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801489024
• ISBN 13: 9780801489020
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

"In order to recruit new members on a scale that would be required to significantly rebuild union power, unions must fundamentally alter their internal organizational practices. This means creating more organizer positions on the staff; developing programs to teach current members how to handle the tasks involved in resolving shop-floor grievances; and building programs that train members to participate fully in the work of external organizing. Such a reorientation entails redefining the very meaning of union membership from a relatively passive stance toward one of continuous active engagement."―from the Introduction

In Rebuilding Labor Ruth Milkman and Kim Voss bring together established researchers and a new generation of labor scholars to assess the current state of labor organizing and its relationship to union revitalization. Throughout this collection, the focus is on the formidable challenges unions face today and on how they may be overcome. Rebuilding Labor begins with a comprehensive overview of recent union organizing in the United States; goes on to present a series of richly detailed case studies of such topics as union leadership, organizer recruitment and retention, union democracy, and the dynamics of anti-unionism among rank-and-file workers; and concludes with a quantitative chapter on the relationship between union victories and establishment survival. This interdisciplinary collection of original scholarship on New Labor offers a window into an otherwise invisible emergent social movement.

About the Author

Ruth Milkman is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute of Industrial Relations at UCLA. She is the editor of Organizing Immigrants (also from Cornell) and the author of Gender at Work and Farewell to the Factory. Kim Voss is Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Making of American Exceptionalism (also from Cornell) and coauthor of Inequality by Design and Hard Work.