Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back

Here is a work of non-fiction that has the bite and grip of a social novel. It is the story of one lawyer's journey into the country of labor's rank and file--a journey that explores the mysteries, romance, and pain of class in America.

Based on his experiences as a Chicago labor lawyer, Geoghegan contends persuasively that post-industrial Reaganomics have caused a widening rift between the working and professional middle classes. In related episodes, he demonstrates how the combined effects of steel mill closings, leveraged buyouts and Third World competitive labor have contributed to the decline of American organized labor. Even more tragic for the workers is their betrayal by international unions which, he asserts, are run by high-powered lawyers engaged in incessant arbitration; in cahoots with the Labor Department and, in some cases, with the mob--e.g., the Teamsters--labor lawyers are accused here of conspiracy to deprive the rank and file of the rights to organize, vote and air grievances freely. Moreover, Geoghegan declares, government regulations (the Taft-Hartley act, etc.) and a dilatory National Labor Relations Board have further weakened unionism, reducing it to the status of an ineffectual counterculture.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A heartfelt and worthy study by labor-attorney Geoghegan of what it means to be on the side of organized labor at a time when labor is written off as an ancient relic. This is not simply a rhetorical plea that Americans need strong unions if the divide between rich and poor that began to grow again in the 1980's is not to grow wider. Geoghegan also believes that a strong labor movement would serve to democratize American politics and life. From his experience as an observer for the dissident faction in a United Mine Workers election in the 1970's to his defense of steelworkers who were stripped of their pension rights in the 1980's, Geoghegan explores the reality of present day industrial relations from his perch as an independent labor lawyer. What he finds is a stale and fearful trade-union leadership that has succumbed to the lawyers it hired to navigate the nation's labor laws and that has refused to allow its own members to vote for their leadership. The author forcefully depicts the devastation of the American working class caused by the captains of finance, who through leveraged takeovers and buyouts hastened the decline of American industry in the 1980's. Throughout, Geoghegan's skepticism about his own career is tempered by the dignity of rank-and-file workers who seek to have a say in their own lives. Geoghegan has managed to take a little discussed subject--the role of a vital labor movement in American society--and place it at the center of a discussion about the growing class-divide in American society. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Geoghegan, a labor lawyer employed by Chicago area union locals, provides an interesting and at times incisive "insider's" view of organized labor. While his book is not the comprehensive analysis of the contemporary organized labor malaise that is so desperately needed, it will stimulate considerable reader interest. After all, the plight of American workers thrown on the trash heap of post-industrial capitalism is one of the truly tragic stories of the modern age, and even Geoghegan's periodic straining for effect and descents into maudlinism do not seriously thwart the impact of his narrative. Stressing the theme of the worker as victim, he recounts the way the courts, the politicians, the corporate interests, and all too often the union hierarchies have combined to undermine the health and well-being of the "working stiff." What he is really describing is the end of the period when American workers had at least a chance at getting a fair shake in the Ameri can economic contest.
- Norman Lederer, Thaddeus Stevens State Sch. of Technology, Lancaster, Pa.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.