Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice / Edition 1

by Bill Fletcher Jr., Fernando Gapasin

Overview

The U.S. trade union movement finds itself today on a global battlefield filled with landmines and littered with the bodies of various social movements and struggles. Candid, incisive, and accessible, Solidarity Divided is a critical examination of labor's current crisis and a plan for a bold new way forward into the twenty-first century. Bill Fletcher and Fernando Gapasin, two longtime union insiders whose experiences as activists of color grant them a unique vantage on the problems now facing U.S. labor, offer a remarkable mix of vivid history and probing analysis. They chart changes in U.S. manufacturing, examine the onslaught of globalization, consider the influence of the environment on labor, and provide the first broad analysis of the fallout from the 2000 and 2004 elections on the U.S. labor movement. Ultimately calling for a wide-ranging reexamination of the ideological and structural underpinnings of today's labor movement, this is essential reading for understanding how the battle for social justice can be fought and won.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520261563
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/19/2009
Edition description:	First Edition, A new direction for labor by two of its leading activist intellectuals
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	702,953
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Bill Fletcher, Jr., co-founder of the Center for Labor Renewal, is a columnist and long-time activist. He served as President of TransAfrica Forum and was formerly the Education Director and later Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO. He is the author of The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Relations, 1934-1941. Fernando Gapasin is a Central Labor Council President, Labor Educator, author, and former professor of Industrial Relations and Chicana/o Studies at Pennsylvania State University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Preface: Revelations in South Africa
Introduction: Change to Win and the Split in the AFL-CIO

PART I. CHALLENGES FACING THE U.S. LABOR MOVEMENT
1. Dukin' It Out: Building the Labor Movement
2. The New Deal
3. The Cold War on Labor
4. The Civil Rights Movements, the Left, and Labor

PART II. THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
5. Whose Welfare Matters, Anyway?
6. What's Left for Us?
7. Organizing to Organize the Unorganized

PART III. SWEENEY'S GRAND GESTURE
8. The New Voice Coalition Takes Office
9. Developing Strategy in Times of Change
10. Globalization: The Biggest Strategic Challenge
11. Could'a, Would'a, Should'a: Central Labor Councils and Missed Opportunities
12. International Affairs, Globalization, and 9/11

PART IV. WHEN SILENCE ISN'T GOLDEN
13. Restlessness in the Ranks
14. Change to Win: A Return to Gompers?
15. Anger, Compromise, and the Paralysis of the Sweeney Coalition
16. Left Behind

PART V. THE WAY FORWARD: SOCIAL JUSTICE UNIONISM
17. The Need for Social Justice Unionism
18. The Need for a Global Outlook
19. Realizing Social Justice Unionism: Strategies for Transformation

Appendix A. A Process for Addressing the Future of U.S. Organized Labor
Appendix B. Using Race, Class, and Gender Analysis to Transform Local Unions: A Case Study
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Authors

Editorial Reviews

The book is necessary reading for all students of US labor history and the Left, and hopefully will spur a long overdue reevaluation of the path to a class-conscious and powerful working class.

Socialism and Democracy

You must read Solidarity Divided. Fletcher and Gapasin provide a superior narrative of the road the labor movement has traveled, and chart the path it must now take for its own survival.

Black Commentator

The book is necessary reading for all students of US labor history and the Left.

Socialism And Democracy - Immanuel Ness

You must read Solidarity Divided.

Black Commentator - David A. Love

"You must read Solidarity Divided."--Black Commentator

"The book is necessary reading for all students of US labor history and the Left."--Socialism And Democracy

From the Publisher