Solidarity Unionism: Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below, Second Edition

Description

SOLIDARITY UNIONISM is critical reading for all who care about the future of labour. Drawing deeply on Staughton Lynd's experiences as a labour lawyer and activist, and on his profound understanding of the history of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), SOLIDARITY UNIONISM helps us begin to put not only movement but also vision back into the workers rights movement.

Staughton Lynd practiced employment law for 20 years, coedited Rank and File, and edited We Are All Leaders. He lives in Youngstown, Ohio. Immanuel Ness is a political economist who specializes in labor unions, and professor of political science at City University of New York. He is editor of WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society and author of numerous works including New Forms of Worker Organization He lives in New York City. Mike Konopacki is a political cartoonist specializing in labor issues. He is coauthor and illustrator of Howard Zinn's graphic history A People's History of American Empire. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

"Solidarity Unionism is an essential text for all rank-and-file workers as well as labor activists. Beautifully succinct, it outlines how CIO unions grew into an ineffectual model for rank-and-file empowerment, and provides examples of how alternative labor organizations have flourished in the wake of this. Lynd illustrates to a new generation of workers that we do have alternatives, and his call for a qualitatively different kind of labor organization gives us an ideological and strategic framework that we can apply in our day-to-day struggles on the shop floor." --Diane Krauthamer, Industrial Worker "Solidarity Unionism is based in a vision of genuine democracy. It's accessibly written and rich in practical examples. I've used it successfully in study groups and labor education courses both to draw out and learn from participants' own experiences and to plan our next steps in struggles. Challenging some of what are conventionally thought of as "wins" (e.g., dues checkoff or signed contracts), the book impels the kind of strategic thinking otherwise lacking in most of labor and the Left." --Norm Diamond, former president, Pacific Northwest Labor College and coauthor of The Power in Our Hands "Brother Staughton Lynd continues to offer an informed, critical voice and many important ideas for today's labor movement. Anyone fighting for a better world for working people will be glad to read this revised edition of Solidarity Unionism, and to pass it on to students, friends, and fellow workers." --Michael Honey, Haley Professor of Humanities, University of Washington-Tacoma and author of Going Down Jericho Road "Staughton Lynd's Solidarity Unionism mines his decades of labor activism and a century of American workers' struggles to shine a beacon on an alternative path that replaces top-down labor organization with local autonomy and community-level networking. Before you despair of reasserting workers' rights and power, read Solidarity Unionism!" --Jeremy Brecher, Labor Network for Sustainability, author of Strike! "In Solidarity Unionism, workers are protagonists, not spectators, and that makes all the difference in the world. Staughton Lynd's ideas will be at the heart of the next mass worker rising." --Daniel Gross, executive director of Brandworkers and cofounder of IWW Starbucks Workers Union