Struggles can change the world, but they also change people who go through them. Rather than using action as a last resort, we need action to build a movement. Second, the need to build the rank-and-file of unions. Power comes from organising at work, not in trusting others to do it on our behalf. Third, democracy matters in organising. This is not only about winning, but also developing the confidence to build another kind of world. This is not a...

The Webbs were major voices in British socialism, economic studies, and the scholarship of the cooperative movement. This influential work, published in 1894, details how the British trade union movement began and developed. It is a cornerstone of the British concept of the welfare society, incorporating organized labor into modern economic thought.

From Wisconsin to Washington, DC, the claims are made: unions are responsible for budget deficits, and their members are overpaid and enjoy cushy benefits. The only way to save the American economy, pundits claim, is to weaken the labor movement, strip workers of collective bargaining rights, and champion private industry. In ""They're Bankrupting Us!": And 20 Other Myths about Unions, "labor leader Bill Fletcher Jr. makes sense of this debate as...

The Molly Maguires was a secret society of militant coal miners who battled their exploitation by mine owners with violence, intimidation… and sometimes murder. Based on actual events, this gripping story is a sympathetic and accurate account of the Irish-American miners’ struggle. Richard Harris (Gladiator, Camelot) plays a detective on undercover assignment for the owners, fighting his own conscience. Academy Award®–winner Sean Connery...

"For decades, intractable social and economic problems have been eating away at the social fabric of the United States. The crisis is now so deep it's threatening democracy. Income inequality has reached epic proportions, resulting in a lopsided political system that bestows tax breaks on the rich while the rest of the country has been economically abandoned. There's a single, obvious solution to these problems, one with a long, successful history,...

"With the world changing at breakneck speed and workers at the whim of apps, bad bosses and zero-hours contracts, why should we care about unions? Aren't they just for white-haired, middle-aged miners anyway? The government constantly attacks unions, CEOs devote endless time and resources to undermining them, and many unions themselves are stuck in the past. Despite this, inspiring work is happening all the time, from fast food strikes and climate...

"In the 1950s, Ellie and Brick are teenagers in love. A basketball star, Brick could escape his abusive father and be the first person in his working-class family to go to college. But when Ellie becomes pregnant, they marry, she gives up her dream of nursing school, and Brick gets a union card instead. This riveting novel tells the story of three generations in a working-class family; especially Brick and Ellie's daughter Samantha. Illuminating issues...

"The construction trades once provided unionized craftsmen a route to the middle class and a sense of pride and dignity often denied other blue-collar workers. Today, union members still earn wages and benefits that compare favorably to those of college graduates. But as union strength has declined over the last fifty years, a growing non-union sector offers lower compensation and more hazardous conditions, undermining the earlier tradition of upward...

In The Future, We Need, Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta bring a novel perspective to building worker power and what labor organizing could look like in the future, suggesting ways to evolve collective bargaining to match the needs of modern people-not only changing their wages and working conditions, but being able to govern over more aspects of their lives. Weaving together stories of real working people, Smiley and Gupta position the struggle to build...

From the time this country began, workingmen have fought and starved and often died to better the life of the common man. The struggles of one generation, have been carried on by the next. Where one group has failed, the next group has won. Gradually improvements, have been granted. Gradually democracy has been strengthened. Today we enjoy the fruits of this constant struggle for human dignity. Every American child is entitled to a free public education....