Hard Work

by Fantasia, Rick; Voss, Kim

• ISBN13: 9780520240131
• ISBN10: 0520240138
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

This concise overview of the labor movement in the United States focuses on why American workers have failed to develop the powerful unions that exist in other industrialized countries. Packed with valuable analysis and information,Hard Workexplores historical perspectives, examines social and political policies, and brings us inside today's unions, providing an excellent introduction to labor in America. Hard Workbegins with a comparison of the very different conditions that prevail for labor in the United States and in Europe. What emerges is a picture of an American labor movement forced to operate on terrain shaped by powerful corporations, a weak state, and an inhospitable judicial system. What also emerges is a picture of an American worker that has virtually disappeared from the American social imagination. Recently, however, the authors find that a new kind of unionism--one that more closely resembles a social movement--has begun to develop from the shell of the old labor movement. Looking at the cities of Los Angeles and Las Vegas they point to new practices that are being developed by innovative unions to fight corporate domination, practices that may well signal a revival of unionism and the emergence of a new social imagination in the United States.

Author Biography

Rick Fantasia, Professor of Sociology at Smith College Kim Voss, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Preface	xi
Why Labor Matters: The Underside of the ``American Model''	1	(33)
An Exceptionally Hostile Terrain	34	(44)
Bureaucrats, ``Strongmen,'' Militants, and Intellectuals	78	(42)
Practices and Possibilities of a Social Movement Unionism	120	(40)
Two Futures	160	(17)
Notes	177	(34)
Works Cited	211	(18)
Index	229