In 1995, in the first contested election in the history of the AFL-CIO,
John Sweeney won the presidency of the nation's largest labor
federation, promising renewal and resurgence. Today, less than 7 percent
of American private-sector workers belong to a union, the lowest
percentage since the beginning of the twentieth century, and public
employee collective bargaining has been dealt devastating blows in
Wisconsin and elsewhere. What happened? Jane McAlevey is famous - and
notorious - in the American labor movement as the hard-charging
organizer who racked up a string of victories at a time when union
leaders said winning wasn't possible.
Then she was bounced from
the movement, a victim of the high-level internecine warfare that has
torn apart organized labor. In this engrossing and funny narrative -
that reflects the personality of its charismatic, wisecracking author -
McAlevey tells the story of a number of dramatic organizing and contract
victories, and the unconventional strategies that helped achieve them.
Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) argues that labor can be
revived, but only if the movement acknowledges its mistakes and fully
commits to deep organizing, participatory education, militancy, and an
approach to workers and their communities that more resembles the
campaigns of the 1930s - in short, social movement unionism that
involves raising workers' expectations (while raising hell).
Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) : My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement - Jane McAlevey & Bob Ostertag
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£9.99