Rebuilding Labor: Organizing and Organizers in the New Union Movement

TitleRebuilding Labor: Organizing and Organizers in the New Union Movement
Publication TypeBook
Year of Publication2004
AuthorsMilkman, Ruth, and Voss, K.
PublisherCornell University Press
CityIthaca, NY
Keywordslabor movement, leadership, organizing, rank and file, SEIU, union
Abstract

Ruth Milkman and Kim Voss bring together established researchers and a new generation of labor scholars to assess the current state of labor organizing and its relationship to union revitalization. Throughout this collection, the focus is on the formidable challenges unions face today and on how they may be overcome. Rebuilding Labor begins with a comprehensive overview of recent union organizing in the United States; goes on to present a series of richly detailed case studies of such topics as union leadership, organizer recruitment and retention, union democracy, and the dynamics of anti-unionism among rank-and-file workers; and concludes with a quantitative chapter on the relationship between union victories and establishment survival. This interdisciplinary collection of original scholarship on New Labor offers a window into an otherwise invisible emergent social movement. (publisher's statement)