Overview

Since the late 1970s, Americans have seen their workplaces downsized and streamlined, their jobs out-sourced, sped up and, often, eliminated. Unions have seemed powerless to defend their members, with big defeats in the strikes at PATCO, Eastern Airlines, International Paper and Hormel. This text recounts how the United Steelworkers of America, in a battle waged over an aluminium plant in West Virginia, proved that organized labour can still win - even against a company controlled by one of the world's richest and most powerful men. The book provides an insider's look at the new tactics that many hope will revitalize the struggle for workers' rights in America. On November 1, 1990, just as its contract with the United Steelworkers of America was about to expire, Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation locked out its 1700 employees and hired permanent replacements. Despite deteriorating conditions that had led to five deaths in the previous year, the company had refused to discuss safety and health issues. The strikers faced an industry in turmoil, a plant manager with a grudge against the union and a business controlled by a billionaire fugitive from justice. The authors describe how victory was achieved through the commitment of the workers and their families coupled with one of the most innovative contract campaigns ever waged by an American union.

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9780801436338

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TOM JURAVICH is Professor and Director of the Labor Center of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of Commonwealth of Toil. KATE BRONFENBRENNER is Director of Labor Education Research for the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. She is a coeditor of Organizing to Win, also from Cornell.

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