Awards

• Winner of Honorable Mention, 2013 Distinguished Scholarly Mo.

Overview

When unions undertake labor organizing campaigns, they often do so from strong moral positions, contrasting workers' rights to decent pay or better working conditions with the more venal financial motives of management. But how does labor confront management when management itself has moral legitimacy? In With God on Our Side, Adam D. Reich tells the story of a five-year campaign to unionize Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, a Catholic hospital in California. Based on his own work as a volunteer organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Reich explores how both union leaders and hospital leaders sought to show they were upholding the Catholic ""mission"" of the hospital against a market represented by the other. Ultimately, workers and union leaders were able to reinterpret Catholic values in ways that supported their efforts to organize. More generally, Reich argues that unions must weave together economic and cultural power in order to ensure their continued relevancy in the postindustrial world. In addition to advocating for workers' economic interests, unions must engage with workers' emotional investments in their work, must contend with the kind of moral authority that Santa Rosa Hospital leaders exerted to dissuade workers from organizing, and must connect labor's project to broader conceptions of the public good.

Full Product Details

9780801450662

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Reviews

<p> This richly textured case study of the expanding arena of health care organizing brilliantly exposes the emotional, cultural, and moral dimensions of struggles between workers and their employers-dimensions far too often ignored by union organizers and labor scholars alike. Adam D. Reich brings an insider's perspective to this vivid account-he worked for more than a year on the lengthy union campaign that his book chronicles- along with a nuanced and sophisticated sociological analysis. With God on Our Side is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of the U.S. labor movement. -Ruth Milkman, CUNY Graduate Center and the Murphy Labor Institute, coeditor of Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy

<p> This richly textured case study of the expanding arena of health care organizing brilliantly exposes the emotional, cultural, and moral dimensions of struggles between workers and their employers dimensions far too often ignored by union organizers and labor scholars alike. Adam D. Reich brings an insider's perspective to this vivid account he worked for more than a year on the lengthy union campaign that his book chronicles along with a nuanced and sophisticated sociological analysis. With God on Our Side is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of the U.S. labor movement. Ruth Milkman, CUNY Graduate Center and the Murphy Labor Institute, coeditor of Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy

<p> Reich chronicles the successful drive for recognition of a healthcare workers union at a Catholic hospital in this articulate and conceptually interesting sociological account . . . a case study that holds implications for the wider context of unionization today. As private sector unionization enters its fifth decade of decline, the us-versus-them frame that guided pro-union efforts in the past must give way, the author argues, to greater attention to the meaning of vocation and worker solidarity, especially for employees in public services and those with vocational moral commitments like health care. -Choice (October 2012)

Author Information

Adam D. Reich is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Hidden Truth: Young Men Navigating Lives In and Out of Juvenile Prison.

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