Download Free Union Free America Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Union Free America and write the review.

A stimulating study of how antiunionism has shaped the hearts and minds of American workers
From the nineteenth-century textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, to the triumph of unions in the twentieth century and their waning influence today, the contest between labor and capital for the American bounty has shaped our national experience. In this stirring new history, Philip Dray shows us the vital accomplishments of organized labor and illuminates its central role in our social, political, economic, and cultural evolution. His epic, character-driven narrative not only restores to our collective memory the indelible story of American labor, it also demonstrates the importance of the fight for fairness and economic democracy, and why that effort remains so urgent today.
Discovering the Real America examines the often overlooked history of white privilege, racism and discrimination in the United States. The text explains how the media have played a big part in maintaining the status quo. The book offers solutions to overcoming the obstacles of bigotry so that people can finally discover that the richness in the real America is in the long-overlooked diversity of this nation's multiethnic, multiracial, multicultural, multinational, multitalented people.
A great dissatisfaction with the government rests within society, yet the discussion continues to revolve around the same issues. In 7 essays, scholars propose that the real problem is size and scale, suggesting that the country is simply too big for one central government. This thought-provoking book begins a debate on how to divide it on a more human scale. Such scholars as Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo, Yuri Maltsev, Donald W. Livingston, Kent Masterson Brown, Marshall DeRosa, Kirkpatrick Sale, and Rob Williams contribute to the debate.
In a fresh and timely reinterpretation, Nelson Lichtenstein examines how trade unionism has waxed and waned in the nation's political and moral imagination, among both devoted partisans and intransigent foes. From the steel foundry to the burger-grill, from Woodrow Wilson to John Sweeney, from Homestead to Pittston, Lichtenstein weaves together a compelling matrix of ideas, stories, strikes, laws, and people in a streamlined narrative of work and labor in the twentieth century. The "labor question" became a burning issue during the Progressive Era because its solution seemed essential to the survival of American democracy itself. Beginning there, Lichtenstein takes us all the way to the organizing fever of contemporary Los Angeles, where the labor movement stands at the center of the effort to transform millions of new immigrants into alert citizen unionists. He offers an expansive survey of labor's upsurge during the 1930s, when the New Deal put a white, male version of industrial democracy at the heart of U.S. political culture. He debunks the myth of a postwar "management-labor accord" by showing that there was (at most) a limited, unstable truce. Lichtenstein argues that the ideas that had once sustained solidarity and citizenship in the world of work underwent a radical transformation when the rights-centered social movements of the 1960s and 1970s captured the nation's moral imagination. The labor movement was therefore tragically unprepared for the years of Reagan and Clinton: although technological change and a new era of global economics battered the unions, their real failure was one of ideas and political will. Throughout, Lichtenstein argues that labor's most important function, in theory if not always in practice, has been the vitalization of a democratic ethos, at work and in the larger society. To the extent that the unions fuse their purpose with that impulse, they can once again become central to the fate of the republic. State of the Union is an incisive history that tells the story of one of America's defining aspirations.
A stimulating study of how antiunionism has shaped the hearts and minds of American workers
About the struggle to create a national myth for the United States, one that could hold its rival regional cultures together and forge, for the first time, an American nationhood. Tells the dramatic tale of how the story of America's national origins, identity, and purpose was intentionally created and fought over in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
When a Civil War substitute broker told business associates that "Men is cheep here to Day," he exposed an unsettling contradiction at the heart of the Union's war effort. Despite Northerners' devotion to the principles of free labor, the war produced rampant speculation and coercive labor arrangements that many Americans labeled fraudulent. Debates about this contradiction focused on employment agencies called "intelligence offices," institutions of dubious character that nevertheless served the military and domestic necessities of the Union army and Northern households. Northerners condemned labor agents for pocketing fees above and beyond contracts for wages between employers and employees. Yet the transactions these middlemen brokered with vulnerable Irish immigrants, Union soldiers and veterans, former slaves, and Confederate deserters defined the limits of independence in the wage labor economy and clarified who could prosper in it. Men Is Cheap shows that in the process of winning the war, Northerners were forced to grapple with the frauds of free labor. Labor brokers, by helping to staff the Union military and Yankee households, did indispensable work that helped the Northern state and Northern employers emerge victorious. They also gave rise to an economic and political system that enriched the managerial class at the expense of laborers--a reality that resonates to this day.
The decline in private sector unions in America is well documented, but some unions have bucked this trend, most notably the 2.1 million member Service Employees International Union. Its former president liked to say: "We use the power of persuasion first. If it doesn't work, we try the persuasion of power." The targets of SEIU's corporate campaigns find themselves on the defensive and, tied to traditional public responses, are often flummoxed by the intensity and thoroughness of the SEIU's efforts. There is, however, a new arrow in the quiver that can be used by firms that are being attacked in a corporate campaign. Social media offers an effective remedy, if used early, thoughtfully, and decisively. This book tells the story of one such counter-campaign, a story of how a blog held off the most powerful union in America. With a foreword by Professor David P. Boyd, D'Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University "What a fascinating story! This is a powerful lesson in winning a battle of perception with the modern tools of transparency and internet speed." Roni Zeiger MD, CEO Smart Patients "Corporate campaigns by unions seek to bypass secret ballot elections that are provided for workers under current law. It was the genius of Paul Levy to capitalize on that anti-democratic deficiency in the union's approach by shining the full light of exposure on this tactic. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said that "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants" and Paul's use of social media and his blog was just the disinfectant needed to show a curious public that SEIU's campaign against Beth Israel Deaconess was no public service, but a frequently outrageous effort at self-promotion and union organizing without having to do the actual hard work of persuading employees to vote that a union was truly in the workers' interest." Kenneth C. Robbins, JD, President, Illinois Hospital Association (1983-2009) "Paul Levy, an innovative, caring, thoughtful, and strategic hospital CEO, writes convincingly how he used a blog, a low cost vehicle, to help counter a well-financed union corporate campaign that sought a neutrality agreement and card check. This fascinating story deserves to be read, it offers lots of insights and useful lessons." Fred K. Foulkes, Professor of Organizational Behavior, Boston University "Just as we have seen Arab Spring erupt from chaos because of the use of new forms of social media, and Ai Weiwei thwart the Chinese government with his use of the internet to spread his freedom message, Paul Levy's effective use of the blogosphere to frame and advance his side of a union-management conflict illustrates how leaders can use social media effectively in a modern era of health care and business. "Levy artfully tells the story of getting his hospital's message out without having a war chest to spend on public relations. His persistent and effective use of social media evened the playing field and allowed him to keep diverse audiences informed and engaged." Harris A. Berman, M.D., Boston
Race, from the beginning and more than any other element, has shaped America's institutions, its economics, politics, laws, social structures, and political attitudes. Congressman Jackson considers race to be the focal point of America through the language of the economy because "the economy is the hearing aid through which Americans hear all political dialogue." In this thought provoking work, Jackson provides ample documentation and insightful analysis of the inextricable link between race and economics. More important Jackson proposes a radical economic strategy and program of new human rights that would build A More Perfect Union for all Americans and put them in a better position to come to grips with this enduring American legacy.