Books and films
Books and films that help us understand collective action.
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For a Beautiful Life / Per una vita bella
If the struggle loses its meaning—in both senses of the word—it also loses its strength. If any demand concerning wages or work is not situated within a broader constellation, it is doomed to fail.
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Tapis rouge et lutte des classes / Une autre histoire du Festival de Cannes
The Cannes Film Festival, the red carpet, its parade of stars and the crackle of camera flashes… Who could imagine that behind the glittering façade of the most prestigious event in the world of cinema lies a completely different story? To understand it, we must go back to the very origins of the Festival.
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This Work Is Not Life: Class Struggle in the 21st Century — The GKN Case / Questo lavoro non è vita. La lotta di classe nel XXI secolo. Il caso GKN
On 9 July 2021, the 422 employees of GKN in Campi Bisenzio, Florence, a factory producing drive shafts for the automotive industry, received an email announcing collective-dismissal proceedings due to the closure of the business. The workers refused to remain resigned: they immediately went to the factory gates, guarded by private security, and managed…
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Building Power to Shape Labor Policy: Unions, Employer Associations, and Reform in Neoliberal Chile
During Chile’s transition to neoliberalism, Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship established a body of pro-business labor legislation that later democratic governments found difficult to reform. Pablo Pérez Ahumada examines why, focusing on collective labor law and on the unequal capacity of workers and employers to influence public policy.
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Handbook of Research on the Global Political Economy of Work
This 724-page Handbook develops a global and intersectional approach to the political economy of work, labour relations and workers. It examines exploitation, class formation, capital accumulation, migration, digital and reproductive labour, trade unionism, workers’ resistance and social movements.
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Fighting Times: Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War
So I have been reading some 70s memoirs of class struggle unionism and just read this one. Highly recommend this book and especially the first 2/3 which show an attempt to build class struggle unionism on the shop floor.
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The Lucas Plan
The book tells the story of the Lucas Aerospace workers’ campaign to defend their jobs and transform the company from largely military production towards socially useful products. It traces the creation of the Shop Stewards’ Combine Committee, the development of the Alternative Corporate Plan, collective bargaining for employment security, wages and…
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Worker Control and Workplace Democracy: An Alternative Labour History
Edited by Dario Azzellini, this 352-page volume examines historical and contemporary forms of workers’ control, self-management and workplace democracy. It argues that the global financial crisis generated new shop-floor militancy, radical protests and workplace takeovers.
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Ours to Master and to Own: Workers’ Control from the Commune to the Present
An international collection on workers’ control and self-management. It examines historical and contemporary struggles for workplace democracy, workers’ councils, factory occupations, cooperatives, and collective ownership—from the Paris Commune to the present.
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El renacer de la huelga obrera en Chile: El movimiento sindical en la primera década del siglo XXI / The Rebirth of the Workers' Strike in Chile: The Trade Union Movement in the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century
This valuable, illuminating, and indispensable publication from the end of the 2000s is a major sociological and historiographical study for understanding the transformations of Chile’s world of work at the turn of the century. Published by ICAL with production by LOM, the volume analyzes the resurgence of work stoppages and workers’ new repertoires of…
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International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the Present
A definitive eight-volume reference work covering five centuries of protest and revolution in the modern era of mass movements. The encyclopedia examines major uprisings and protest movements across the world, the ideas and activists behind them, and the ways in which these struggles developed.
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Revolt on Goose Island: The Chicago Factory Takeover, and What It Says About the Economic Crisis
Kari Lydersen tells the story of the workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago who, in December 2008, occupied their factory after the company abruptly shut it down, leaving them without jobs, health care and legally mandated severance pay. The workers, members of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America Local 1110, won…
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Stalin Over Wisconsin: The Making and Unmaking of Militant Unionism, 1900–1950
For union organizers, community activists, and labor scholars the republication of Stephen Meyer’s Stalin Over Wisconsin: The Making and Unmaking of Militant Unionism, 1900–1950 is especially timely. Meyer tells the story of fiercely militant, and Communist-influenced, UAW Local 248, which represented the huge Allis-Chalmers plant outside Milwaukee,…
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Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars
What effect did the two world wars have on the relations between women and men? Drawing on broad comparative material—from government policy to popular media, poetry and fiction, and personal letters—this book examines the redefinition of gender that occurred in many Western countries during both world wars.
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Strikes in the United States, 1881-1974
A study of strikes and strike activity in the United States from 1881 to 1974.
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Dig Where You Stand: How to Research a Job / Gräv där du står
First published in 1978, Dig Where You Stand is a rallying cry for workers to become researchers, to follow the money, take on the role as experts on their job, and “dig” out its hidden histories in order to take a vital step towards social and economic transformation. A how-to guide that inspired an entire movement, it makes the case that everyone – not…
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Root & Branch: The Rise of the Workers movements
An anthology published by the Root & Branch collective in 1975. Drawing on the tradition of workers councils and libertarian socialism, it brings together accounts and analyses of strikes, workplace struggles, union bureaucracy, workers self-organization and the prospects of an autonomous workers movement.
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The Language of the Third Reich: LTI—Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook
Written from observations made during the Nazi period and published after the war, this philological notebook traces how propaganda reshaped everyday German and political thought.
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A Century of Co-operation
A history of the British co-operative movement, from its early pioneers, including Robert Owen and the Rochdale Pioneers, to its development into a major social and economic force.