Books and films

Involution: A Worker Inquiry Amid China’s Youth Unemployment Wave

China’s hypercompetitive job market is stunting and distorting the lives of an entire generation. Through conversations with young workers from across China, the Gonglao Collective examines involution — the ever-intensifying pressure of a labour market in which rewards decline while demands and competition grow.

The Unmaking of the Chinese Working Class: How Communism Built a Capitalist Superpower

The Unmaking of the Chinese Working Class examines China’s transformation from a poor agrarian society into a global economic powerhouse through the history of land, labour and class. Teemu Ruskola traces how the Chinese working class was formed after 1949 and then unmade by the reforms that began in the late 1970s.

Gewerkschaft, ja bitte!

This handbook, now regarded as a standard reference work, supports both experienced and newly elected works council members, shop stewards, and youth and trainee representatives in their work within the workplace. In the updated fifth edition of this standard work, the basic structure remains unchanged: the first part develops the foundations of…

How We Will Fight for a Future on This Planet: A Handbook for the Fearless

A political handbook about linking working-class self-organization with the climate movement. Drawing on twenty-five years of documenting social movements, strikes, class struggles and climate activism, Johanna Schellhagen argues that appeals to the state are not enough.

Autobiography of Cotton

An intimate fictionalization, Autobiography of Cotton reveals a rich social history of agricultural colonization, labor activism, environmental degradation,

Kamrat Bamse / Comrade Teddy Bear

Class struggle, liberation movements and evil directors. But also fascist coups d'état, famine and blue-yellow slave trade.

Caught in Neutral: Labour, global production networks and the green transition in South Africa’s auto industry

This book examines South Africa’s automotive industry and shows how inconsistent industrial policy has undermined a worker-centred just transition. Alex M.

Underground Resistances from Latin America / Social Movements, Trade Unionism and Anarchism(s) between Progressive Disillusionment and the Far Right

An overview of the debates shaping Latin American social movements. With autonomy and independence from political parties, this book brings together different realities that share a desire for a new era grounded in social justice, feminism, community activism, land defense, opposition to punitive politics, and life.

Robert Steele - The Forgotten Miner: Leadership and Sacrifice among the Lanarkshire Miner

This well-researched book not only enhances our knowledge of the coalmining communities of central Scotland in the second half of the nineteenth century, but makes a valuable contribution to labour history in general by focussing on someone who, while never a full-time union official, and who remained a working miner throughout his career, was…

An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class

Whatever happened to the working class? A compelling new social history of Britain since 1945 From the picket lines of the Miners' Strike to the Amazon warehouses of today, the British working class has been pushed from the center of political life to its margins, though not without a fight.

Unpaid: The Past, Present and Future of Wage Theft

Matthew Cole traces the history and present of wage theft, from unpaid overtime and unlawful deductions to algorithmic exploitation in the platform economy. Drawing on workers’ experiences and global evidence, the book argues that wage theft is not an accidental violation but a structural feature of capitalist property relations, and makes the case for…

Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund

A vivid history of the Jewish Labor Bund, a secular socialist and anti-Zionist movement that was once one of the most influential Jewish political forces in Eastern Europe. Through portraits of forgotten poets, revolutionaries, organizers and rebels — including the author’s great-grandfather’s story — Molly Crabapple follows the Bund through the Russian…

This Is How We Win: A Guide to Building Working-Class Uprisings

The most powerful force in the world isn't billionaires or governments. It's working people who decide to act together.

Backroom Bargaining: Racketeering and Rebellion in New York City’s Labor Unions

Organized crime figures and their minions honeycombed unions while leadership instituted nepotism, salary padding, and other practices that undermined the well-being of the rank and file. But in New York City, groups of union members and their legal allies waged a years-long struggle against corruption and for better working conditions.

Beneath the Wage: Tips, Tasks, and Gigs in the Age of Service Work

Beneath the Wage retheorizes capitalism from the perspective of the service economy, challenging conventional assumptions about how work is waged, regulated, managed, and automated

From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor

From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor documents the overlooked history and lasting influence of the International Socialists through the words of its members. The International Socialist Club, founded at UC Berkeley in 1964 as a radical civil rights group, lit the spark of the Free Speech Movement that same year, and its members and…

Handbook For The Revolution: Building A More Perfect Union For The 21st Century

Railsong

A breathtaking novel about a woman forging a life for herself on the railways, Railsong is the heartwarming story of an individual coming of age amid the social and political upheavals of twentieth-century India. In a newly independent India charged with national vigour, Charu, the motherless daughter of a railway worker, pines for freedom from the…

Warrior: Learning to Fight Back from the Angriest Man in the Labor Movement

Warrior tells the story of one of the most brutal labor battles of the Covid era: a small, militant healthcare union taking on powerful nursing-home chains and the state of Connecticut itself, on behalf of low-paid, largely Black and brown certified nursing assistants who bore the deadliest costs of the pandemic.

Dangerous Migration: Mexican Labor and the Fight for Immigrant Rights

In the post-World War II years, many Mexican Americans viewed undocumented immigration as a threat to their communities. Yet the interplay among Mexican migrants, Mexican Americans, and white Americans eventually produced a vibrant immigrant-oriented activist movement inspired by larger struggles for civil and human rights.

Les finances du syndicalisme / The Finances of Trade Unionism

Since the 1980s, trade unions in France have faced a paradoxical situation: their membership plummeted at the very moment the government guaranteed them unprecedented financial support. Since then, the image of unions living off the state has become widespread.

The Future in Our Past: The General Strike, 1926/2026

The Future in Our Past tells the remarkable story of Britain’s only ever General Strike on its centenary. It is an on-the-ground account of how workers brought the country to a standstill for nine extraordinary days.

Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World’s Most Powerful Industry

As tech bosses align with the political right, workers across Silicon Valley organize against military contracts, sexism, layoffs, and employer control. Drawing on campaigns at Google, Kickstarter, Twitter, and elsewhere, JS Tan and Clarissa Redwine trace the rise of the tech worker movement, its victories and limits, and the backlash that made work more…

Militant Migrants: Clements Kadalie, the ICU and the Mass Movement of Black Workers in Southern Africa, 1896-1951

Born in colonial Malawi, Clements Kadalie dramatically rose to global prominence as general secretary of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa (ICU) during the 1920s. A famed orator, journalist and trade union organiser, Kadalie electrified huge meetings with his call for economic freedom and all-in mass organisation, eclipsing…

Shifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics

Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage’s book, Shifting Gears, explores these dynamics in the Canadian labour movement by focusing on autoworkers. While it may be tempting to think that a book about autoworkers has little relevance for academic staff associations, there are lessons here for all of us.

화물연대 20년사 2002~2022 / 20-Year History of the Cargo Truckers Solidarity Union (2002–2022)

The 20-Year History of the Cargo Truckers Solidarity traces the formation and development of Korea’s organized truck drivers’ movement from 2002 to 2022. The book documents how cargo workers, facing neoliberal globalization and precarious employment, united to build a powerful national organization and halt logistics to demand survival rights and labor…

21세기 노동의 귀환 / The Return of Labor in the 21st Century

The Return of Labor in the 21st Century examines the contemporary crisis of labor in South Korea amid growing polarization between regular and irregular workers, large and small firms, and generations. Cho argues that anti-labor government policies and the collapse of social dialogue have intensified this crisis.

그리운 5·18투사 김성애·로사리아 / Beloved 5·18 Fighter Kim Sung-Ae (Rosaria): A Pioneer of the Gwangju Women’s Labor Movement and Participant in the May 18 Uprising

Kim Seong-ae was a pioneering labor activist in Gwangju and a key participant in the May 18 Democratic Uprising of 1980. She played an important role in building solidarity between workers and students, including organizing support for protesting university students.

투쟁의 역사, 성찰의 기록 / A history of struggle, a record of reflection

Reflecting on 40 Years of the Korean Labor Movement: Not Just Victories, But Also Failures and Mistakes This book examines the practical direction of the Korean labor movement and the political and ideological stances it has developed. The ideology and practice of the labor movement have directly shaped its form.

긴 투쟁, 귀한 삶 / A Long Struggle, a Valuable Life: 50 Years of Women Workers’ Struggle at Dongil Textile

Even in such a Korea, there was undoubtedly a time of labor activism. And paradoxically, it was a time when workers' rights were most brutally trampled.