Books and films
Books and films that help us understand collective action.
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Not Yet Lost
Set in turbulent 1937 Detroit, this novel portrays the Eastern European immigrant struggle when difficult economic times, xenophobia, “Fordism,” secret societies, and Communist-led labor organizations buffeted the demographic.
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On the Clock
A marvelous debut from the hugely talented young French writer Claire Baglin, this tender and painful portrait of working-class life finds shards of poetry inside the twin hardships of poverty and service work
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Organizing Professionals
Amidst unprecedented levels of union organizing in higher education, Gary Rhoades combines the perspectives of a scholar and labor movement activist and leader to provide a comprehensive analysis of organizing campaigns and collective bargaining agreements for faculty (contingent and tenure-track), graduate students, and postdoc employees. Academic…
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Picket Line The Lost Novella
Picket Line is the never-before-published, prescient story of a budding agricultural strike in Texas, the racial tension brewing in the fields.
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Precarious
In 2023, after weeks of investigation, United Nations Special Rapporteur Tomoyo Obokata came to a scathing conclusion: Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program is “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” Workers complained of excessive hours and unpaid overtime; of being forced to perform dangerous tasks or ones not specified in their…
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Raising Class Consciousness
This book focuses on the unequal power dynamics embedded in technological change. Offering critical and international perspectives on labor and communication, the book demonstrates how the adoption and implementation of technologies are political processes shaped by economic incentives, worker organizing and state intervention.
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Red Harbor: The Radical Roots of the Pacific Northwest Labor Movement
In Red Harbor, Aaron Goings resurrects the forgotten history of lumber workers in a bastion of labor radicalism, examining the conflict as workers faced down an alliance of employers, police, and violent anti-radicals, including the Ku Klux Klan. But he goes beyond these clashes to illuminate the vital roles of families, immigrants, and working-class…
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Roy Reuther and the UAW: Fighting for Workers and Civil Rights
This biography of Roy Reuther examines his tumultuous life, including the triumphs and tragedies in the labor and civil rights movements.
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Shadow Ticket
Hicks McTaggart, a onetime strikebreaker turned private eye, thinks he's found job security until he gets sent out on what should be a routine case.
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Solidarity Betrayed
Solidarity Betrayed reckons with the labor movement’s failures on sexual harassment. Ana Avendaño draws on decades of organizing experience to provide a compelling insider’s account of trade unions’ complicity, collusion, victim blaming, and lack of perpetrator accountability.
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Stinkbug
In this wildly original and deeply unhinged story, Sinéad Stubbins turns her keen but empathetic eye on the lies we tell about ourselves in order to belong. Part anxious millennial fever dream, part searing workplace satire, this corporate gothic novel is perfect for fans of Yellowface, Nightbitch and Such a Fun Age.
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Strike Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire
Historian Sarah E. Bond retells the traditional story of Ancient Rome, revealing how groups of ancient workers unified, connected, and protested as they helped build an empire
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Strike While the Needle Is Hot: A Discography of Worker’s Revolt
This book unearths some of the biggest swings musicians, workers, and supporters have taken to co-create a popular culture of resistance.
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Striking Ore: The Rise and Fall of Union Power in the Pilbara
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Pilbara iron ore industry was a bastion of militant unionism – 'union power'. Today, it is almost completely un-unionised.
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Such a Good Man
In these inventive and formally daring stories, Dustin M. Hoffman shines a light into the dark corners of American suburbia.
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Teamsterland: Reports on America’s Most Iconic Union
The world's most iconic union?When Len McCluskey, the General Secretary of Britain's largest union, Unite the Union, spoke to the delegates of the 2016 Teamster convention, he declared, "The Teamsters is the most iconic trade union on our planet and you should be proud." The delegates loved it and gave him a rapturous welcome.But, was iconic the best way…
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The 1968 Florida Teachers' Strike
In early 1968, more than 27,000 teachers across Florida mailed their resignation letters, initiating the country's first statewide teachers' strike.
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The Art of Class War: Newspaper Cartoonists and the 1984-85 Miners' Strike
A new book sheds light on political cartoons from the bitter miners’ strike of the mid-1980s and includes around 130 cartoons. It is written by Nicholas Jones, who was the BBC’s industrial and senior political correspondent for over 20 years and has authored many books on UK politics and industrial relations.
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The Power of Unity: Labor Unions and the Fight for Workers’ Rights
In 1935, the landmark National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was passed, greatly increasing the power of American workers. During and immediately after World War II, unions flourished, and income inequality fell to its lowest level since the Great Depression.
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The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America
In 1922, a young idealist named Charles Garland rejected a million-dollar inheritance and, in a world marked by extreme wealth inequality, open racism, and political repression, chose instead to invest in a future where radical ideas such as working-class power, free speech, and equality could flourish. Over the next two decades, the Garland Fund…
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The Rehabilitation of Tony Boyle: A Contextual History of the United Mine Workers of America
This book is an organizational history of the United Mine Workers of America and a record of the context of this history as it relates to the murder of Jock Yablonski in 1969. American coal miners were among the most exploited workers in the nation's history, subject to ferocious violence at the hands of employers and the state.
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Those Who Travail and are Heavy Laden: Memoir of a Labor Lawyer
In a life laden with honors, Bill Gould has worked to lighten the burden of workers unjustly and illegally cut off from fully reaping the fruits of their labor.
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Threads of labour Tapestry of an ex-industrial community
Charting a collaborative art-based project using carpet-making skills and the industrial heritage of the region, the book investigates how a cleaved ex-industrial community used arts methodologies as a cohesion strategy. Drawing on images from the company’s archives, the book mines the history of Firths Carpets Limited, a firm that carpeted interiors…
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Transnational Working-Class Literatures Canons and Connections in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
This book addresses an urgent need for a study which brings together the national, transnational and international dimensions of working-class literatures.
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Trouble! at Coal Creek
This gripping graphic novel tells the story of the 1891 Coal Creek War—one of the most significant yet overlooked labor and abolitionist uprisings
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Union Organizing and Collective Bargaining at a Critical Moment: Opportunities for Renewal or Continued Decline
Since the 1950s, union membership and collective bargaining in the United States have declined. Union density, the percentage of the workforce belonging to unions, peaked at 34.8% in 1954 and fell steadily thereafter.
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U.S. V. Darby Lumber
The eight-hour day. The five-day work week.
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We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big
Eric Blanc shows that recent struggles have developed a new organizing model, worker-to-worker unionism, which builds scalable power by giving rank-and-filers an unprecedented degree of leadership. Through digital tools and ambitious campaigns, young worker leaders are turning the labor movement back into a movement—and they're winning.
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We Paved the Way: Black Women and the Charleston Hospital Workers' Campaign
In the spring of 1969, hundreds of workers, all Black and mostly female, went on strike at Medical College Hospital and Charleston County Hospital to protest racial discrimination, low wages, and the marginalization of their dignity. The movement began with an incident of wrongful termination in 1967 involving five Black women at Medical College Hospital…
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Who’s Got the Power: The Resurgence of American Unions
An essential and timely guide to the changing landscape of the labor movement, from a veteran labor organizer “The best overview of the recent labor upsurge we have yet seen. T