Books and films
Books and films that help us understand collective action.
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La protegida / The Protected One
Barcelona, 1880. As the protégée of one of Barcelona's upper-class women, Sara has begun working in the Bofarull family's textile workshop .
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Las Madrinas / The Godmothers
The 1960s. A striking mining region dismisses young Gloria Montes, who, pregnant and rejected by her family, leaves home never to return.
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La svolta. Lo sciopero, un diario, l'amore / The Turning Point: The Strike, a Diary, and Love
Young journalist Paris Collanti, searching for information for a historical essay on the 1962 Piaggio strike, stumbles upon a mysterious murder that he tries to solve. A complex novel of history, romance, and suspense, it flows with humorous touches and delves into the social dynamics of the Italian industrial boom.
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Movimiento obrero en Andalucía. Comisiones Obreras en Sevilla (1977-2008) / The Workers' Movement in Andalusia. Workers' Commissions in Seville (1977-2008)
The evolution of the labor movement has been intrinsic to the history of modern societies, to the point of being considered "the great dialectic of the 20th century." Andalusia has been part of this international dynamic, and in this case, the focus is on Seville, the capital of the region, during the last third of the 20th century and the beginning of…
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Pablo Iglesias Posse. Pasión por la igualdad / Pablo Iglesias Posse. Passion for equality
This work is a profound analysis of the life and thought of Pablo Iglesias Posse, one of the most relevant historical figures of Spanish socialism.
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Paolo Barsocchi: The coherence of change in half a century of economic, social and political history of the Lucca area
Over half a century of Lucca's history, from the 1960s to the present day, relived through the eyes of one of the city's leading figures in trade union and political life.
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Postales / “Postcards”: The stories of postal workers made into a book of short stories
In a context of mass layoffs and worsening working and wage conditions, postal workers publish a literary work to reclaim their culture, their stories, and experiences, and to resist, through narrative, the constant attacks they suffer from the far-right government of Javier Milei. Amid the threat of privatization of the National Postal Service and a…
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Son coma glaciares os barcos de aceiro / STEEL SHIPS ARE LIKE GLACIERS
Steel Ships Are Like Glaciers is an artisanal novel, welded with precision line by line, word by word, as workers do with metal sheets on the benches of shipyards. A love letter to industrial and combatant Vigo, to the sons and daughters of work and dignity, through the memories of a child who grows up among demonstrations, strikes and union struggles in…
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Tienen género los sindicatos? / Do trade unions have a gender?
The trade union, as a key component of the institutional model of labor relations, is constitutionally assigned the function not only of contributing to, but also of leading, the effort to achieve real and effective equality. However, empirical data demonstrate that patriarchal biases persist in union representation and structures, perpetuating gender…
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Todo han de ser / Everything must be
This is the story of the rise, between the 1930s and 1950s, of Eddie Florio, an Italian-American, through the ranks of the criminal underworld vying with unions for control of American ports. Starting as an informant and later becoming a union leader, Florio's rise was fueled by his utter lack of scruples.
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Una causa per cui combattere / A cause worth fighting for." The Resistance in the factories of Veneto and the strikes of March 1944 in the Vicenza area.
March 1, 1944: General strike of the Italian working class. In the preceding months, regular and widespread work stoppages had already affected the Veneto and Northern Italy, where the workforce, hostile to forced relocation and weakened by working conditions and food shortages, thus staged a veritable form of resistance to the German occupation.
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Παρεμποδίζοντας την Αποστασία / Preventing Apostasy Julian 1965: social protest and the Left
The Julian Revolution of the summer of 1965, after George Papandreou was forced to resign from the prime ministership by King Constantine II and the organization of the Apostasy, constituted the greatest social explosion of post-war Greece and one of the most significant conflict episodes of modern Greek society, having been characterized as the "Greek May".
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Orgullo de clase
Orgullo de clase is a documentary tracing a century of workers’ struggles and union activism in the region of Castilla y León, Spain. The film highlights key episodes such as mining strikes, resistance against multinational companies, and workers’ contributions to democracy.
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Segertåget / The Victory Train
As purple trains roll through the rapeseed fields of southern Sweden, anger is growing among railway workers. The train company is planning yet another round of cuts — but this time, the staff are ready to stand up for one another.
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A Living: Working Class Americans Talk to Their Doctor
A Living is a vivid portrait of the working lives of the patients who visit Dr. Michael Stein, a primary care doctor in urban America.
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Chatto Windus Mining Men.
This is the story of the last generation of British fathers and sons, brothers and comrades, big hitters and broken men, strikers and scabs. Men for whom the masculine world of pit was all they had ever known, who reluctantly emerged into the daylight for the final time, and others who were happier to consign the dust and darkness to the past.
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Mining Memories: Tales of Hardship, Tales of Joy
A new book on Durham Coalfield communities is a timely testament to working class resilience, says MARY HULL, bringing together evocative tales of ‘marras’, meetings, strikes and marches as well as banners, brass bands and allotments. Full of hope and laughter, sadness and anger, it seeks to hand the area’s rich and radical history on to the next generation.
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Organizing Amazon: Building Worker Power under Conditions of Fragmentation, Precarity and Regimentation
Between August 2022 and July 2024, GMB Union membership at Amazon’s BHX4 Coventry warehouse skyrocketed, with 37 days of strike action resulting in a 28.5% pay rise. Yet despite this, the union narrowly lost a ballot that would have forced Amazon to grant formal recognition.
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State of Struggle
Long time vice president of the PCS John McInally traces the history of the civil service trade union movement from its origins and in a final chapter analyses the present political situation and the potential for socialist advance. The book includes fascinating detail of the sharp battles between the rising Broad Left and the State-backed Moderates, the…
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Steelworkers in struggle: An oral history of the 1980 national steel strike
Using oral histories gathered from trade unionists, this book explores the national steelworkers strike of 1980 and asserts its significance as a key turning point in modern British history. The strike was nominally a response to a 2% pay offer made by British Steel Corporation (BSC), at a time when inflation was 17%, but was generated by the widespread…
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Home Work: Gender, Child Labor, and Education for Girls in Urban America, 1870–1930
Ruby Oram’s Home Work: Gender, Child Labor, and Education for Girls in Urban America, 1870-1930 (University of Chicago Press, 2025) examines how working people and reformers in Chicago debated secondary education curricula for girls in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Debates over the curriculum for junior high and high school “manual…
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Baristas vs. Billionaires
Starbucks baristas in Buffalo unite against corporate exploitation, sparking a generational uprising among working-class Millennials and Gen Z as they challenge a powerful billionaire CEO and fight for their rights.
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Box 25. Archival Secrets, Caribbean Workers, and the Panama Canal
When acclaimed labor historian Julie Greene researched her book The Canal Builders, which went on to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2009, she explored a cache of first-person essays written in 1963 by the Afro-Caribbean people, mainly Jamaican and Barbadian, who migrated to the Isthmus of Panama to work as diggers, track shifters, or domestic…
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City, Space and Trade Unionism The Spatiality of Labour in the Metal Industry
This book examines the transformation of the workers' movement in Spain's metal sector, one of the country's most unionised industries.
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City Stopped: Stories from New York’s Essential Workers
Robert Snyder tells the story of COVID-19 in the words of ordinary New Yorkers, illuminating the fear and uncertainty of life in the early weeks and months.
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Class Warfare in Black Atlanta
Between 1966 and 2015, the city of Atlanta was transformed. In the late 1960s, Black politicians ascended to the top of the power structure for the first time thanks to newly enfranchised Black working-class voters.
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Class War on Workers
This 100-page book is a lively and comprehensive account of the year-long struggle against the vicious government of Maggie Thatcher.
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Driver
Driver is a book about a young man from the provinces who moves to Paris and studies to become a train driver. As he learns about trains and their intricate workings, he is transported into a world in constant motion, with its own laws and codes and specialized language, its own heroes and legends and manifold dangers.
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Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: The Rebel Girl, Democracy, and Revolution
A young Socialist, raised in New York, took to the streets, mobilizing the masses for the sake of a more equitable society and civil liberties for all. No, it’s not Zohran Mamdani.
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Empire of Labor How the East India Company Colonized Hired Work
Empire of Labor tells the story of how hired workers experienced and responded to the rise to power over the long eighteenth century of the English East India Company (EIC), which perennially hired thousands of people in and around its settlements in Bengal. Focusing on boatmen and silk reelers as well as sailors and soldiers—a remarkable look at both…