Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction by Lynn R. Williams
- 1 A Future for the American Labor Movement?
- 2 Industrial Relations in a Time of Change
- 3 A Survey of American Union Strategies
- 4 The Old Reformist Unionism: The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor
- 5 The New Reformist Unionism: CAFE
- 6 A New Version of an Old Reformist Strategy: Employee Ownership
- 7 Social Democratic Unionism in Action: Strategies of European Trade Unions
- 8 A New Twist and TURN on Social Democratic Unionism: Unions and Regional Economic Development
- 9 A Labor Movement for the Twenty-First Century
- Appendix: Interview with John J. Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO
- References
- Index
Foreword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction by Lynn R. Williams
- 1 A Future for the American Labor Movement?
- 2 Industrial Relations in a Time of Change
- 3 A Survey of American Union Strategies
- 4 The Old Reformist Unionism: The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor
- 5 The New Reformist Unionism: CAFE
- 6 A New Version of an Old Reformist Strategy: Employee Ownership
- 7 Social Democratic Unionism in Action: Strategies of European Trade Unions
- 8 A New Twist and TURN on Social Democratic Unionism: Unions and Regional Economic Development
- 9 A Labor Movement for the Twenty-First Century
- Appendix: Interview with John J. Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO
- References
- Index
Summary
This is a point in the history of the American labor movement, and of labor movements throughout the world, when realities are changing rapidly – even cataclysmically. It has been said of such times that:
ideas, economic and otherwise, grow out of … experience. When one stage of society meshes smoothly into the next … ideas are reshaped in a gradual and orderly fashion. In the case of a cataclysmic historical change … events leap ahead and ideas lag behind
(Bernstein 1960: 262).At present, events have indeed leapt ahead of ideas regarding the labor movement. For labor to cope with new and powerful economic and social forces, it is necessary for its ideas to catch up. It is important that this happen, given that the labor movement is at the very heart of American democracy.
This book is an attempt to facilitate the American labor movement's catchup by identifying and analyzing ideas that offer some hope for it. As there is nothing new under the sun, almost none of the ideas put forward here are original in the sense that no one has ever thought of them before. Instead, they consist of a revival of old ideas, new combinations of ideas, changed emphases, and a restructuring of the ways that strategies are put together. Also, there is an attempt to figure out what is central to a labor movement and to suggest a new structure for it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Future of the American Labor Movement , pp. ix - xiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002