The Next Upsurge

Labor and the New Social Movements

by Dan Clawson

The US labor movement may be on the verge of massive growth, according to Dan Clawson. He argues that unions don't grow slowly and incrementally, but rather in bursts. For there to be a new upsurge, Clawson asserts in The Next Upsurge, labor must fuse with social movements concerned with race, gender, and global justice.

In The Next Upsurge Dan Clawson points out that even if the AFL-CIO could organize twice as many members per year as it now does, it would take thirty years to return to the levels of union membership that existed when Ronald Reagan was elected president. In contrast, labor membership more than quadrupled in the years from 1934 to 1945. Through research and analysis of both labor and current social movements, The Next Upsurge examines how the linking of these two forces can lead to labor's resurgence.

Dan Clawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts. His books include Money Talks and Dollars and Votes.

Contents include:

• Labor Revival: What Would it Take?
• The New Deal System: Employer Offensive, Labor Response
• Gender Styles and Union Issues
• New tactics, Community, and Color
• Neoliberal Globalization

What others are saying about The Next Upsurge:

"Clawson's vision of a new labor movement infused with the dynamic strategies and broad agendas of the new social movements is not only persuasive, it is necessary if we ever want to create a decent world for those who must work for a living. A powerful book by one of labor's smartest and most enthusiastic champions."

— Robin D. G. Kelly, author
Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

"This thoughtful and bracing book examines a host of new initiatives that link labor organizing to communities, students, minorities, and women. Clawson argues that these experiments may show us the path to a new upsurge from below. . .We should all hope so, not only for the sake of a revived labor movement, but also for the sake of a revived American democracy."

— Frances Fox Piven
City University of New York

235 pages