US Labor in Trouble and Transition

The Failure of Reform from Above, The Promise of Revival from Below

by Kim Moody

US Labor in Trouble and Transition tells the story of union decline in America and of the split in the labor movement it led to, following the dismal tale of union mergers and management partnerships that accompanied the retreat from militancy since the 1980s.

Looking to the future, Moody shows how the rise of immigrant labor and its efforts at self-organization can re-energize the unions from below.

Kim Moody was a founder of Labor Notes and author of Workers in a Lean World. He has taught at the Cornell Labor Studies program and at Brooklyn College, and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom.

Contents include:

• A Message about the Future from the Present
• The Great Transformation
• The Changing Industrial Geography
• The Changing Industrial Demography
• Lost Decades
• The End of Militancy, the Surrender of the Workplace, and the Origins of Decline
• Winning to Change: The Failure of Reform from Above
• The Politics of Defeat- One More Time
• The Split: Reform from Above Again
• Beneath the Split: Resistance and Change from Below
• Paths to Power, Roads Not Taken

Reviews

"In US Labor in Trouble and Transition Kim Moody has broken new ground, not only with regard to how unions in the US got into trouble, but also how they might get out of it. This book goes beneath the personalities at the center of the recent split in the AFL-CIO and the cliches that usually explain it in order to examine the roots of decline and crisis. He gives us a fresh look at the changing workforce and the new realities and potential of immigrant workers today. This book is a must for those who care about the future of organized workers in the US."

-Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz.

289 pages.