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Clicking on the title of an item takes you to the bibliographic reference for the resource, which will typically also contain an abstract, a link to the full text if it is available online, and links to related topics in the subject index. Particularly recommended items have a red Connexions logo beside the title.

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  1. The Battle to Unionize Starbucks in Chile: an Interview with Andrés Giordano Salazar
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    After six years of intense battles, two strikes, a hunger strike, and four legal sentences for anti-union activities, Starbucks reluctantly agreed to sign a collective agreement with unionized workers in Chile in May 2015. This was a huge concession for the world’s largest coffee shop chain that has long aggressively fought off unionization efforts among its 150,000 workers in 64 countries.
  2. Beating Back the Corporate Attack 
    Socialism and the struggle for global justice

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2000
    Our movement is calling for a new direction -- for democratic control of our political life, and for democratic control over the most important aspects of the economy. Why should handful of the super-rich run the planet, and, moreover, run it into the ground?
  3. Cambodia: Labor and the Coup
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1998
    IN THE FACE of a repressive and dangerous environment, workers are on the move in Cambodia. Though Americans heard little about it, the emergence of an independent labor movement was one of the most promising developments in Cambodia since the UN imposed democratic institutions “from above” on a society with no prior democratic experience.
  4. Canada: Activists Face the Future
    Against The Current vol. 91

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2001
    Electoral politics present challenging problems for labor movements all over the world. In the absence of strong working class parties, labor activists are often compelled to support parties that implement anti-worker legislation simply because they represent a lesser evil. While reforms are certainly necessary, the investment of activist energy and resources into the electoral process can often distract union and social justice organizations, preventing them from undertaking the important task of generating solidarity within more impoverished segments of the working class.
  5. Canadian Information Sharing Service
    Volume 3, Number 1 - February 1978

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1978
  6. Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Workers, and the Question of Unions in Contemporary Capitalism
    Review of Frank Bardacke, Trampling Out The Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2013
    Bardacke tells the story of one movement’s evolution from grassroots obscurity to such (relatively little-known) successes as the Salinas Valley (California) general strike of lettuce pickers in 1979—a veritable mass strike in Rosa Luxemburg’s sense—and from there to the collapsed shell of a union nonetheless administering fourteen non-profits with millions in assets.
  7. The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor
    Birth of a New Workers' Movement or Death Throes of the Old?

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2011
    Steve Early explains why and how the 2008-2010 battles within the progressive wing of the U.S. labour movement occurred.
  8. Columbia's Paramilitary Politics
    Against The Current vol. 135

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    In a surprise move in the early morning of May 13th, Colombian President Álvaro Uríbe announced the extradition of fourteen top paramilitary leaders to the United States, where they are charged with cocaine trafficking and money laundering. His move has provoked an outcry from victims’ and human rights groups, who fear that the extraditions will undercut efforts to hold the paramilitaries accountable for massacres, disappearances, torture, extra-judicial executions, and the displacement of thousands of people in Colombia.
  9. Community Organising - A New Part of the Union
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    A look at Unite’s community union organizing.
  10. Connexions
    Volume 5, Number 3 - September 1980 - Racism/Racisme

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1980
  11. Connexions
    Volume 6, Number 3 - September 1981 - Atlantic Development/Le Developpement Atlantique

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1981
  12. Connexions
    Volume 6, Number 4 - November 1981 - Unorganized Workers/Travailleurs Non-Organises

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1981
  13. Connexions
    Volume 7, Number 2 - May 1982 - Canada-Latin America/Le Canada-L'Amerique Latine

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1982
  14. Connexions
    Volume 7, Number 3 - July 1982 - Prairie Region/Region des Prairies

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1982
  15. Connexions
    Volume 8, Number 2 - Summer 1983 - Toward a New Economy

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1983
  16. Connexions
    Volume 11, Number 2 - Winter 1988 - A Social Change Sourcebook

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1988
  17. Connexions Annual 1994
    A Sourcebook of Social and Environmental Alternatives

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1994
    Simultaneously a reference book and an introduction to the world of social and environmental alternatives. The bulk of the Annual is devoted to listings of grassroots groups. It also contains a series of introductory articles surveying a wide range of social and environmental issues and possibile alternatives.
  18. Connexions Library: Labour and Unions Focus 
    Resource Type: Website
    First Published: 2009
    Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on labour and unions.
  19. Connexions Library: Organizing Focus Page 
    Resource Type: Website
    Selected articles from the Connexions Online Library.
  20. Cooperation at Work
    The Mondragon Experience

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1983
    A guide to work co-operatives, based on the experience of the Mondragon group of co-operatives in Spain.
  21. Cracking the Canadian Formula
    The Making of the Energy and Chemical Workers Union

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1990
  22. DARE's Struggles in Rhode Island
    Against The Current vol. 110

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2004
    Let's start in a scene from last summer that will be familiar, not exactly but approximately, to many older readers: the labor awards banquet. The setting is a "casino"— in the 1880s sense of a banquet hall, used for wedding receptions and assorted fraternal functions for six generations — set in a venerable public park in a working-class neighborhood, long ago designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.
  23. Dubai Labor Fighting Back Vs. Indentured Globalization
    Against The Current vol. 132

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    October, 2007 saw the government of the United Arab Emirates halfway through a "humane" immigration amnesty which, in turn, paved the way for a clampdown on labour. In November a huge strike wave erupted, culminating in pitched battles between militant laborers and Dubai police.
  24. Everything's on the Line at AAM
    Against The Current vol. 134

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    The strike of 3,600 UAW-represented workers at American Axle and Manufacturing plants in Michigan and New York has forced the idling of more than 40,000 workers in 30 GM plants and shut down a number of parts plants throughout North America. Eighty percent of AAM’s axles, chassis components and forged products are shipped to General Motors, but AAM also produces parts for other automakers, including Chrysler and Toyota.
  25. False Promises 
    The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1973
  26. Fast food rights: organising the unorganised
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2017
    The experience from the examples of organising the unorganised both in the US and UK demonstrate that it is possible to develop union organisation; significant examples are discussed in this article, particularly in a British context.
  27. Fighting for Union Autonomy: Mexican Miners On Strike
    Against The Current vol. 122

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    On April 20 eight hundred state and federal police launched an assault on 500 striking workers who had been occupying a steel mill in Lázaro Cárdenas. Two were killed, five seriously injured and 40 wounded. A video released to the press shows Michoacán police taking aim at the strikers.
  28. For Workers' Climate Action
    Climate Change and Working-Class Struggle

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    A new collection of articles and reviews on the fight against dangerous climate change, capitalism and workers' organisation and struggle. Urges the left to reach out to climate activists to make the case that being "anti-capitalist" is important but not enough.
  29. Getting Organized
    Building A Union

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1980
    Comprehensive guide to the process of unionization and certification.
    See also: CX2072.
  30. Martin and Jessie Glaberman Collection
    Papers, 1939-2001

    Resource Type: Unclassified
    The papers of the Marxist radicals Martin Glaberman and Jessie Glaberman, now housed at Wayne State University.
  31. Goodbye "Norma Rae"
    Eulogy for Crystal Lee Sutton, Labor Hero

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2009
    Crystal Lee Sutton was a genuine hero. She will forever be remembered as one of the champions of organized labor, right up there with the Joe Hills, Bill Haywoods and Emma Goldmans.
  32. The Great Flint Sit-Down Strike Against G.M. 1936-37
    How Industrial Unionism was Won

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1967
    A history of the Flint strike (1936-1937).
  33. Guide to taking strike action
    Tips and advice on how to effectively organise and carry out strike action at your workplace.

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    Our labour is the ultimate weapon that workers possess. Without workers bosses cannot make a profit. Strike action can be very powerful, but at the same time it, at the very least, reduces take home pay. More worryingly it may also lead to dismissal. Hardly, surprising therefore, that strike action is usually last resort taken of workers.
  34. Having the Hard Conversations 
    Jane McAlevey on Fight for 15, labour's crisis of strategy, and the difference between organizing and mobilizing

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    An interview with labour organizer Jane McAlevey on labour's crisis of strategy and the difference between organizing and mobilizing. McAlevey discusses what ails the labour movement, problem with the terms "public" and "private" sector, and why we need to stop ignoring the rank-and-file.
  35. International Labour Office (ILO) Publications
    Resource Type: Organization
    First Published: 1981
  36. An Interview with Patricia Campbell
    Against The Current vol. 123

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    Patricia Campbell is President of the Irish Independent Workers Union (IWU), an independent trade union and social movement in both the north and south of Ireland. She is a deputy editor of the journal Fourthwrite, founded by a group of Irish Republicans most of whom are former political prisoners from the Republican movement.
  37. Is that an archive in your basement... or are you just hoarding?
    Sources News Release

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    Are you an 'accidental archivist'? Have you been saving the publications and documents produced by the social justice projects you've been involved in? Then Connexions would like to hear from you.
  38. Just Another Cog in the Machine
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    First Published: 2009
    Using wordplay & a photocopier to promote starting a union.
  39. The "Labor Aristocracy" and Working-Class Struggles: Consciousness in Flux, Part 2
    Against The Current vol. 124

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    Whatever the theoretical and empirical problems with the economics of the labor aristocracy thesis, its defenders still claim that well paid workers have generally been more reformist and conservative in their politics than lower paid workers. They point to the example of mostly white New York City construction workers ("hardhats") attacking antiwar demonstrators in the Spring of 1970; and contrast them with the militancy and progressive politics of some of the recent "Justice for Janitors" campaigns.
  40. Labour in an Affluent Society
    Resource Type: Article
    Put together by the Radical Education Project, this paper includes the following articles: "WILDCAT: anatomy of a work stoppage" by Steve Fox; "THE BRUNS STRIKE: a case study of student participation in labor" by C. Clark Kissinger; and "BLUE RIDGE: The History of the Levi Strike" by Brenda Mull.
  41. Labor on the Ropes
    Against The Current vol. 135

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    In U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition, Kim Moody focuses on why the organized labor movement went into decline and points to potential signs of revival. The author’s explanation begins with the worsening economic situation in the 1970s and a harsher anti-union climate, both politically and in the workplace, as “business refined its ability to act as a class.”
  42. Labor Organizing Across Israel's Apartheid Line: An Interview with Israeli Labor Activist Yoav Tamir
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    Yoav Tamir is an organizer with the new Israeli labour union, Workers Advice Center, or WAC-MANN. WAC-MAAN was founded in the late 1990s as (as its name might suggest) a workers' advice center, and began organizing unions and negotiating contracts in 2010. A product of both deepening austerity within Israel as well as the wave of uprisings in the Arab world in 2011, WAC-MAAN organizes both across the racial line and across the Green Line, doing what no other labor organization in Israel or Palestine's history has done: create a multi-ethnic, bi-national workers' movement.
  43. The Labor Party in the Big Picture
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1999
    THE LABOR PARTY convention was inspiring. At the Detroit chapter's report-back meeting, locked-out newspaper workers talked about how good it felt to be in a convention hall where everyone would support you, "unlike the Democrats and Republicans."
    Authorizing the possibility of electoral campaigns means that, in the places where those happen, we have the potential to attract a whole different layer of members.
  44. Labor Politics in Action, 1901-1911: The Union Labor Party of San Francisco
    Against The Current vol. 81

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1999
    In 1900 San Francisco had an organized labor movement that reflected the unique development of this metropolis of the West. San Francisco did not experience the slow and steady growth of Chicago and other cities of the plains, but became a city overnight in 1850 when thousands of gold seekers poured in from the East and every part of Europe, and beyond.
  45. Labour Spies
    Connexipedia Article

    Resource Type: Article
    Labor spies are persons recruited or employed for the purpose of gathering intelligence, committing sabotage, sowing dissent, or engaging in other similar activities, typically within the context of an employer/labor organization relationship. Labor spying is most typically used by companies or their agents, and such activity often complements union busting.
  46. The Labor Wars
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1973   Published: 1974
    A survey of landmark events in the U.S. labour movement.
  47. Labor's Disaster at American Axle
    Against The Current vol. 137

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    The 87-day strike earlier this year at American Axle & Manufacturing (AAM) ended in a rout that has devastating implications for the organized U.S. labor movement. Begun on a snowy morning early February 26, the strike ended on May 22, a late spring day just before the Memorial Day weekend.
  48. Labour's Side
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1981
    Labour's Side is a newsletter published four times a year by the Nova Scotia Labour Research and Support Centre "to inform our readers about labour struggles in the province."
  49. LabourStart
    Resource Type: Website
    A major site with information about labour activities throughout the world.
  50. Lessons from small shop organizing
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2013
    A significant amount of organizing experience in the IWW comes from working in relatively small workplaces such as stand-alone single shops or franchises of multiple smaller shops. These places present their own set of difficulties and opportunities.
  51. Life After Death for Labor?
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2015
    A review of Stanley Aronowitz's book "The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Workers’ Movement."
  52. Life Support for Labor?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    The Debate Over how to save the labour movement suffers from a serious deficit of books written by organizers. Rarely do we get an entire book by someone who has been organizing for four decades, and is still actively engaged with union members, staff and leaders.
  53. Live Working or Die Fighting 
    How the Working Class Went Global

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2010
    Mason relates a series of struggles for worker and human rights over the past two hundred years and compares them to current struggles.
  54. The Long Haul 
    An autobiography

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1990   Published: 1991
    Myles Horton tells the story of the Highlander Folk School. A major catalyst for social change in the United States for over sixty years, this school has touched the lives of so many people, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
  55. Marx et Makhno a la rencontre de McDonald's
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2005
    A Paris, les travailleurs précaires qui sont sortis vaniqueurs de plusieurs grèves en ont perud d'autres avec les honneurs à cause des méthodes à la fois légales et illégales des syndicats et des ultra-syndicalistes.
  56. Marx and Makhno Meet McDonald's 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2005
    Over the last several years, a revolving network of militants in Paris, France, have developed a strategy and tactics for winning strikes by marginal, low-paid, outsourced and immigrant workers against international chains, in situations where the strikers are often ignored by unions to which they nominally belong, or are actually obstructed by them.
  57. Marxists Internet Archive 
    Resource Type: Website
    Large archive of the writings of Marx and Engels and of others in the Marxist tradition. Searchable.
  58. Materials Available from One Sky Cross-Cultural Centre
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1981
  59. Los Mexicanos: The Struggle for Justice of Patricia Perez
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    First Published: 2009
    Every year, some 4000 migrant foreign workers coming mostly from Mexico, labour in Quebec farms to plant and pick our vegetables. In the summer of 2006, Patricia Perez a pro-union militant speaking for the UFCW, launches a major drive to organize the workers in several farms south of Montreal.
  60. Migrant Workers Fight Exploitation in New Zealand
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2013
    Unite Union has dealt with several cases of extreme exploitation of migrant workers. It seems that some of the liquor shops around Auckland have been employing students from India and paying a pittance four or five dollars an hour, well below the legal minimum of $13.75 an hour.
  61. Mining History Written in Blood
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2018
    Domestic coal mining history above and below ground lives on the pages of Written in Blood: Courage and Corruption in the Appalachian War of Extraction edited by Wess Harris (PM Press, 2017). The anthology unpacks the industry, people and communities of a coal-rich region, amplifying relevant class and gender issues over a century.
  62. Monographs on the Portuguese
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1975
    A collection of analytical essays on the Portugese immigrant community in Toronto.
  63. More than one way to strike
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1978
    Rather than simply walk away from their vehicles, drivers could keep driving, but refuse to collect fares. This puts pressure on the employer without inconveniencing riders.
  64. New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class-Struggle Unionism
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2014
    A book that compiles workers struggles on a global basis, examining the formation and expansion of radical unions in the Global South and Global North.
  65. The New Worker Organizing 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2013
    Many, perhaps most, worker center–based organizing projects focused on workers in low-wage jobs, are conducted with the active support and, often enough, leadership provided by a variety of community-based organizations—with support from one or more unions.
  66. The Nine-Hour Movement
    How civil disobedience made unions legal

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2013
    From today’s strike-first strategy of fast food workers in America, to the 1965 postal workers wildcat which ushered in public sector collective bargaining, civil disobedience has long been essential to breaking through legal barriers imposed on workers. The birth of Canada's labour movement was during a movement of mass civil disobedience in attempt to secure the nine hour workday.
  67. On workplace organisation
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1997
    A look at the exchange between Stan Weir and Sam Friedman on workplace organisation.
  68. Organizers Worth Their Salt
    "Let's drink to the hard working people; Let's drink to the salt of the Earth"

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2014
    A few unions are recruiting salts these days, usually young people who apply for low-wage jobs in retail, hospitality, or logistics. But unions are reluctant to talk about salting, not wanting to alert management to look out for suspicious characters.
  69. Organizing In Mexico: It's Tough, Often Brutal, And It Means Taking On The State
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    The system in Mexico operates to the detriment of independent unions. Although the Mexican system of labour relations initially conferred real benefits on workers and peasants whose organizations supported the government, it now functions to maintain a status quo where benefits flow only to corrupt union leaders.
  70. Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1936
    "Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry” is written with the object of aiding the most active workers in the steel industry and steel workers generally in organizing the industry in the present campaign. There can be no doubt that a mastery of the principles developed in this pamphlet, principles based on practical experiences, would result in a greater efficiency on the part of all those now engaged in organising the industry. It is really a manual of organization methods in the organization of the unorganized in the mass production industries. The organizational principles and methods here developed can be easily adapted to problems of organizing other mass production and large-scale industries such as auto, rubber, chemical, textile, etc.
  71. Organizing "The Organized"
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2014
    For many years, American unions have been trying to “organize of the unorganized” to offset, and, where possible, reverse their steady loss of dues-paying membership. In union circles, a distinction was often made between that "external organizing" – to recruit workers who currently lack collective bargaining rights – and "internal organizing," which involves engaging more members in contract fights and other forms of collective action aimed at strengthening existing bargaining units.
  72. Organizing The Unorganized is the key to building the Union
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1981
    This article comments on a policy paper presented for discussion at the 1981 UEW conference in Montreal.
  73. Organizing Unions
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1994
    How to form or build a union. Shows how to strength organizing drives by responding to the concerns of all workers, including women, immigrant workers, people of colour, workers with disabilities, lebians and gay men, and part-time and casual workers.
  74. Organizing with Love: Lessons from the New York Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Campaign 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2010
    Great organizing campaigns are like great love affairs. You begin to see life through a different lens. You change in unexpected ways. You lose sleep, but you also feel boundless energy. You develop new relationships and new interests. Your skin becomes more open to the world around you. Life feels different, and it’s almost like you’ve been reborn. And, most importantly, you begin to feel things that you previously couldn’t have even imagined are possible.
  75. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - January 15, 2015
    Workers' Health and Safety

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2015
    The topic of the week is Workers' Health and Safety. Articles on why environmentalists should support working class struggles; whistleblowers; the appalling death rate from U.S. drone strikes; the murderous attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris; and what humanity could learn from Bonobos. The feature from the archives is Traces of Magma. The International Labor Rights Forum is the group of the week, and Silkwood is the film of the week.
  76. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - March 12, 2015
    Organizing

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2015
    The focus of this issue is organizing. How can we challenge and overcome entrenched structures of economic and political power? Our own source of power is our latent ability to join together and work toward common goals, collectively. That requires organizing. Power gives way only when it is challenged by powerful movements for change, and movements grow out of organizing. In this newsletter, we feature a number of articles, books, and other organizing resources.
  77. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - May 7, 2015
    Urban agriculture and local food production

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2015
    This issue of Other Voices ranges widely, from increasing worker activism and strikes in China, to advances in battery technology that make it much easier and cheaper to store solar and wind energy for future use, to testimonies from Israeli soldiers about the war crimes they committed routinely and as a matter of policy in last summer's attack on Gaza.
  78. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - January 16, 2016
    Working class organizing

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2016
    Working to change things for the better, fighting to prevent things from getting worse, remembering the past to illuminate possibilities for the future: as always, that is the focus of Other Voices. In this issue, we pay special attention to working class organizing. There can be no meaningful change without the active participation of the majority of the population: working people. Yet much activism ignores this obvious reality, while the organized labour union movement has put much of its reliance on 'professionals' who see organizing as a top-down technique rather than a grassroots movement. Several articles in this issue look at aspects of these issues. We also delve into the relationship between feminism and socialism, and look at the so-called 'sharing economy,' which produces increasingly exploited and precarious work, and immense profits for super-rich corporate owners.
  79. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - March 5, 2016
    International Women's Day

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2016
    In this issue of Other Voices, we mark International Women's Day. An article written by Alexandra Kollontai in 1920 talks about the early history of this event, which grew out of a proposal put forward by Clara Zetkin at the 1910 International Conference of Working Women. A key focus at that time was winning the vote for women, with the slogan "The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism". The link between women's rights and socialism became even clearer a few years later, in 1917, when a Women's Day march in St. Petersburg turned into a revolutionary uprising which led to the overthrow of the Czar and the Russian Revolution.
  80. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - July 2, 2016
    Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn, and Contempt for Democracy

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    Brexit, the British vote to leave the European Union, has thrown the political elites into turmoil and confusion. The referendum was supposed to be a safe political manoeuvre, a way to produce an appearance of democratic legitimacy for the profoundly undemocratic structures of the EU. The gambit turned out to be a spectacular miscalculation, as millions of people turned out to express their opposition to a state of affairs that is leaving the majority worse off while enriching a small minority. This issue of Other Voices looks at the Brexit referendum, elite loathing for democracy, and the related attempt to get rid of Labour's leftwing leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
  81. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - December 17, 2017
    Collective Memory and Cultural Amnesia

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2017
    Our society is obsessed with the short-term present. It devalues memory and the past. But there are those who do remember, and who work to preserve and share our collective memory. But they have to contend with those of us who see historical memory as a way of contributing to the struggle for a different world. For us, knowledge of history is subversive, and remembering can be a form of resistance.
  82. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - February 17, 2018
    Hearts and Minds: How do People Change?

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2018
    How can we reach the millions we need to reach and engage if fundamental change is to happen? How can we accomplish the essential task of persuading a majority of the population that a fundamental social and economic transformation is necessary? Even more importantly, what will it take for people to come together and act collectively to bring about that transformation? What can we do to help make this happen?
  83. Our Generation
    Volume 18 Number 1

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1986
  84. The Pittsburgh Reds, 1911-1914: Revolutionary Socialists in Allegheny County
    Against The Current vol. 81

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1999
    The Socialist Party of America reached the peak of its strength and influence in 1912. In that year, the party could claim 118,000 members, and 879,000 American voters (about 6% of the total) cast their votes for Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs. There were some 1,200 Socialist elected officials throughout the United States in 1912, and over 300 Socialist periodicals.
  85. Plunderbund and Proletariat
    A History of the IWW in B.C.

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1975
    A history of working class struggle from the workers' perspective.
  86. The problem with 1199's 'Advice to Rookie Organizers' 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2020
    One of the most widely-circulated statements on organizing is SEIU 1199’s “Advice to rookie organizers,” popularized most recently by Jane McAlevey but originally drafted in 1985 at an SEIU organizing conference. It’s good advice — it’s actually excellent advice for the most part — and I think anyone who takes a hard look at almost any organizing can spot where things went right by how closely it followed this advice and where things went wrong by where it deviated from it.
  87. Promoting your union
    Six strategies to get more organizing leads and union members

    Resource Type: Book
    Promoting Your Union is a book to help union organizers get more organizing leads, create outreach plans to bring in new members and build the power of their unions. The ideas in this book are based on actual best practices from union organizers who are using these tactics in the field.
  88. A Proposal to American Labor
    'Open source unionism' could reinvigorate American labor in the age of the Internet

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2002
    The authors posit that union membership is too restricted by the requirement that unions have majority support in the workplace. They believe that pro-union workers who are a minority in their workplace should be mobilized by the labor movement if it wants to grow.
  89. Queer Activism in the Labor Movement
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    In the 1970s, Teresa Rankin kept her sexual orientation private while organizing textile workers at J.P. Stevens in North Carolina. When the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) offered her an organizing position in a small town in Virginia, Rankin, turned down the opportunity fearing isolation due to her sexual orientation.
  90. Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2014
    Today, fewer than 7% of American private-sector workers belong to a union and public employee collective bargaining has been dealt devastating blows in Wisconsin and elsewhere. This book argues that labour can be revived with social movement unionism that involves raising worker's expectations.
  91. Randolph, A. Philip
    Connexipedia Article

    Resource Type: Article
    African-American civil rights leader. (1889-1979).
  92. Rank and File 
    Personal Histories of Working Class Organizers

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1973   Published: 1974
    A collection of stories and recollections from labour movement organizers.
  93. The Rank and File Strategy: Building A Socialist Movement in the U.S.
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    We are seeing more and more attempts by rank and file union members to make their unions more democratic and more effective in fighting today's highly aggressive employers and in organizing the unorganized.
  94. A Reluctant Memoir of the '50s and '60s
    Against The Current vol. 134

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    I have been asked to write a memoir that would give a sense of the old left/new left realities of the 1950s and ‘60s. That seems quite odd to me (why would I be writing such a thing?), until I look in the mirror and see this old guy looking back at me. As I reflect, it does seem to me that I went through a lot of experience, met a lot of people, and perhaps learned from all that…So I will share some of my story.
  95. Review Essay: Reutherism Redux
    Against The Current vol. 112

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2004
    Despite stepped-up union recruitment, farm workers and poultry processors still haven't taken over the AFL-CIO. But the old guard's fear of being swamped by low-wage workers—expressed by this AFT delegate seven years ago—has materialized in other ways (even while organizing among "strawberry pickers and chicken pluckers" generally flopped).
  96. Seeds of Peace
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    First Published: 2009
    Jawdat Talousy worked in a Jewish Settlement located on the West Bank. He was fired because he established a labour committee in order to get equal labour rights as Israeli co-workers.
  97. Social Movements/Social Change
    The Politics and Practice of Organizing - Socialist Studies 4

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1988
    This collection of essays covers movements related to labour, ecology, childcare, peace, disability, gay rights, and access to abortion.
  98. Strike Friday at Amazon.it
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2017
    Amazon workers at the Castel San Giovanni hub launched their first strike on Black Friday 2017. The facility is Amazon's largest in Italy, where the retail giant employs up to four thousand workers, less than half of whom have a permanent contract.
  99. Strike Lessons from the Last Twenty-Five Years: Walking Out and Winning
    Against The Current vol. 124

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    Labor's strike effectiveness and organizational strength have long been connected. Throughout history, work stoppages have been used for economic and political purposes, to alter the balance of power between labor and capital within single workplaces, entire industries, or nationwide. Strikes have won shorter hours and safer conditions, through legislation or contract negotiation.(1) They've fostered new forms of worker organization -- such as industrial unions -- that were badly needed because of corporate restructuring and the reorganization of production. Strikes have acted as incubators for class consciousness, rank-and-file leadership development, and political activism.(2) In other countries, strikers have challenged -- and changed -- governments that were dictatorial and oppressive (plus union leadership no longer accountable to the membership).
  100. Strike strategy today
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    Why has the use of the strike in the US become so scarce? While subjective factors are more difficult to quantify, certain basic reasons seem more readily evident. Union membership, particularly in the private sector, is at an all-time low. Most of the unions are heavily bureaucratized, and central labor councils ossified. "Sympathy strikes," long ago outlawed by Taft-Hartley, militate against the sort of broad-based solidarity so essential to an industrial victory. Moreover, many unions have accepted no-strike clauses for the duration of their contracts, effectively tying one hand behind their backs.
  101. Them and us : struggles of a rank-and-file union
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1975
    This account, co-written by an ex-machinist and UE organizer, was one of the first accounts of the militant, highly democratic, activist union in the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE).
  102. They Are Still Killing Trade Union Leaders
    Global Capital's Death Squads and Night-Riders

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    Question: So what happens these days in developing countries when a prominent, charismatic union activist - with the courage to stand up to sinister, government-supported business groups who have, on more than one occasion, already threatened his life - attempts to get the country’s underpaid, under-benefited workers to join a labor union? Answer: They kill him.
  103. Towards Workers' Climate Action
    Book review

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    A review of a book and a pamphlet by Paul Hampton, both on the urgent need for workers' action on climate change.
  104. A Troublemaker's Handbook 
    How to Fight Back Where You Work -- And Win!

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1991   Published: 2005
    An organizing manual for workers dealing with both major issues and everyday problems in the workplace.
  105. A Troublemaker's Handbook 2 
    Resource Type: Book
    A manual for workers who want to take control over their lives at work. In hundreds of first-person accounts, workers tell in their own words how they organized and struggled to do that.
  106. 25 Years After the Gdansk Uprising
    Against The Current vol. 121

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    Suzi Weissman interviews David Ost. The occupation of the Gdansk shipyard by Polish workers in 1980, demanding recognition of their independent trade union Solidarnosc, rocked the Eastern bloc and inspired the world. A quarter century later, Communist rule is only a bad memory but the present realities for the Polish working class are a grim choice between neoliberalism and reactionary psedo-populism. The following interview with David Ost, conducted by Suzi Weissman November 28, 2005 for her radio program “Beneath the Surface” on KPFK in Los Angeles (90.7 FM), explores what’s happened to post-Solidarity Poland. It has been edited for publication here.
  107. The UAW vs. Indian Casinos
    Which Side Are You On Boys

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2011
    The issues raised by Indian gambling casinos and their opposition to labour unions.
  108. An Unauthorized Biography of the World 
    Oral History on the Front Lines

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2004
    This book uses oral history to discuss oral history. It is in memoir style, and delves into how oral history is done in such places as First Nations (Canada), Turkey, Chicago, Newfoundland, Peru, New York City, Cleveland, Israel, and other places. Riordon's concept is about telling stories, celebrating diversity, and making connections between people.
  109. Union has right to be in mall
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1990
  110. Union organizer
    Connexipedia Article

    Resource Type: Article
    A union organizer is a union representative who "organizes" or unionizes non-union companies or worksites.
  111. U.S. Labor's Subterranean Fire
    Against The Current vol. 131

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2007
    The broad outlines of the crisis of the U.S. labor movement -— sharply declining union density, concession bargaining, failures to organize the growing non-union manufacturing and service sectors, the labor officialdom’s reliance on institutionalized labor-management cooperation schemes — are familiar to readers of Against the Current. The roots of this crisis — the dominance of bureaucratic business unionism and the weakness of rank-and file-led reform movements from below — are also well-known.
  112. Wal-Mart's Real Cost
    Against The Current vol. 121

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    The long-brewing struggle between retail giant Wal-Mart and those concerned with reforming its corporate practices burst onto the mainstream consciousness of the American public this past November. An unprecedented convergence of labor, small business owners, environmentalists, activists and communities of faith blossomed into a full-scale movement to change the world’s largest retail company.
  113. 'We are not from another planet': Justice 4 Cleaners campaign and the struggle for recognition
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2014
    The ongoing struggle of the SOAS Cleaners for acceptable working conditions and equality in the workplace.
  114. What's Left of Queer?: Immigration, Sexuality, and Affect in a Neoliberal World
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    We need to refuse the narratives of abjection that are routinely forced upon us. They only render us immobile creatures, begging for help. We are all neoliberals now. We're all selling our bodies, our lives, our stories to the media and to provide comfort to ourselves. Those stories have to be challenged and reworked or we lose sight of the larger story of economic exploitation, at our peril.
  115. When Hate Groups Come to Town
    A Handbook of Model Community Responses

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1986
    A handbook for dealing with hate groups in communities across North America, dealing with the nature of such groups and how they work and how communities can band together to combat them.
  116. When the UAW Was Young
    Against The Current vol. 131

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2007
    An interview with Erwin and Estar Baur.
  117. The Whistle-Blower as Deep Mole 
    Spying on Malfeasance

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2014
    There’s an intriguing idea based loosely on the turn-of-the-century union practice of "salting" a workplace. Salting consists of union activists secretly hiring into an anti-union shop in order to promote unionism from within.
  118. Who Advocates Spontaneity? 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1973
    The working class can come to understand its power to act only by acting.
  119. The Winter of our Discontent
    Experiences Organizing Nursing Homes

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1973
    An account by two nursing home workers describing their jobs and their successful efforts to organize unions at their workplaces.
    Published in Issue #2 (1973) on the New Tendency newsletter.
  120. Wisconsin Uprising
    Labor Fights Back

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2012
    A collection of essays describing the working class uprising that occurred in Wisconsin, in February and early March of 2011.
  121. A Word to Say
    The Story of the Maritime Fishermen's Union

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1991
    An account of how inshore fishermen, most of them Acadian, came together to take control of their industry and their livelihood and form the Maritime Fishermen's Union.
  122. Workers and Trade Unions for Climate Solidarity
    Tackling climate change in a neoliberal world

    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2015
    Paul Hampton, a Marxist trade union researcher in Britain, addresses the role of workers in the climate justice movement, as well as the tasks of revolutionaries.
  123. A Working-Class Hero Is Something To Be
    Against The Current vol. 133

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    As a 35-year veteran of union activity in America, I can personally attest that Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers (OCAW) was a rare bird, perhaps the last of his kind.
  124. The WTO's Nude World Order
    Against The Current vol. 85

    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2000
    It got intoxicating that Tuesday (Nov. 30, `99) in Seattle, without chemical assist. That capitalist machine that has looked so mighty and irresistible, for that day was stopped and defeated. Seattle marked the emergence of the next new left, a wildly diverse and creative bunch. And they will be operating on a changing terrain, where not just corporate misbehavior but capitalism appears the problem, and can be fought.

Experts on Mobilisation des travailleurs in the Sources Directory

  1. Marxists Internet Archive
  2. Michael Riordon

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