The Future of the American Labor Movement [Paperback]

This 2002 book analyzes various strategies for American labor's survival in today's challenging globalized world economy.This book analyzes various strategies for American labor's survival in today's challenging globalized world economy. In both the US and Europe, labor is experimenting with a fascinating arsenal of strategies. These include worker ownership and other ideas drawn form the 19th Century Knights of Labor, along with new ideas such as strategic use of labor's capital. The key to survival is constructing a real labor movement. This needs to be rooted in the ideal of democracy, and structured so that it can act in a diverse set of ways simultaneously.This book analyzes various strategies for American labor's survival in today's challenging globalized world economy. In both the US and Europe, labor is experimenting with a fascinating arsenal of strategies. These include worker ownership and other ideas drawn form the 19th Century Knights of Labor, along with new ideas such as strategic use of labor's capital. The key to survival is constructing a real labor movement. This needs to be rooted in the ideal of democracy, and structured so that it can act in a diverse set of ways simultaneously.Coming at a time of profound change in the global conditions under which American organized labor exists, The Future of the American Labor Movement describes and analyzes labor's strategic alternatives. It casts its net broadly, taking into account ideas that range from the current European Social Dialogue to the methods of the nineteenth Century American Knights of Labor. There are a number of intriguing strategies that have potential for reviving the U.S. labor movement, of which worker ownership and labor capital strategies are examples. There is a necessity for a number of diverse strategies to be pursued simultaneously. For this to work, there has to be a a broad movement of labor, consisting of diverse parts, held together by a clear idea of its purpose and alˆ