Labor

"Rethinking U.S. Labor History" provides a reassessment of the recent growth and new directions in U.S. labor history. Labor History has recently undergone something of a renaissance that has yet to be documented. The book chronicles this rejuvenation with contributions from new scholars as well as established names. "Rethinking U.S. Labor History" focuses particularly on those issues of pressing interest for today's labor historians: the relationship of class and culture; the link between worker's experience and the changing political economy; the role that gender and race have played in America's labor history; and finally, the transnational turn.

In Live Wire, Francine Moccio brings to life forty years of public policy reform and advocacy that have failed to eliminate restricted opportunities for women in highly paid, skilled blue-collar jobs. Breaking barriers into a male-only occupation and trade, women electricians have found career opportunities in non-traditional work. Yet their efforts to achieve gender equality have also collided with the prejudice and fraternal values of brotherhood and factors that have ultimately derailed women's full inclusion.

A philosopher/mechanic's wise (and sometimes funny) look at the challenges and pleasures of working with one's hands

Called "the sleeper hit of the publishing season" (The Boston Globe), Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant bestseller, attracting readers with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a "knowledge worker," based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing. Using his own experience as an electrician and mechanic, Crawford presents a wonderfully articulated call for self-reliance and a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract world.

As American women have entered the labor force in greater numbers, the traditional work of wives and mothers--cleaning houses and caring for children--has gradually moved into the global marketplace. Paid domestic work has largely become the domain of disenfranchised immigrant women of color. Unlike the working poor who toil in factories and fields, these women see, touch, and breathe the material and emotional world of their employers' homes. They scrub grout, coax reluctant children to eat their vegetables, launder and fold clothes, dust, vacuum, and witness intimate family dynamics. In this enlightening and timely work, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo highlights the voices, experiences, and views of Mexican and Central American women who care for other people's children and homes, as well as the outlooks of the women who employ them in Los Angeles.
All royalties from this book will be donated to the Domestic Workers' Association, a division of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA).

An innovative and informative mini-encyclopedia of work and workers in America. Unique and comprehensive, The Lexicon of Labor features informative and engaging descriptions of more than 500 key places, people, and events in American labor history. From Eugene Debs to Cesar Chavez, the Haymarket Riots in 1886 to the Teamsters/ups strike in 1997, labor writer R. Emmett Murray provides brief, fascinating sketches of this vital part of the American experience. The Lexicon of Labor also includes explanations of major legislative acts, definitions of key legal terminology, and complete listings of all the member unions of the AFL-CIO and independent unions in the United States. A practical, handy resource for students and journalists, and an ideal introduction to the history of labor in America. Terms include: AFL-CIO; boulwarism; collective bargaining; Davis-Bacon Act; downsizing; Fair Labor Standards Act; Homestead Strike; I.W.W.; Knights of Labor; maquiladora; May Day; Palmer Raids; scab; sweatshop; Taft-Hartley Act; union bug; wildcatting; wobblies; zipper clause; and many more.