Beaten Down, Worked Up

September 2, 2019
Greenhouse, a former labor reporter for the New York Times, offers an inspirational greatest-hits look at the past, present, and future of American workers’ movements. He argues that a decline in the power of organized labor has been both cause and consequence of several other blights over the past 40 years, including income inequality; wage stagnation; the proliferation of low-security, low-wage jobs; and the rise of a political culture dominated by corporations and billionaires. Greenhouse kicks off with a series of illustrative, diverse “profiles in courage”; there’s Clara Lemlich and the garment workers’ strikes in turn-of-the-last-century New York City, or United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther’s efforts to lift auto workers and others into the postwar middle class from the 1930s on. The author follows them with episodes from labor’s subsequent stagnation and embattlement, through which he considers the effects of deregulation, globalization, automation, the rise of “investor capitalism,” anti-labor politics, and “labor’s self-inflicted wounds” (corruption, complacency, ambivalence about social justice movements). Greenhouse ends with some recent labor successes—including the “Fight for $15” and the profitable, harmonious relationship between workers and management at the hospital chain Kaiser Permanente—and suggestions for a broadly revivified labor movement. This collection will satisfy readers who seek an introduction to labor history or ideas about how American workers can regain some power.