In this collection of firsthand accounts by those who knew Cesar Chavez best, a portrait of an uncommonly complex man, both driven and focused, yet humble, empathic and exceedingly principled, emerges. The reader gains an understanding of the yoke Chavez chose to place upon his own shoulders, as well as the ideals he employed to accomplish for the migrant farmworkers what many predicted would be impossible. The more than 45 contributors range from the famous--Edward James Olmos, Henry Cisneros, Martin Sheen, Coretta Scott King, Jerry Brown and others--to members of the Chavez family, to UFW staff, to the farmworkers themselves. Illustrated by the compelling black and white photographs of George Elfie Ballis, who began photographing the farmworker movement in the 1950s.

Remarkable An energizing, engaging book that can lead to the end of homelessness for over 1,000,000 minimum wage workers. This book takes off where all the other minimum wage, living wage books end.
Michael Stoops, National Civil Rights Organizer for the National Coalition for the Homeless
..". the only book on the subject that combines in such depth both personal stories of low wage workers and their families, on the one hand, and analytic arguments about the costs and benefits of living wages, on the other. The idea of indexing wages to housing costs just may be the right way to think about this."
Robert Pollin, author of The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy
Troxell's accounts of the homeless point to a profound break down in our culture - a society that grows more rootless and disconnected with each passing year. After reading this book your next experience at a highway intersection will be radically changed. The bedraggled figure holding a cardboard sign will not be a complete stranger. You won't be looking at a bum; you'll be seeing another human being and into the brokenness of our culture.
Tom Spencer, CEO Austin Area Interreligious Ministries
Compassion means to suffer (pati) with (com) another. To suffer with Unfortunately in today's world the idea of compassion is confused with the liberal notion of charity as opposed to a genuine call to justice. Richard Troxell has shared and taken on the pain of others and battled like a great warrior the institutional mindset that prevents humans from simply doing what is right.
Alan Graham, President Mobile Loaves & Fishes
Finally, someone with some common sense Troxell lays out a plan that will end homelessness for over 1,000,000 minimum wage workers- without costing tax payers a dime. Plus, this is a great read - a compelling activist's tell.
Jim Hightower, radio commentator and editor of The Hightower Lowdown
... the inspiration and key to Bringing America Home for millions of people through the Universal Living Wage - by indexing employment income to housing costs.
Sue Watlov Phillips, M.A., C.S.P., executive director of Elim Transitional Housing, founder Minnesota and National Coalition for the Homeless
Troxell's outstanding advocacy and efforts on behalf of the homeless are legend and truly appreciated by those he helps and those who admire his selfless work.
Texas State Senator Kirk Watson, District 14

The Marikana Massacre of August 16, 2012, was the single most lethal use of force by South African security forces against civilians since the end of apartheid. Those killed were mineworkers in support of a pay raise. Through a series of interviews conducted with workers who survived the attack, this account documents and examines the controversial shootings in great detail, beginning with a valuable history of the events leading up to the killing of workers, and including eyewitness accounts of the violence and interviews with family members of those who perished.
While the official Farlam Commission investigation of the massacre is still ongoing, many South Africans do not hold much confidence in the government's ability to examine its own complicity in these events. "Marikana," on the other hand, examines the various roles played by the African National Congress, the mine company, and the National Union of Mineworkers in creating the conditions that led to the massacre. While the commission's investigations take place in a courtroom setting tilted toward those in power, "Marikana" documents testimony from the mineworkers in the days before official statements were even gathered, offering an unusually immediate and unfiltered look at the reality from the perspective of those most directly affected. Enhanced by vivid maps that make clear the setting and situation of the events, "Marikana" is an invaluable work of history, journalism, sociology, and activism.

Originally written in 1882, The State in Relation to Labour is a treatise discussing the rights of workers (specifically blue-collar or factor workers) and how certain workers or jobs should be governed, both by factory owners and labor laws. Author W. Stanley Jevons discusses the principles of factory legislation, interference in industry by both the government and labor unions, acts and laws that directly affect laborers, and methods of cooperation and compromise between laborers and their superiors. Jevons wrote several books that dealt with issues of the industrial age, and this would have come at a time when industrial laborers greatly needed an advocate. Jevons avoids supporting either side, striving for a neutral conclusion as to how the state and laborers should interact, resulting in an interesting study of labor policies for history buffs and political science students. English economist and logician WILLIAM STANLEY JEVONS (1835-1882) was born in Liverpool. He studied chemistry and botany at University College, London, and was later professor of logic and political economy at Owens College, Manchester. He is also the author of The Theory of Political Economy (1871) and The State in Relation to Labour (1882).

In The Chicken Trail, Kathleen C. Schwartzman examines the impact of globalization and of NAFTA in particular on the North American poultry industry, focusing on the displacement of African American workers in the southeast United States and workers in Mexico. Schwartzman documents how the transformation of U.S. poultry production in the 1980s increased its export capacity and changed the nature and consequences of labor conflict. She documents how globalization and NAFTA in particular forced Mexico to open its commodity and capital markets, and eliminate state support of corporations and rural smallholders. As a consequence, many Mexicans were forced to abandon their no longer sustainable small farms, with some seeking work in industrialized poultry factories north of the border.

By following this chicken trail, Schwartzman breaks through the deadlocked immigration debate, highlighting the broader economic and political contexts of immigration flows. The narrative that undocumented worker take jobs that Americans don't want to do is too simplistic. Schwartzman argues instead that illegal immigration is better understood as a labor story in which the hiring of undocumented workers is part of a management response to the crises of profit making and labor-management conflict. By placing the poultry industry at the center of a constellation of competing individual, corporate, and national interests and such factors as national debt, free trade, economic development, industrial restructuring, and African American unemployment, The Chicken Trail makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the implications of globalization for labor and how the externalities of free trade and neoliberalism become the social problems of nations and the tragedies of individuals."

In Conflicting Commitments, Shannon Gleeson goes beyond the debate over federal immigration policy to examine the complicated terrain of immigrant worker rights. Federal law requires that basic labor standards apply to all workers, yet this principle clashes with increasingly restrictive immigration laws and creates a confusing bureaucratic terrain for local policymakers and labor advocates. Gleeson examines this issue in two of the largest immigrant gateways in the country: San Jose, California, and Houston, Texas.

Conflicting Commitments reveals two cities with very different approaches to addressing the exploitation of immigrant workers both involving the strategic coordination of a range of bureaucratic brokers, but in strikingly different ways. Drawing on the real life accounts of ordinary workers, federal, state, and local government officials, community organizers, and consular staff, Gleeson argues that local political contexts matter for protecting undocumented workers in particular. Providing a rich description of the bureaucratic minefields of labor law, and the explosive politics of immigrant rights, Gleeson shows how the lessons learned from San Jose and Houston can inform models for upholding labor and human rights in the United States."

In Union Voices, the result of a thirteen-year research project, three industrial relations scholars evaluate how labor unions fared in the political and institutional context created by Great Britain's New Labour government, which was in power from 1997 to 2010. Drawing on extensive empirical evidence, Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate, and Edmund Heery present a multilevel analysis of what organizing means in the UK, how it emerged, and what its impact has been.

Although the supportive legislation of the New Labour government led to considerable optimism in the late 1990s about the prospects for renewal, Simms, Holgate, and Heery argue that despite considerable evidence of investment, new practices, and innovation, UK unions have largely failed to see any significant change in their membership and influence. The authors argue that this is because of the wider context within which organizing activity takes place and also reflects the fundamental tensions within these initiatives. Even without evidence of any significant growth in labor influence across UK society more broadly, organizing campaigns have given many of the participants an opportunity to grow and flourish. The book presents their experiences and uses them to show how their personal commitment to organizing and trade unionism can sometimes be undermined by the tensions and tactics used during campaigns.

Written when Engels was 24, and inspired by his time living among the poor in Manchester, this forceful polemic explores the staggering human cost of the Industrial Revolution in Victorian England.

In Conflicting Commitments, Shannon Gleeson goes beyond the debate over federal immigration policy to examine the complicated terrain of immigrant worker rights. Federal law requires that basic labor standards apply to all workers, yet this principle clashes with increasingly restrictive immigration laws and creates a confusing bureaucratic terrain for local policymakers and labor advocates. Gleeson examines this issue in two of the largest immigrant gateways in the country: San Jose, California, and Houston, Texas.

Conflicting Commitments reveals two cities with very different approaches to addressing the exploitation of immigrant workers both involving the strategic coordination of a range of bureaucratic brokers, but in strikingly different ways. Drawing on the real life accounts of ordinary workers, federal, state, and local government officials, community organizers, and consular staff, Gleeson argues that local political contexts matter for protecting undocumented workers in particular. Providing a rich description of the bureaucratic minefields of labor law, and the explosive politics of immigrant rights, Gleeson shows how the lessons learned from San Jose and Houston can inform models for upholding labor and human rights in the United States."

Call centres illustrate the consequences of globalisation for labour perhaps more clearly than any other form of employment. Call-centre workers sit at the interface between the global and the local, having to transcend the limitations of local time zones, cultures and speech patterns. They are also at the interface between companies and their customers, having to absorb the impact of anger, incomprehension, confusion and racist abuse whilst still meeting exacting productivity targets and staying calm and friendly. Finally, they take the brunt of the conflict at the contested interface between production and consumption, having to deal in their personal lives with the conflicts between the demands of paid and unpaid work. Drawing, amongst others, on organisational theory, sociology, communications studies, industrial relations, economic geography, gender theory and political economy, this important collection brings together survey evidence from around the world with case studies and vivid first-hand accounts of life in call centres from Asia, North and South America, Western and Eastern Europe. In the process it reveals many similarities but also demonstrates that national industrial relations traditions and workers' ability to negotiate can make a significant difference to the quality of working life in call centres.

Numerous pithy essays on a variety of topics in the fields of Safety, Health, and Environment (SHE). These essays a perfect introduction to SHE, interesting, and applicable. Information contained in the essays can be used to prevent accidents that could result in injuries, illnesses, and property damage and save valuable resources.

The shift from manufacturing- to service-based economies has often been accompanied by the expansion of low-wage and insecure employment. Many consider the effects of this shift inevitable. In Disintegrating Democracy at Work, Virginia Doellgast contends that high pay and good working conditions are possible even for marginal service jobs. This outcome, however, depends on strong unions and encompassing collective bargaining institutions, which are necessary to give workers a voice in the decisions that affect the design of their jobs and the distribution of productivity gains.

Doellgast's conclusions are based on a comparative study of the changes that occurred in the organization of call center jobs in the United States and Germany following the liberalization of telecommunications markets. Based on survey data and interviews with workers, managers, and union representatives, she found that German managers more often took the "high road" than those in the United States, investing in skills and giving employees more control over their work. Doellgast traces the difference to stronger institutional supports for workplace democracy in Germany. However, these democratic structures were increasingly precarious, as managers in both countries used outsourcing strategies to move jobs to workplaces with lower pay and weaker or no union representation. Doellgast's comparative findings show the importance of policy choices in closing off these escape routes, promoting broad access to good jobs in expanding service industries.

The Communist Manifesto was first published on February 21, and it is one of the world's most influential political tracts. Commissioned by the Communist League and written by communist theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, it laid out the League's purposes and program. The Manifesto suggested a course of action for a proletarian (working class) revolution to overthrow the ruling class of bourgeoisie and to eventually bring about a classless society.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

In the thirty years since the opening of China's economy, China's economic growth has been nothing short of phenomenal. At the same time, however, its employment relations system has undergone a gradual but fundamental transformation from stable and permanent employment with good benefits (often called the iron rice bowl), to a system characterized by highly precarious employment with no benefits for about 40 percent of the population. Similar transitions have occurred in other countries, such as Korea, although perhaps not at such a rapid pace as in China. This shift echoes the move from "breadwinning" careers to contingent employment in the postindustrial United States.

In From Iron Rice Bowl to Informalization, an interdisciplinary group of authors examines the nature, causes, and consequences of informal employment in China at a time of major changes in Chinese society. This book provides a guide to the evolving dynamics among workers, unions, NGOs, employers, and the state as they deal with the new landscape of insecure employment.

Contributors: Fang Cai, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Baohua Dong, East China University of Politics and Law; Mark W. Frazier, University of Oklahoma; Mary E. Gallagher, University of Michigan; Sarosh Kuruvilla, Cornell University; Ching Kwan Lee, UCLA; Kun-Chin Lin, King's College, London; Mingwei Liu, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; Albert Park, University of Oxford; Yuan Shen, Tsinghua University; Sarah Swider, Wayne State University; Lu Zhang, Temple University

Being laid off can be a traumatic event. The unemployed worry about how they will pay their bills and find a new job. In the American economy's boom-and-bust business cycle since the 1980s, repeated layoffs have become part of working life. In A Company of One, Carrie M. Lane finds that the new culture of corporate employment, changes to the job search process, and dual-income marriage have reshaped how today's skilled workers view unemployment. Through interviews with seventy-five unemployed and underemployed high-tech white-collar workers in the Dallas area over the course of the 2000s, Lane shows that they have embraced a new definition of employment in which all jobs are temporary and all workers are, or should be, independent "companies of one."

Following the experiences of individual jobseekers over time, Lane explores the central role that organized networking events, working spouses, and neoliberal ideology play in forging and reinforcing a new individualist, pro-market response to the increasingly insecure nature of contemporary employment. She also explores how this new perspective is transforming traditional ideas about masculinity and the role of men as breadwinners. Sympathetic to the benefits that this "company of one" ideology can hold for its adherents, Lane also details how it hides the true costs of an insecure workforce and makes collective and political responses to job loss and downward mobility unlikely.

The realities of globalization have produced a surprising reversal in the focus and strategies of labor movements around the world. After years of neglect and exclusion, labor organizers are recognizing both the needs and the importance of immigrants and women employed in the growing ranks of low-paid and insecure service jobs. In Organizing at the Margins, Jennifer Jihye Chun focuses on this shift as it takes place in two countries: South Korea and the United States.

Using comparative historical inquiry and in-depth case studies, she shows how labor movements in countries with different histories and structures of economic development, class formation, and cultural politics embark on similar trajectories of change. Chun shows that as the base of worker power shifts from those who hold high-paying, industrial jobs to the formerly "unorganizable," labor movements in both countries are employing new strategies and vocabularies to challenge the assault of neoliberal globalization on workers' rights and livelihoods.

Deftly combining theory and ethnography, she argues that by cultivating alternative sources of "symbolic leverage" that root workers' demands in the collective morality of broad-based communities, as opposed to the narrow confines of workplace disputes, workers in the lowest tiers are transforming the power relations that sustain downgraded forms of work. Her case studies of janitors and personal service workers in the United States and South Korea offer a surprising comparison between converging labor movements in two very different countries as they refashion their relation to historically disadvantaged sectors of the workforce and expand the moral and material boundaries of union membership in a globalizing world.

William Morris (1834-1896) was an English artist, writer, socialist and activist. He was one of the principal founders of the British arts and crafts movement, best known as a designer of wallpaper and patterned fabrics, a writer of poetry and fiction and a pioneer of the socialist movement in Britain. Morris and his friends formed an artistic movement, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They eschewed the tawdry industrial manufacture of decorative arts and architecture and favoured a return to hand-craftsmanship, raising artisans to the status of artists. He espoused the philosophy that art should be affordable, hand-made, and that there should be no hierarchy of artistic mediums. His best-known works are The Defence of Guinevere, and Other Poems (1858), Hopes and Fears for Art (1882), Chants for Socialists (1885), A Dream of John Ball: A King's Lesson (1888), The House of the Wolfings (1889), Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair (1895), Old French Romances (1896), The Well at the World's End (1896), and The Hollow Land (1897).

A manifesto of the Workers Opposition, a group within the USSR's Communist Party that rejected Leninist centralization and Stalinist dictatorship, and argued for direct worker control of the industries, democratic socialism, the rights of labor unions, the right of free criticism of Party leaders and programs, the end of Party repression, and a return to the original worker-organized Council-based state structure. Most of the Workers Opposition died in Stalin's jails.

Something is terribly wrong with America's public school system.

For decades, we have seen test scores slide or stagnate (today fewer than twenty percent of our nation's twelfth graders are proficient in math, and our students rank near the bottom in science and math among the industrialized nations of the world) and achievement gaps persist or widen.

So who's responsible for the ongoing failure of our education system? In "The War Against Hope," former Secretary of Education Rod Paige pulls no punches in his critical analysis of America's crisis in the classroom. Without question, the greatest impediment to meaningful school reform is the enormous, self-aggrandizing power wielded by the teachers' unions.

In this vital, well-documented book, Paige takes an unflinching look at the power-hungry union leaders who have consistently placed their ambitions ahead of the needs of the teachers and the students whom they claim to serve. He also traces the history of the National Education Association (NEA) from its humble beginnings as an advocate of education excellence to its early radicalization by left-wing ideology.

"The War Against Hope" is a disturbing account of the corruption, greed, and skewed values that have assaulted our schools, betrayed our teachers, and forsaken our children for far too long.

Senator Dorgan is sounding the alarm: With our country up to our neck in trade debt--$2 billion a day--as we import energy and export jobs, it is long past the time to tackle the trade crisis head-on.
By outsourcing hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs, American companies are essentially hollowing out our economic base, and with the current White House beholden to Big Oil and cronies straight out of the Gilded Age, no one is guarding the rights of the American worker. "Take This Job and Ship It" is not just a dire warning--it also offers many sobering cures before our current policies put American national security even further at risk.

How Internet Radio Can Change the World: An Activist's Handbook is essential reading for trade unionists, environmental campaigners, human rights activists -- anyone who is working to change the world. Author Eric Lee has pioneered the use of the Internet by unions around the globe, and the website he established in 1998, LabourStart, now appears in 19 languages and is used by thousands of activists every day. In early 2004, the author launched the first online labor radio station and this book reveals exactly what was involved in setting it up. It also delves into the short history of Internet radio, revealing how what began as a radical project to reinvigorate the liberal wing of the Democratic Party was turned into a commercial success -- and yet remains a vital tool for activists. The book clearly explains both how to listen to Internet radio -- and how to set up your own station.