Jimmy Hoffa, acquitted in a Nashville court during the Test Fleet case, was under investigation for jury tampering and subsequently tried and convicted in Chattanooga after a judge in Nashville granted a change of venue. Nicely explores Hoffa's time in Tennessee, the major players in the case, and the development of Bobby Kennedy, then chief counsel of the Senate's McClellan Committee, as Hoffa's main antagonist. All the while, Hoffa's continued legal troubles created a high amount of tension between the Teamsters, management, and members of organized crime. While many books overlook this important tipping point in Hoffa's career, tending to focus on his disappearance, Nicely mines court transcripts and presents the Tennessee trials as both the height of Hoffa's perceived invincibility and the beginning of his downfall.

Series Editor: John Milton Cooper, Jr., University of Wisconsin-Madison

This distinguished series provides complete interpretive biographies of influential twentieth-century figures. Based on extensive research and written by a prominent scholar, each concise study examines the subject's career, private life, political milieu, public image, and impact on modern society.

'Teachers United' is the inspiring history of NYSUT, New York State's largest union, and a powerful progressive force in the state and in the country. Gaffney shows how it has been a leader of educational reform, winning more money for education, creating smaller classes, raising academic standards, and training better teachers.

In the summer of 1968 Peter Matthiessen met Cesar Chavez for the first time. They were the same age: forty-one. Matthiessen lived in New York City while Chavez lived in Sal Si Puedes, the San Jose barrio where his career as a union organizer took off. This book is Matthiessen's panoramic yet finely detailed account of the three years he spent traveling and working with Chavez. In it, Matthiessen provides a candid look into the many sides of this enigmatic and charismatic leader who lived by the laws of nonviolence. More than thirty years later, Sal Si Puedes is less reportage than living history. A whole era comes alive in its pages: the Chicano, Black Power, and antiwar movements; the browning of the labor movement; Chavez's series of hunger strikes; and, the nationwide boycott of California grapes. When Chavez died in 1993, thousands gathered at his funeral. It was a clear sign of how beloved he was, how important his life had been. A new postscript by the author brings the reader up to date as to the events that have unfolded since the writing of Sal Si Puedes. Ilan Stavans' insightful foreword considers the significance of Chavez's legacy for our time. As well as serving as an indispensable guide to the 1960s, this book rejuvenates the extraordinary vitality of Chavez's life and spirit, giving his message a renewed and much-needed urgency.

"Finally, the book we've all been waiting for With gripping tales of grassroots experiments in social justice unionism from the 1960s to the present, Vanessa Tait cracks wide open our concept of what a labor movement looks like, and shows how it can be part and parcel of movements for racial and gender justice. In the process, she does a stunning job of helping us imagine workers' movements that are creative, democratic, and, above all, build power from below--pointing the way to a vibrant future for labor."--Dana Frank, UC-Santa Cruz; author of "Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism"

"A critical contribution to broadening our understanding of who and what is the labor movement in the USA. . . . Tait captures the dynamism of alternative forms of working class organization that have long been ignored. In formulating a new direction for organized labor in the USA, the history Tait addresses must become a recognized part of our foundation."--Bill Fletcher, Jr., President, TransAfrica Forum and former assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

"While the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions desperately try to figure out how to rebuild and energize the labor movement, this exceptional book reveals that poor workers have been showing the way for the past forty years. Utilizing original documents, Tait examines . . . a wide range of movements organized by poor workers to improve their circumstances and build a more just society, including the Revolutionary Union Movement, the National Welfare Rights Organization, ACORN's Unite Labor Unions, workfare unions, and independent workers' centers. She demonstrates that these movements were founded and developed upon principles of rank-and-file control, democracy, community involvement, and solidarity and aimed to improve all aspects of workers' lives. . . . Both labor activists and labor historians will learn much from this book."--Michael Yates, author of "Why Unions Matter"

This text offers an up-to-date overview of the present context and operations of trade unions in the UK and the rest of Europe. The effects of 15 years of Conservative government, the "Thatcher years", the rise of the quality movement, European initiatives and the rise of Human Resource Management as an important management discipline mean that the role and the environment of the union has changed very significantly. The fact that "new" unions are responding to the new challenges means that they are a real feature of the industrial and HRM landscape again. The book covers the key areas of: the post-war history of the unions; Union "revival" and the relationship between unionism and HRM; the continuing relevance of collective action; contemporary unions as organizations and their relations with politics and the law; the new international context - European unions, British unions and Europe and international union organizations.

Highly acclaimed and widely read, "American Workers, American Unions" (first published in 1986, revised ed. 1994) provides a concise and compelling history of American workers and their unions in twentieth-century America. This new edition features new chapters on the pre-1920 period, as well as an entirely new final chapter that covers developments of the 1980s and 1990s in detail. There the authors explore how economic change, union stagnation, and antilabor policies have combined to erode workers' standards and labor's influence in the political arena over the last two decades. They review current "alternatives to unionism" as means of achieving fair workplace representations but insist that strong unions remain essential in a democratic society. They argue that labor's new responsiveness to the concerns of women, minority groups, and low-wage workers, as well as its resurgent political activism, offer new hope for trade unionism. Also included in this third edition is new bibliographical material and a regularly updated on-line link to an extended bibliographical essay.

"A volatile, competitive, and seasonal industry, the making of men's suits has long been characterized by manufacturers who search relentlessly for the cheapest labor pools. Sweatshop labor conditions have been a regular feature of the industry, provoking repeated and explosive investigations and constituting a target for social reform and a major source of union concern. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers from its inception in 1914 has sought to create a process of labor-management relations that emphasizes cooperation and negotiation" -- from the Introduction

Making the Amalgamated examines the policy and power relationships that developed on the shopfloor, in the union hall, on the picket line, and within the national organization of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (ACW) in the period when this industry -- now largely departed from the United States -- teemed with activity. A progressive union imbued with socialist principles, the ACW practiced labor-management cooperation and attempted simultaneously to discipline union members and to bring clothing manufacturers to heel.

Jo Ann E. Argersinger examines both the interests that tended to unify workers and the forces that divided them. She studies the complex nature of union building itself, explores the seasonal cycles of the clothing industry as a whole, and places Baltimore and the ACW in national context, illustrating how local trends collided with national union politics. Argersinger draws from the strengths of the traditional approach to labor history. While offering a full account of institutional growth of the union movement, however, she also incorporates new insights, stressing labor's social context and the shiftinginfluences of ethnicity, gender, and culture. Blending old and new perspectives, Making the Amalgamated calls for a more nuanced understanding of organized labor and business practices.

This inspiring story of Jessie De La Cruz, the United Farmer Workers, and la Causa is told as only Gary Soto -- novelist, essayist, poet, and himself a field laborer during his teens -- can tell it, with respect, empathy, and deep compassion for the working poor.

A field worker from the age of five, Jessie knew poverty, harsh working conditions, and the exploitation of Mexicans and all poor people. Her response was to take a stand. She joined the fledgling United Farm Workers union and, at Cesar Chavez's request, became its first woman recruiter. She also participated in strikes, helped ban the crippling short-handle hoe, became a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, testified before the Senate, and met with the Pope.

Jessie's life story personalizes an historical movement and shows teens how an ordinary woman became extraordinary through her will to make change happen, not just for herself but for others.

"The strength of this book ...encompasses a broad view of history from the bottom up and deals not only with biographical background of the nonelite in labor but with insights into black, immigrant, and grassroots working-class history as well."--Choice Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Why has labor played a more limited role in national politics in the United States than it has in other advanced industrial societies? Victoria Hattam demonstrates that voluntarism, as American labor's policy was known, was the American Federation of Labor's strategic response to the structure of the American state, particularly to the influence of American courts. The AFL's strategic calculation was not universal, however. This book reveals the competing ideologies and acts of interpretation that produced these variations in state-labor relations. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book combines the tools of political science, sociology, and labor history to offer a wide-ranging analysis of how unions have participated in politics in Britain, Germany, and the United States. Rather than focus exclusively on national union federations, Gary Marks investigates variations among individual unions both within and across these countries. By examining the individual unions that make up union movements, he probes beyond national descriptions of British laborism, German socialism, and American business unionism while bringing the analysis closer to the actual experiences of people who joined labor organizations. Among the topics Marks examines are state repression of unions, the Organizational Revolution, the contrasting experiences of printing and coalmining unions, and American Exceptionalism. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.