How can American unions survive in our increasingly globalized business environment? With the trend toward multinational corporations, free trade pacts, and dismantling import barriers, organized labor has been steadily losing ground in the United States. This book argues that to reverse this trend, U.S. unions must create ties with workers and unions in other countries, and include the ever-increasing number of immigrant workers in their ranks. And it calls for a shift toward "social movement unionism, " which would change unions' orientation from exclusively market-focused and more toward social issues and rights.

How can American unions survive in our increasingly globalized business environment? With the trend toward multinational corporations, free trade pacts, and dismantling import barriers, organized labor has been steadily losing ground in the United States. This book argues that to reverse this trend, U.S. unions must create ties with workers and unions in other countries, and include the ever-increasing number of immigrant workers in their ranks. And it calls for a shift toward "social movement unionism, " which would change unions' orientation from exclusively market-focused and more toward social issues and rights.

Respecting both the history a labor theories and the variety of theoretical points of view concerning the labor movement, this collection of readings includes selections by Karl Marx, V. I. Lenin, William Haywood, Georges Sorel, Stanley Aronowitz, John R. Commons, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Thorstein Veblen, Henry Simons, and John Kenneth Galbraith, among others. Intending this as a text for classroom use, Larson and Nissen have arranged the readings according to the social role assigned to the labor movement by each theory. The text's major divisions consider the labor movement as an agent of revolution, as a business institution, as an agent of industrial reform, as a psychological reaction to industrialism, as a moral force, as a destructive monopoly, and as a subordinate mechanism in pluralist industrial society. Such groupings allow for ready comparison of divergent views of the origins, development, and future of the labor movement.

With the decline of the labor movement in the United States over the past four decades, unions are facing the future with unresolved concerns over free trade agreements, dwindling memberships, and their own leverage with industry and government. Which Direction for Organized Labor? addresses critical questions facing the U.S. labor movement as it approaches the 21st century. It analyzes the overall state of organized labor and examines the direction it should take in rebuilding its strength and influence.

The editor has arranged this collection around the themes of organizing, reaching out, and self-transformation, and he presents essays that demonstrate the interconnection of these concepts. The initial selections examine prospects for growth by addressing the priority of the AFL-CIO to "organize the unorganized". These essays consider the current environment for organizing, examine present efforts, and propose major departures from past practices.

A second group of essays assesses labor's prospects for establishing supportive alliances with religious, community, and international organizations, arriving at some provocative conclusions that indicate the real source of external power for unions today. The final section examines the internal transformations that are needed if the labor movement is to successfully confront its challenges, evaluating past union modes of operation, present attempts to change, and lessons for the future.