The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Workers’ Movement

Union membership in the United States has fallen below 11 percent the lowest rate since before the New Deal. Labor activist and scholar of the American labor movement Stanley Aronowitz argues that the movement as we have known it for the last 100 years is effectively dead. And he explains how this death has been a long time coming—the organizing and political principles adopted by US unions at mid-century have taken a terrible toll. In the 1950s Aronowitz was a factory metalworker.<br>In the ’50s and ’60s he directed organizing with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers. In 1963 he coordinated the labor participation for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Ten years later the publication of his book <i>False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness </i>was a landmark in the study of the US working-class and workers’ movements.<br>Aronowitz draws on this long personal history reflecting on his continuing involvement in labor organizing with groups such as the Professional Staff Congress of the City University. He brings a historian’s understanding of American workers’ struggles in taking the long view of the labor movement. Then in a survey of current initiatives strikes organizations and allies Aronowitz analyzes the possibilities of labor’s rebirth and sets out a program for a new broad radical workers’ movement.