Popular Reading & Cartoons

Reviving the Strike: How Working People can Regain Power and Transform America

If the American labor movement is to rise again, the author says, it will not be as a result of electing Democrats, the passage of legislation, or improved methods of union organizing. Rather, workers will need to rediscover the power of the strike. Not the ineffectual strike of today, where employees meekly sit on picket lines waiting for scabs to take their jobs, but the type of strike capable of grinding industries to a halt—the kind employed up until the 1960s. 206 pages paperback

Cut From Plain Cloth: The 2011 Wisconsin Workers Protests

The 2011 worker uprising in Wisconsin made history: hundreds of thousands of enraged workers and supporters converged on the state capital of Madison to protest the gutting of public employee collective bargaining. This moving and beautifully-executed new book marks the event for the piece of history it is, documenting the stories of demonstrators ranging from dedicated and overworked teachers to an unsettled Vietnam vet who finally felt welcomed back to his country, from high school students supporting those teachers to a 79-year-old German immigrant with a history of speaking truth to power. 162 pages hardcover, 150 photos

Unions for Beginners

It is a time when unions have returned to the front pages of newspapers and blogs and demonstrators are in the streets of America every day. It is a time when the right wing has tried to strike the final blow against what remains of the right to collective bargaining. It is a time when millions of members of the middle class are falling through the cracks in a downward economic trend that parallels the decline of unions. It is this time when people are turning again to the history of unions. Unions for Beginners provides an introduction to that essential history. 176 pages paperback

No Place to Be Sick

The nurses in Tim Sheard's fictional hospital suspect a serial killer is stalking their patients. But when they bring their fears to the director of nursing, she orders them to keep their mouths shut or be fired and lose their license. On top of the suspicious deaths, a greedy CEO is trying to buy the hospital, turn it private and decertify the union. Sound familiar? 341 pages paperback

They're Bankrupting Us! And 20 Other Myths about Unions

How familiar do these phrases ring? Unions are responsible for budget deficits; they’ve outlived their usefulness; their members are overpaid and enjoy cushy benefits. The only way to save the American economy, many say, is to weaken the labor movement, strip workers of collective bargaining rights, and champion private industry. In They're Bankrupting Us! And 20 Other Myths about Unions, longtime labor activist and educator Bill Fletcher Jr. makes sense of this debate as he unpacks the 21 myths most often cited by anti-union propagandists. 204 pages paperback

Kings in Disguise: A Graphic Novel

This award-winning tale, set in the height of the Great Depression, received rave reviews long before graphic novels became the phenomenon they are today. Hailed as one of the top 100 comics of all time by The Comics Journal, Kings in Disguise now reemerges as a classic.

Chicken Feathers and Garlic Skin: Diary of a Chinese Garment Factory Girl on Saipan

We’ve all read newspaper and magazine reports about how miserable life is for garment workers in Third World sweatshops. But we’ve read very little in the workers’ own words, and that’s what this fascinating book offers. In Chicken Feathers and Garlic Skin, 25-year-old Chun Yu Wang tells of her life as a Chinese emigrant to Saipan, searching for a better life 2,000 miles from her home. 180 pages paperback

The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor: Birth of a New Workers' Movement or Death Throes of the Old?

Between 2008 and 2010, the progressive wing of the U.S. labor movement tore itself apart in a series of union-on-union struggles. More than 140 million dollars was expended, by all sides, on organizing conflicts that tarnished union reputations and undermined the campaign for real health care and labor law reform. Campus and community allies, along with many rank-and-file union members, were left angered and dismayed. It was ugly and destructive. 440 pages paperback

Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology

Originally published in 1964 and long out of print, Rebel Voices remains by far the biggest and best source on IWW history, fiction, songs, art, and lore. This new edition includes 40 pages of additional material from the 1998 Charles H. Kerr edition by Fred Thompson and Franklin Rosemont, and a new preface by Wobbly organizer Daniel Gross. 464 pages paperback

Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams

Rock stars, poets, filmmakers, activists, novelists, and historians lend their voices to this entertaining collection about the daily grind. From the folk anthems of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie to the poems of Walt Whitman and Amiri Baraka; from the stories of Willa Cather and Bret Lott to the rabble-rousing work of Michael Moore, and from the White Stripes’ “The Big Three Killed My Baby” to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” this great collection touches upon all aspects of working-class life. 550 pages paperback

Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street

Ripped from the headlines, Uprising provides a bracing snapshot of the union-led protest movement that captivated the nation and paved the path for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Author John Nichols recounts the gripping story of the more than 100,000 public employees, teachers, students, and their allies who descended on the capital in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011 after Republican Gov. Scott Walker announced his plan to eliminate the right of public sector employees to unionize. The dramatic struggle (and the Democratic caucus’s secret escape across the border to Indiana in order to block a quorum) elicited extensive national media coverage and debate—as well as enormous grassroots support for protestors. 192 pages paperback

Drawing My Times: A 30 Year Retrospective

The cartoons of Bulbul -- the pen name for California free lance cartoonist Genny Guracar -- have graced the pages of union newspapers and alternative publications for three decades. This great collection contains 312 of her best cartoons and 12 autobiographical essays. As well as labor issues, her focus here is on children, education, feminism, corporations, and much more. A woman of great talent, insight and sympathy for people who work for a living, her cartoons are syndicated in the labor press across the U.S. and Canada by UCS -- publishers of this book catalog. 188 pages paperback

The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker

Society makes sweeping judgments about the intelligence of the "common worker." But consider the lightning-fast calculations required of any waitress; the complex spatial mathematics of the carpenter; the hairdresser’s ability to turn a client’s vague description into a real hairdo. Ditto the skills and brainpower involved in being an electrical worker, a welder and more. In this impassioned and insightful book, Mike Rose reveals the intellectual skills that physical labor requires and assesses the costs -- educational, economic and societal -- of ignoring them. 249 pages paperback

Labor Pains: Inside America’s New Union Movement

If you’re a union organizer, or interested in getting a sense of what that kind of life is like, you’ll want to read this sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes heartening, sometimes troubling book about a Chicago organizer’s life, both on the job and off. 211 pages paperback

On the Global Waterfront: The Fight to Free the Charleston 5

On the Global Waterfront tells the story of longshoremen in South Carolina who confronted attempts to wipe out their union, the state’s most powerful black organization, and rallied the nation and labor around the world in their successful fight. 224 pages paperback

Why Unions Matter

In this new (2009) edition of Why Unions Matter, Michael D. Yates shows why unions still matter. Unions mean better pay, benefits, and working conditions for their members; they force employers to treat employees with dignity and respect; and at their best, they provide a way for workers to make society both more democratic and more egalitarian. Yates uses simple language, clear data, and engaging examples to show why workers need unions, how unions are formed, how they operate, how collective bargaining works, the role of unions in politics, and what unions have done to bring workers together across the divides of race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. 200 pages paperback

Embedded with Organized Labor

This valuable collection describes how union members have organized successfully, on the job and in the community, in the face of employer opposition now and in the past. 288 pages paperback

Retire Happy: What To Do NOW To Guarantee A Great Retirement

Everyone who works for a living thinks at some point about retirement, but few actually consider what that really means, other than escaping the daily grind. For sure, most of us worry about having enough money, and this highly readable book provides a lot of information and advice on the subject: how much we’ll need, how to make the most of what we’ve accumulated, how to accumulate more (even as we get close to retirement) and how to make it last. For that advice alone, Retire Happy is worth the price. 248 pages paperback

Framed! Labor and the Corporate Media

Most any unionist who’s ever been forced to walk a picket line has first-hand knowledge of how the real issues in their strike are buried -- if ever really discussed at all -- in the media’s coverage. In this thoughtful book, a professor of communication studies documents the media bias against labor in a shocking and compelling way. 185 pages paperback

The Killing of Karen Silkwood

This is an updated edition of the groundbreaking book about the death of union activist Karen Silkwood, an employee of a plutonium processing plant, who was killed in a mysterious car crash on her way to deliver important documents to a newspaper reporter in 1974. Silkwood’s death at age 28 was highly suspicious: she had been working on health and safety issues at the plant, and a lot of people stood to benefit by her death. 426 pages paperback