Strike

Strike

This book tells you something your school history books almost certainly did not: how working Americans for the past 125 years have used the strike again and again to win a degree of justice and fair play.

Beginning with the Great Upheaval of 1877, STRIKE! tells of the nation’s great strikes and the social and political climates from which they grew. Readers see the evolution of the strike: from a class-wide struggle across industries to a time of collective bargaining in which “Workers think of their struggle in terms of their own industry or workplace alone.”

Brecher also examines the ever-shifting roles and configurations of unions, from the Knights of Labor of the 1800s, formed in reaction to the elitist trade unions of the day, to the AFL-CIO of the 1990s.

Ending with the 1997 Teamster strike against UPS, STRIKE! illustrates that, throughout recent history, no matter how all encompassing or industry-specific the strike, “The real issue is an attempt by workers to wrest at least a part of the power over their lives away from their employers and exercise it themselves.”

“An exciting history of American labor. Brings to life the flashpoints of labor history. Genuinely stirring.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES