Union Voices: Labor’s Responses to Crisis

The contributors to this book are labor activists reflecting on their direct experiences and their union’s efforts to address the serious problems facing them in a rapidly changing political and economic environment. The authors discuss now new forms of international competition, corporate restructuring, technological innovation, and the anti-labor policies and prejudices of recent national administrations have undermined union strength and influence, reflected in steeply declining membership and the erosion of workers’ rights and living standards. The book is anchored in the reality of workers day-to-day struggles. Union Voices focuses on three central issues which confront all workers and unions: first, changing technology and work organization, especially its effect on health and safety and worker displacement, and union responses to the new workplace; second, the impact of the changing economy on workforce composition and the problem of responding to the needs of new work constituencies, especially among women and new immigrant groups; and third, the question of developing new union practices, especially to promote alliances between unions and other social movements, both nationally and internationally.