A Year in the Life of a Factory

In 1973, out of work university graduate Maynard Seider took the only job he could get in San Francisco at the time, at a factory. Here’s an account of his year of factory toil - and of his workmates, management, rebellion, the union, and a whole lot more. I learned more about worklife from this account of a run-of-the-mill year and run-of-the-mill strike, than from a hundred stories of historic labor struggles. Seider shows that those nameless and faceless factories that litter the view from freeways in every American city are battlegrounds where a war is fought at a low, low heat, but fought daily. [Joan Holden, playwright, San Francisco Mime Troupe] Seider has a wonderful ability to portray the intimate details of workgroups and the interplay of personality and power in the world of work. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know about what it’s like to work in a factory today or to introduce students to the realities of American industrial life. [Jeremy Brecher].