American workers, American unions - Zieger

A concise history of American workers and their unions in 20th-century America, first published in 1986 and revised in 1994. This third edition features new chapters on the pre-1920 period, as well as an entirely new final chapter that covers developments of the 1980s and 1990s in detail. Here the authors explore how economic change, union stagnation, and anti-labour policies have combined to erode workers' standards and labour's influence in the political arena over the last two decades of the century. They review current "alternatives to unionism" as means of achieving fair workplace representations but insist that strong unions remain essential in a democratic society. They argue that labour's new responsiveness to the concerns of women, minority groups and low-wage workers, as well as its resurgent political activism, offer new hope for trade unionism. This third edition also includes new bibliographical material and an on-line link to an extended bibliographical essay.