A History of America in Ten Strikes
Ratings2
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating4.5
"... labor historian Erik Loomis recounts ten critical workers’ strikes in American labor history that everyone needs to know about (and then provides an annotated list of the 150 most important moments in American labor history in the appendix). From the Lowell Mill Girls strike in the 1830s to Justice for Janitors in 1990, these labor uprisings do not just reflect the times in which they occurred, but speak directly to the present moment"--
Reviews with the most likes.
This was fascinating and I'm embarrassed by just how little of it I knew beforehand, though in my defense it's been just about 20 years since I took AP US History. Anyway. I enjoyed this and learned a lot from it, and I appreciate how straightforward and clear-eyed Loomis is about organized labor - while he's clearly on the side of workers throughout, he's also definitely willing to point out where racism or sexism or just flat-out terrible leadership undermined the movement's ability to succeed. (Especially in the early chapters, I was continually amused by the clear disdain for the AFL/Samuel Gompers.)
I especially appreciated the chapter about slave resistance and rebellion before and during the Civil War, and the last two chapters about the PATCO strike and the rise of the SEIU and public sector unions. I would've liked a little more about things like the current wave of unionization among online workers and/or attempts to unionize gig workers like Uber drivers, but those may be too recent to have made this edition.
