Unions

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Connexions Library

The Abolition of the State: Anarchist & Marxist Perspectives
Price, Wayne
Book
2007
Both Anarchists and Marxists believe that it will be possible to do away with the state. But what do they mean by that? What is the state, after all? What institutions, if any, would be necessary ...
All That Our Hands Have Done: A Pictorial History of Hamilton Workers
Heron, Craig; Hoffmitz, Shea; Roberts, Wayne; Storey, Robert
Book
1981
The story of working people in Hamilton's steel industry.
The American Socialist Movement: 1897-1912
Kipnis, Ira
Book
1952
A history of the American Socialist Party, which at its height had over 150,000 dues-paying members, published hundreds of newspapers, and won almost a million votes for its presidential candidate.
The American Working Class in Historical Persepctive
Glaberman, Martin
Article
1973
A review of Jeremy Brecher's Strike! (See CX6590)
Asia: Realities of "Recovery": Against The Current vol. 83
Greenfield, Gerard
Article
1999
Why are we still talking about the Asian crisis? In recent months we have heard government policy-makers, economists, business journalists, financial analysts, IMF technocrats, big business and even s...
Battle in Nicaragua's Maquiladoras: Against The Current vol. 87
Feeley, Dianne
Article
2000
Nicaragua has only one major "free trade zone," Las Mercedes, and unlike the rest of Central America, half of the workers there have managed to build unions. Recently the zone management and the Labor...
Beating Back the Corporate Attack: Socialism and the struggle for global justice
Clement, Chris; La Botz, Dan; Luce, Stephanie; Post, Charlie
Book
2000
Our movement is calling for a new direction -- for democratic control of our political life, and for democratic control over the most important aspects of the economy. Why should handful of the super-...
Beyond the Fields
Early, Steve
Article
2011
There is a strong historical link between the United Farm Workers in its heyday and myriad forms of progressive activism today. UFW alumni, ideas, and strategies have influenced Latino political empo...
The Big Lie About the Tax Bill: Why Bosses Will Never Raise Wages
Lindorff, Dave
Article
2017
The big lie underlying the $1.5-trillion Trump/Republican Congressional tax bill is that Corporations will pass much of it on to workers in the form of higher wages, and to consumers in the form of lo...
Big Three Win A Modular Future: Contract Hype and Reality: Against The Current vol. 83
Moody, Kim
Article
1999
The 1999 contract talks between the United Auto Workers and the Big Three auto makers, plus General Motors' Delphi spin-off, offer one more demonstration of what the mainstream media like to call impr...
Black Workers, Fordism and the UAW: Book Review of Bates's "The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford"
Feeley, Dianne
Article
2014
A book review of Beth Tompkins Bates's analysis of how the automotive industry provided an opportunity for African Americans to fight for equal working rights, unionize, and forge an alliance with whi...
The Canadian Left: A Critical Analysis
Penner, Norman
Book
1977
The main focus of the book is the emergence and development of Canadian socialist thought. Penner examines the origins of the Communist Party of Canada and its ideological base and the beginings and d...
Das Capital, Volume 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production
Marx, Karl
Book
1867
Marx's great work sets out to grasp and portray the totality of the capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that emerges from it. He describes and connects all its economic features, ...
Capitalism and the National Question in Canada
Teeple, Gary
Book
1972
Essays examining a variety of questions about Canada's past, from a Marxist perspective.
The Case of Northwest Airlines: Workers' Rights & Wrongs: Against The Current vol. 125
Rachleff, Peter
Article
2006
Four years ago, when asked by an academic journal to write about whether the strike was still a viable weapon in labor’s “arsenal,” my title was blunt: “Is the Strike Dead?”(1) As is my style, I intro...
Chinese Workers' Resistance: Against The Current vol. 111
Diamond, Norm
Article
2004
Norm Diamond interviews Tim Pringle, who lives in Hong Kong, where he participates as an observer and also as a member of the editorial board of the Chinese-language magazine Globalization Monitor.
The Chinese Working Women's Network: Against The Current vol. 113
Ngai, Pun; Ming, Yang Lie
Article
2004
There is no doubt that China is growing rapidly in importance in the global economy. China has now surpassed the United States as the largest destination in the world for foreign investment. While man...
The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor: Birth of a New Workers' Movement or Death Throes of the Old?
Early, Steve
Book
2011
Steve Early explains why and how the 2008-2010 battles within the progressive wing of the U.S. labour movement occurred.
Class Composition and the Theory of the Party at the Origin of the Workers-Councils Movement
Bologna, Sergio
Article
1972
Re-examines a crucial segment of labour history, the German workers' council experience, which bridges the classical socialist phase of the Second and Third Internationals, and the post-Keynesian peri...
Class Struggle at the Waistline
Schwalbe, Michael
Article
2013
The obesity rate has soared not because lower income earners lack the knowledge to eat wisely, but because they have lost power over the economic conditions of their lives.
Class Unionism
Debs, Eugene
Article
1905
Close the 49th Parallel Etc: The Americanization of Canada
Lumsden, Ian
Book
1970
The increasing Americanization of Canada is now evident to all, and it is also becoming evident that the elites in Canada have been anxious to avoid any confrontation of this fact or any examination o...
Collective Action - and Victory! France: CPE Goes Down: Against The Current vol. 122
Morder, Robi
Article
2006
Millions of young people in France have lived through the experience of collective action and of an important victory, young people who just a few weeks earlier had paid no attention to political orga...
Collective Bargaining Course Book
OPSEU Education Dept.
Book
1979
Columbia's Paramilitary Politics: Against The Current vol. 135
Gill, Lesley
Article
2008
In a surprise move in the early morning of May 13th, Colombian President Álvaro Uríbe announced the extradition of fourteen top paramilitary leaders to the United States, where they are charged with c...
Combatting Racism in the Workplace: A Course for Workers
Thomas, Barb; Novogrodsky, Charles
Book
1983
With the ultimate aim of combatting racism within the labour movement, the Cross Cultural Communication Centre, under the auspices of the Humber Collage for Labour Studies, ran a ten-week, 30 hour pil...
Common Sense for Hard Times: The Power of the Powerless to Cope with Everyday life and Transform Society in The Nineteen Seventies
Brecher, Jeremy; Costello, Tim
Book
1976
Presents a vision of society as it is and as it could be. Putting the problems of contemporary daily life in historical perspective, it reveals that they have their roots in the way our society is org...
Connexions: Volume 3, Number 5 - September 1978
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1978
Connexions Library: Labour and Unions Focus
Website
2009
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on labour and unions.
Constitution and By-Laws of Industrial Workers of the World
Article
1905
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing cla...
Craft Unionism
Debs, Eugene
Article
1905
The old form of trade unionism no longer meets the demands of the working class. The old trade union has not only fulfilled its mission and outlived its usefulness, but that it is now positively react...
Critique of Syndicalist Methods: Trade-Unionism to Anarcho-Syndicalism
Bonanno, Alfredo M.
Article
1975
Bonanno's 1975 meditation on the means to be used in pursuit of the anarchist project. Emphasizes the utility of unions in propagating capitalist control of industry and agriculture.
The Danish General Strike
Chester, Eric
Article
1998
THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES have constituted the foremost outposts on the reformist road to socialism. One of them, Denmark, a small country of five million people, has become a flashpoint in the conti...
DARE's Struggles in Rhode Island: Against The Current vol. 110
Buhle, Paul
Article
2004
Let's start in a scene from last summer that will be familiar, not exactly but approximately, to many older readers: the labor awards banquet. The setting is a "casino"— in the 1880s sense of a banqu...
Eugene V. Debs Internet Archive
Debs, Eugene
Article
Writings of Eugene Victor Debs (1855-1926).
Democracy's Oxygen: How Corporations Control the News
Winter, James
Book
1997
Winter shows that far from providing "democracy's oxygen," the news media legitimize a fundamentally undemocratic system. Instead of keeping the public informated, news organizations manufacture publi...
A Dictionary of Marxist Thought
Bottomore, Tom
Book
1983
The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement
Glaberman, Martin
Article
1969
DRUM was formed in May 1968 during the course of a wildcat strike that protested against an increase in production without an increase in man-power. Most of the plant porkchoppers were off in Atlantic...
Doubling Down in Atlantic City
Reed, Adolph
Article
2016
The casino workers' strike at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino is a defining battle for American labor.
Eat Pray Love Strike: The Law of the Bargaining Table
Macaray, David
Article
2010
We admire underdogs, yet we do not rejoice when underdogs go on strike against corporate fat cats. We admire hard-workers, yet we do not embrace those who are, arguably, the hardest-workers among us ...
E-Commerce vs. E-Commons: Communications in the public interest
Moll, Marita; Shad, Leslie Regan (eds.)
Book
2001
From privacy issues to intellectual property, from universal access to union activism, these essays challenge the rush to deregulate and disconnect communications from the public interest.
Eugene V. Debs Speaks
Tussey, Jean Y. (ed.)
Book
1983
Everything's on the Line at AAM: Against The Current vol. 134
Feeley, Dianne
Article
2008
The strike of 3,600 UAW-represented workers at American Axle and Manufacturing plants in Michigan and New York has forced the idling of more than 40,000 workers in 30 GM plants and shut down a number ...
The Exploitation Explosion
Article
1991
Female workers in developing countries are undervalued and underpaid.
Facing the Toyota "Pattern": Against The Current vol. 131
Feeley, Dianne
Article
2007
Highly praised as a “breakthrough” in the mainstream and business press, the new United Auto Workers contract at General Motors is a stunning retreat for the union, threatening the existence of most h...
Failure of a Dream?: Essays in the History of American Socialism
Laslettt, John H. M.; Lipset, Seymour Martin
Book
1974
Examines the reasons for the relative weakness of American socialism.
Falling Behind: The State of Working Canada, 2000
Jackson, Andrew, Robinson, David, Baldwin,Bob, Wiggins, Cindy
Book
2000
An accessible collation of data and analysis, analyzed from a progressive perspective, about the social and economic realities of working people in Canada.
False Promises: A Review
Glaberman, Martin
Article
1974
False Promises is a strange book. Despite a certain carelessness of presentation, I recommend it to all concerned with the working class for its extensive documentation of the working-class experience...
Fight for the Forest: Chico Mendes in His Own Words
Mendes, Chico; Gross, Tony
Book
Chico Mendes talks of his life's work in his last major interview. He recalls the rubber tappers' campaign against forest clearances and their struggle to develop sustainable alternatives for the Amaz...
Fighting for Union Autonomy: Mexican Miners On Strike: Against The Current vol. 122
La Botz, Dan
Article
2006
On April 20 eight hundred state and federal police launched an assault on 500 striking workers who had been occupying a steel mill in Lázaro Cárdenas. Two were killed, five seriously injured and 40...
The Flint sit-down strike, 1936-1937: Jeremy Brecher
Steven
Article
2013
210,000 auto workers joined the American Federation of Labor (A.F.L.) to take part in the strike but the A.F.L leadership however wanted no part in a strike, and managed to postpone it again and again...
From Iron Mines to Iron Bars
Garvey, John
Article
2010
Exploring some of the consequences of the long-term decline in union membership and the significant shift in membership towards public sector workers.
General Strike France 1968: A factory-by-factory account
Hoyles, Andree
Book
1969
Andre Hoyles analyses the development, organisation and end of the mass strike in France, 1968, with reference to case studies of particular factories.
Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite
Levine, Bruce E.
Book
2011
Levine offers insights into the epidemic of political passivity in America and analyzes how major U.S. institutions have created helplessness and fatalism. He proposes ways of recovering dignity, ener...
Glaberman, Martin - Writings - Index
Glaberman, Martin
Article
Writings of Martin Glaberman (1918-2001).
Global Labour Calendar
Website
Calendar of trade union and labour-related events.
Globalizing the Left
Fryer, John
Article
1990
The Canadian trade union movement has to put greater emphasis on using its global ties to prevent multinational companies from shifting their operations to low wage countries.
Gramsci & Syndicalism
Wetzel, Tom
Article
In a polemic against the syndicalists, Antonio Gramsci argued that the syndicalists were wrong in maintaining that unions were capable of being organs of workers' revolution. He said this confused a m...
The Great Transformation: The political and economic origins of our time
Polanyi, Karl
Book
1944
Polanyi analyzes the social and political upheavals that took place in England during the rise of the market economy. Polanyi contends that the modern market economy and the modern nation-state should...
Harlan County USA
Kopple, Barbara
Film
1976
An effort of 180 coal miners and their wives to strike for benefits at the Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine in Harlan County, southeast Kentucky in 1973.
The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945: Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat
Hoffman, Peter
Book
1969
A thorough portrayal of the plans, hesitations, frustrations, and failures of the opposition to Hitler.
How the Unions Killed the Working Class Movement
Stratman, Dave
Article
2006
An analysis of how the vertical integration of unions disempowers workers and forces them to use captilist systems such as courts instead of relying on friendship and solidarity.
How to Make Union Meetings Interesting and Useful
Parker, Mike; Gruelle, Martha
Article
2016
Meetings should give members a sense of power by bringing them together. They can see and feel that they are not alone, that others have similar problems, and that others have found solutions. They ca...
India: Why are Suzuki automobile workers in jail?
Article
2017
Why are automobile workers being jailed for murder? The story at Maruti is a familiar one in India's industrial scene.
Industrial Unionism
Debs, Eugene
Article
1905
In capitalist society you are the lower class; the capitalists are the upper class-because they are on your backs; if they were not on your backs they could not be above you.
An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism
Moody, Kim
Book
The author, a union organizer and activist, details the decline of the American union movement.
An Interview with Patricia Campbell: Against The Current vol. 123
Finkel, David
Article
2006
Patricia Campbell is President of the Irish Independent Workers Union (IWU), an independent trade union and social movement in both the north and south of Ireland. She is a deputy editor of the journa...
It's Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor
Macaray, David
Book
2009
Most of the labor essays included here were written over the last seven years and appeared originally in various publications, including CounterPunch, The Exception Magazine, Liberalati, Los Angeles T...
Jim Crutchfield's I.W.W. Page
Crutchfield, Jim
Website
Historic documents on the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies).
Karl Marx: Essential Writings
Bender, Frederic L.
Book
1972
A selection of Marx's writings ranging from his early works on philosophy, religion, alienation, and Hegelianism, through the materialist conception of history, the theoretical analysis of capitalism,...
Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution: Volume II: The Politics of Social Classes
Draper, Hal
Book
1978
Draper ranges through the development of the thought of Marx and Engels on the role of classes in society.
The "Labor Aristocracy" and Working-Class Struggles: Consciousness in Flux, Part 2: Against The Current vol. 124
Post, Charles
Article
2006
Whatever the theoretical and empirical problems with the economics of the labor aristocracy thesis, its defenders still claim that well paid workers have generally been more reformist and conservative...
Labour Martyr: Joe Hill
Smith, Gibbs M
Book
1972
The story of the rebel songwriter and union activst Joe Hill, who was murdered by the state of Utah in 1915.
Labor on the Ropes: Against The Current vol. 135
Leyshon, Traven
Article
2008
In U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition, Kim Moody focuses on why the organized labor movement went into decline and points to potential signs of revival. The author’s explanation begins with the wors...
Labor Politics in Action, 1901-1911: The Union Labor Party of San Francisco: Against The Current vol. 81
Perry, Hayden
Article
1999
In 1900 San Francisco had an organized labor movement that reflected the unique development of this metropolis of the West. San Francisco did not experience the slow and steady growth of Chicago and o...
Labor Scores at Verizon: Against The Current vol. 89
Douglas, Rachel
Article
2000
On August 6 87,000 members of the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) struck Verizon Communications in twelve states from Maine to Vir...
The Labor Wars
Lens, Sidney
Book
1973
A survey of landmark events in the U.S. labour movement.
Labor's Disaster at American Axle: Against The Current vol. 137
Feeley, Dianne
Article
2008
The 87-day strike earlier this year at American Axle & Manufacturing (AAM) ended in a rout that has devastating implications for the organized U.S. labor movement. Begun on a snowy morning early Febru...
Let's Be Practical
Stratman, Dave
Article
1997
Building a movement to destroy capitalism and create a society which truly reflects the aspirations of most people, though it may sound scary, is actually more practical than trying to reform a union.
Let's Get to Work
Forman, Erik
Article
2017
Instead of asking "What is to be done?", we could start with a different question: "What should I do?" As it turns out, the right-wing hecklers we've all encountered are half right: we should get jobs...
Liberal Dreams and Nature's Limits: Great Cities of North America Since 1600
Lemon, James T.
Book
1996
An exploration of city life through time, focusing on the life [economically, socially, politically, etc.] of five large North American cities at various times in the past - Philadelphia during the ti...
Life After Death for Labor?
Cohen, David
Book
2015
A review of Stanley Aronowitz's book "The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Workers’ Movement."
Life Support for Labor?
Schafer, Meredith
Article
2015
The Debate Over how to save the labour movement suffers from a serious deficit of books written by organizers. Rarely do we get an entire book by someone who has been organizing for four decades, and ...
Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global
Mason, Paul
Book
2010
Mason realtes a series of struggles for worker and human rights over the past two hundred years and compares them to current struggles.
Loosing Another Round: Against The Current vol. 135
The Editors
Article
2008
The strike at American Axle, which we reported on in ATC 134, ended when workers voted to go back under a concessionary agreement. The 25% who voted no didn’t feel they were close to winning but they ...
Luxemburg, Rosa - Writings - Index
Luxemburg, Rosa
Article
Writings of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919).
The Making of Jericho Road: Against The Current vol. 132
Williams, Charles
Article
2008
An interview with Michael Honey. The paperback edition of Michael Honey’s Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign is released this January 2008.
Marxism and the Trade Unions
Draper, Hal
Article
1970
Draper argues that essentially, no Marxist group has ever carried on any systematic revolutionary work in trade unions.
A Marxist History of the World part 102: What is neoliberalism?
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2012
The ‘free-market’ theory provides a pseudo-scientific justification for the greed and poverty endemic to the system, and the main beneficiaries are the global mega-corporations of neoliberal capitalis...
The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions
Luxemburg, Rosa
Book
1906
Luxemburg writes that "the mass strike in Russia [in 1905] has been realised not as means of evading the political struggle of the working-class, and especially of parliamentarism, not as a means of j...
Los Mexicanos: The Struggle for Justice of Patricia Perez
Latour, Charles (Director)
Film/Video
2009
Every year, some 4000 migrant foreign workers coming mostly from Mexico, labour in Quebec farms to plant and pick our vegetables. In the summer of 2006, Patricia Perez a pro-union militant speaking fo...
A Militant, "Minority" Union?
Early, Steve
Article
2013
At the AFL-CI0 convention in Los Angeles in September 2013, a small group of rank-and-file workers managed to alter the convention agenda -- by threatening to protest the presence of Kaiser Permanente...
Mining History Written in Blood
Sandronsky, Seth
Article
2018
Domestic coal mining history above and below ground lives on the pages of Written in Blood: Courage and Corruption in the Appalachian War of Extraction edited by Wess Harris (PM Press, 2017). The anth...
Never Say Die!
Stanton, John
Book
Autobiography of labour lawyer John Stanton with an account of Canadian labour history since the 1930's.
The No-Nonsense Guide to Class, Caste & Hierarchies
Seabrook, Jeremy
Book
2002
Concentrates mainly on the history of social hierarchy in Western civilization, and particularly the struggles of the working class.
Notes from a Revolution Dying: Against The Current vol. 134
Pirani, Simon
Article
2008
In June 1922, five years on from the Russian Revolution, a group of Moscow communists gathered to discuss a letter by Vladimir Petrzhek, an auto worker, tendering his resignation from the communist (o...
Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative
Cohn-Bendit, Daniel; Cohn-Bendit, Gabriel
Book
1968
An account of the May 1968 uprising in Paris, positing a left radical alternative to the encrusted beliefs of the old left and the right. A comment on power, on bureaucracy, and on the paths to libera...
On Unions and the Class Struggle
Article
1969
Written during the wave of workers' struggles known as the Italian hot autumn of 1969, when the autonomous struggles of the working class reached an unprecedented level, laying bare the character and ...
One Big Union: An Outline of a Possible Industrial Organization of the Working Class, with Chart
Trautman, Willaim E.
Article
1911
This is the first edition of a booklet that was revised and republished many times by both the I. W. W. and Daniel De Leon's "Detroit I. W. W." (later the W. I. I. U.), to which the author defected in...
Organizing Unions
Cornish, Mary; Spink, Lynn
Book
1994
How to form or build a union. Shows how to strength organizing drives by responding to the concerns of all workers, including women, immigrant workers, people of colour, workers with disabilities, leb...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - September 10, 2015: Labour Day issue
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Rickwood, Darien Yawching (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2015
Labour Day issue, with articles examining the relentless pressure put on workers to work ever longer hours, at the cost of their health and family life; anti-worker legislation, Zapatista popular educ...
Our Generation: Volume 4 Number 3
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1966
Our Generation: Volume 6 Number 3
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1969
Our Generation: Volume 8 Number 4
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1972
Our Generation: Volume 11 Number 4
Serial Publication (Periodical)
Our Generation: Volume 13 Number 12
Serial Publication (Periodical)
Pay Cheques & Picket Lines: All About Unions in Canada
MacKay, Claire; Illustrated by Peters, Eric
Book
1987
A children's book which explains what unions are, how they came to be, and why they exist.
Peer Review and the New Teacher Unionism: Mutual Support or Policing?: Against The Current vol. 82
Jordan, Joel
Article
1999
This spring, the California state legislature passed a bill sponsored by the newly elected governor, Democrat Gray Davis, making California the first state to mandate peer review in every school distr...
The Philippines under fire: New Internationalist March 1990
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1990
An investigation into the political and cultural life of the Philippines, told in the form of a travelogue. The stories of ordinary people are interspersed with historical detail and analysis of the c...
Portugal: The Impossible Revolution?
Mailer, Phil,
Book
1977
The story of what happened in Portugal between April 25, 1974 and November 25, 1975, as seen and felt by a deeply committed participant.
Preface to Martin Glaberman's Four Essays on the Working Class
Diemer, Ulli
Article
1975
Glaberman insists that the working class is not merely a victim of capitalism. Working people are active participants in creating their own consciousness, their methods of struggle and their own histo...
The Press and the Class Struggle: Against The Current vol. 131
Eidlin, Barry
Article
2007
Early on the morning of August 19, 1997, the U.S. labor movement experienced something it had rarely known in recent years: a victory on a national scale. After two weeks out on strike, over 185,000 m...
The Principles of Revoltuionary Unionism
Article
1922
Adopted at the Berlin Congress of Revolutionary Unionist organizations, 1922.
Promoting your union: Six strategies to get more organizing leads and union members
Mann, Jason
Book
Promoting Your Union is a book to help union organizers get more organizing leads, create outreach plans to bring in new members and build the power of their unions. The ideas in this book are based o...
A Proposal to American Labor: 'Open source unionism' could reinvigorate American labor in the age of the Internet
Freeman, Richard B.; Rogers, Joel
Article
2002
The authors posit that union membership is too restricted by the requirement that unions have majority support in the workplace. They believe that pro-union workers who are a minority in their workpla...
Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement
McAlevey, Jane
Book
2014
Today, fewer than 7% of American private-sector workers belong to a union and public employee collective bargaining has been dealt devastating blows in Wisconsin and elsewhere. This book argues that l...
Raising the Workers' Flag: The Workers' Unity League of Canada, 1930-1936
Endicott, Stephen L.
Book
2012
A history of the Workers' Unity League, the Canadian affiliate of the Communist Red International of Labour Unions.
Rank and File: Personal Histories of Working Class Organizers
Lynd, Alice; Lynd, Staughton (eds.)
Book
1973
A collection of stories and recollections from labour movement organizers.
Red and Green: The New Politics of the Environment
Weston, Joe (ed.)
Book
1986
In order for green politics to work, we need to develop a total policy for the environment, a social policy which views capitalist industry as the destroyer of the world we live in.
A Reluctant Memoir of the '50s and '60s: Against The Current vol. 134
Le Blanc, Paul
Article
2008
I have been asked to write a memoir that would give a sense of the old left/new left realities of the 1950s and ‘60s. That seems quite odd to me (why would I be writing such a thing?), until I look in...
Renewal through Strike
Zeise, Fanny
Article
2013
Strikes are a major means of trade union self-assertion. A closer look at strikes in Germany reveals interesting trends and developments, indicating new approaches to trade union strategies and practi...
Restructuring and Resistance: Diverse voices of struggle in Western Europe
Abramsky, Koyla
Book
2000
The book consists of 77 individual chapters, almost all of them written by activists based on their experiences of struggle against the different aspects of capitalist globalisation. Those that aren't...
Review Essay: Reutherism Redux: Against The Current vol. 112
Early, Steve
Article
2004
Despite stepped-up union recruitment, farm workers and poultry processors still haven't taken over the AFL-CIO. But the old guard's fear of being swamped by low-wage workers—expressed by this AFT del...
Revolutionary Centennial: Guyana's 1905 Rebellion: Against The Current vol. 114
Westmaas, Nigel
Article
2005
1905 was a landmark year in the history of Guyana, as it was for several places around the world. In Russia, the Tsar and his troops shot workers delivering a petition in St. Petersburg. In Bengal t...
Revolutionary Unionism
Debs, Eugene
Article
1905
Speech at Chicago, November 25, 1905
Root & Branch: A Libertarian Socialist Journal, #1
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1970
Root & Branch: A Libertarian Socialist Journal, #2
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1971
Root & Branch: A Libertarian Socialist Journal, #6
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1975
The Rosa Luxemburg Reader
Luxemburg, Rosa. [Anderson, Kevin; Hudis, Peter (eds.)]
Book
2004
A definitive one-volume collection of Luxemburg's writings.
Selections from the Prison Notebooks
Gramsci, Antonio
Book
1951
Gramsci's Notebooks cover a wide range of subjects including history, culture, politics, and philosophy.
Social Reform or Revolution
Luxemburg, Rosa
Book
1900
Rosa Luxemburg's attack on reformism.
Socialism and Revolution
Gorz, Andre
Book
1967
Representative democracy in every industrially advanced country is in a state of profound crisis. But we have been accustomed for so long to accept democracy in the form of its outward appearances and...
The Socialist Register 1973: Volume 10: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
Miliband, Ralph; Saville, John (eds.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1973
The Socialist Register 1976: Volume 13: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
Miliband, Ralph; Saville, John (eds.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1976
The Socialist Register 1982: Volume 19: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
Miliband, Ralph; Saville, John (eds.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1982
Socialist Register 1991: Volume 27: Communist Regimes the Aftermath
Miliband, Ralph; Panitch, Leo (eds.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1991
Socialist Register 1996: Volume 32: Are There Alternatives?
Panitch, Leo (ed.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1996
Socialist Register 2013: Volume 49: The Question of Strategy
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2013
This, the 49th volume of the Socialist Register examines the choices faced by the left today, the models of strategy available to it, and the innovations that are being made by groups as they organize...
Solidarity (Polish trade union): Connexipedia Article
Article
A Polish trade union federation founded in September 1980, the first non-communist party-controlled trade union in a Warsaw Pact country.
South African trade union congress supports CUPE boycott of apartheid Israel
COSATU
Article
2006
South African workers will never forget the support given by the Israeli state to the apartheid South African regime. In the same way we will never forget the thousands of acts of solidarity of ordina...
Spanish Dock Workers Build Union Without Bureaucrats
Fitz, Don
Article
1989
Containerization has devastated port labor throughout the world. Spanish struggles over containerization have been unique becausea "socialist" government has spearheaded port reorganization and it has...
Speech at the Founding Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World
Debs, Eugene
Article
1905
I realize that I stand in the presence of those who in the past have fought, are fighting, and will continue to fight the battles of the working class economically and politically, until the capitalis...
Spontaneity and Organization: Some Comments
Montgomery, David
Article
1973
A contribution to a symposium on Jeremy Brecher's book Strike!
The State of the World Atlas
Kidron, Michael
Book
1981
Strike!: The True History of Mass Insurgence from 1877 to the Present
Brecher, Jeremy
Book
1972
A history-from-below that brings to light strikes as authentic revolutionary movements against the establishments of state, capital, and trade unionism.
Strike Lessons from the Last Twenty-Five Years: Walking Out and Winning: Against The Current vol. 124
Early, Steve
Article
2006
Labor's strike effectiveness and organizational strength have long been connected. Throughout history, work stoppages have been used for economic and political purposes, to alter the balance of power ...
They Are Still Killing Trade Union Leaders: Global Capital's Death Squads and Night-Riders
Macaray, David
Article
2012
Question: So what happens these days in developing countries when a prominent, charismatic union activist - with the courage to stand up to sinister, government-supported business groups who have, on ...
Tony Mazzocchi Lives: Blue-Green Organizer Takes Up 'Just Transition' Mantle
Hand, Mark
Article
2015
Union and environmental activist Alex Lotorto believes environmentalists should be working more closely with organized labour and following the advice of some of labour's more enlightened leaders.
Toronto's Poor: A Rebellious History
Palmer, Bryan D.; Heroux, Gaetan
Book
2016
Toronto’s Poor reveals the long and too often forgotten history of poor people’s resistance. It details how the homeless, the unemployed, and the destitute have struggled to survive and secure food an...
Trade Justice! Yes, but what is it?: New Internationalist April 2006
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2006
Discusses Trade justices and the effects its has had on different parts of the world. Voices the opinions of people from the around the world on the topic of trade justice.
The Trade Union Movement of Canada, 1827-1959
Lipton, Charles
Book
1967
An account of trade union evolution as a whole for the period 1827-1959, as well as an ouline of continuing sphere's of Labour's effort, such as organization of the unorganized, the fight for better c...
Trade Unions Bread & Roses The trade union revival: New Internationalist December 2001
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2001
A look at some of the facts and issues regarding trade unions and what they have done for people in various parts of the world.
Trade Unions: International Solidarity in Action
Pilichowski, Christian
Article
2012
International solidarity can be understood as cooperation between trade-union organisations that, by their nature, share the same objectives because they represent the workers of their countries. It t...
Trade Unions: The Difficult Path to Solidarity in One's Own Interest
Lehndorff, Steffen
Article
2013
In both the ideals and the rhetoric of trade unions international solidarity plays a major role. Trade union practice, however, is first and foremost focused on the context of those nation-states, in ...
A Troublemaker's Handbook: How to Fight Back Where You Work -- And Win!
La Botz, Dan
Book
1991
An organizing manual for workers dealing with both major issues and everyday problems in the workplace.
25 Years After the Gdansk Uprising: Against The Current vol. 121
Weissman, Suzi
Article
2006
Suzi Weissman interviews David Ost. The occupation of the Gdansk shipyard by Polish workers in 1980, demanding recognition of their independent trade union Solidarnosc, rocked the Eastern bloc and ins...
The Two Methods of Trade-Union Policy
Luxemburg, Rosa
Article
1907
To be sure, revolutions and revolutionary struggles cannot be transplanted artificially, by means of ‘good intentions’, into a country. But the examples and lessons of a neighbouring revolutionary cou...
A Union Defeated at United Air Lines: Against The Current vol. 134
Miah, Malik; O'Rourke, Terry
Article
2008
The April 1 certification of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) was no April Fool’s joke for the 8600 eligible mechanic and related United Airlines (UAL) employees who voted in the March...
The Union in Academia: Against The Current vol. 153
Clawson, Dan
Article
2011
Cary Nelson is a distinguished professor of English and the president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a group that is part professional association and part union. This bo...
Unionism and Socialism
Debs, Eugene
Article
1907
The labor movement of modrn times is the product of past ages. It has come down to us for the impetus of our day, in pursuit of its world-wide mission of emancipation.
Unions (a film)
Film/Video
1980
Unions Against Revolution
Munis, G., Zerzan, J.
Book
Unions -- as well as employers -- stand in the way of workers' political freedom. Labour militants who become union leaders enforce industrial discipline just as Lenin and Stalin advocated. In the pam...
Unions vs. Workers in the Seventies
Glaberman, Martin
Article
1972
The tightly knit structures of the big industrial unions leave no room for maneuvering. There is no reasonable way in which young workers can use the union constitution to overturn and overhaul the un...
Unions with Leaders Who Stay on the Job (a.k.a. Class War Lessons)
Weir, Stan
Article
Stan Weir writes about direct action and on-the-job union leadership as a merchant marine in the 1940s.
U.S. Labor's Subterranean Fire: Against The Current vol. 131
Post, Charlie
Article
2007
The broad outlines of the crisis of the U.S. labor movement -— sharply declining union density, concession bargaining, failures to organize the growing non-union manufacturing and service sectors, the...
U.S. Strikes Drop Dramatically
Article
1992
A decade of Reaganism has left employers in a position to destroy unions without fear of significant political and public retribution.
Want to Stop Trump? Take a Page From These Dockworkers, and Stop Work
Cole, Peter
Article
2017
On the day of Donald Trump's inauguration, many Americans wrung their hands. Some took to social media to express their discontent while others protested. But, perhaps, the most dramatic and important...
What Happened - and Didn't: Behind New York's Transit Strike: Against The Current vol. 124
Downs, Steve
Article
2006
Early on December 20, 2005, Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100, representing some 33,000 of New York City's subway and bus workers, called a strike. When dawn broke, there was no public transport...
What's left of Pakistan's left?: For those in Pakistan who want to explore a non neo-liberal, non-right wing option, the Left is there in some form.
Menon, Meema
Article
2017
Menon recounts her discovery of the emerging political Left in Pakistan and reflects on its future. Awami Workers Party featured.
What's the Matter With That Union Boss?: The Real Yes Men
Engler, Yves
Article
2013
Why do the most right-wing politicians and corporate news outlets always use the term “union boss”? Because the worst thing they can think of is to say the leader of a labour organization acts like a ...
When the UAW Was Young: Against The Current vol. 131
Feeley, Dianne
Article
2007
An interview with Erwin and Estar Baur.
Who Advocates Spontaneity?
Brecher, Jeremy
Article
1973
The working class can come to understand its power to act only by acting.
Who Killed Chea Vichea?
Cox, Bradley (Director)
Film/Video
2009
Chea Vichea served as president of Cambodia's garment workers' union until he was gunned down on the street in 2004. Filmed over four years, this film explores motives for Vichea's assassination and u...
Why Bosses Hate Unions
Henwood, Doug
Article
2015
Unions vastly improve the wages and working conditions of their members. No wonder they're still under attack.
Why Unions Matter: 2nd Edition, 10th Anniversary Update
Yates, Michael
Book
Shows why workers need unions, how unions are formed, how they operate, how collective bargaining works, the role of unions in politics, and what unions have done to bring workers together across the ...
Why Workplace "Accidents" Happen: Safety Costs Money
Macaray, David
Article
2013
Many industrial and manufacturing companies resort to almost any means (some of them not entirely legal) to dissuade employees from joining a union because besides having to offer higher wages and imp...
Women's Trade Union League: Connexipedia Article
Article
A U.S. organization of both working class and more well-off women formed in 1903 to support the efforts of women to organize labour unions and eliminate sweatshop conditions.
Workers in a lean world: unions in the international economy
Moody, Kim
Article
2016
In a comprehensive study of current labour relations worldwide, Kim Moody surveys both sides of the picket lines. A bracing riposte to the conventional wisdom concerning the irresistible power of glob...
Working Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800-1991
Palmer, Bryan D.
Book
1983
From nineteenth-century tavern life to late twentieth-century cinema, from rough canallers and the first stirrings of craft unionism to contemporary public-sector strikes, this books provides a sweepi...
A Working-Class Hero Is Something To Be: Against The Current vol. 133
Early, Steve
Article
2008
As a 35-year veteran of union activity in America, I can personally attest that Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers (OCAW) was a rare bird, perhaps the last of his kind.
The Working-Class Mini-Revolts of the Twenty-First Century: Low-Level Insurgencies
Brecher, Jeremy
Article
2014
The start of the twenty-first century has seen a continuing decline in union membership and strikes. But it has also seen the emergence of unpredicted mini-revolts.
Workmates: direct action workplace organising on the London Underground
Kay, Joseph
Article
2011
An online pamphlet detailing resistance in the late 1990s by London Underground employees to outsourcing via a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) scheme. Workers organized outside the Rail, Maritime and...
Year of the Strike: A Short Story
Yates, Michael
Article
2012
A short story about a boy's money-making scheme during the year his father and other workers go on strike at the town glass factory.

Connexions Directory of Groups & Websites

Against the Current
Bi-monthly magazine oriented toward movements for social and economic justice; radical, socialist and feminist in orientation.
ACTRA
The union representing Canada's 21,500 performers, writers and broadcast journalists. Concerned about free trade, cultural sovereignty, censorship, public broadcasting, copyright, Canadian film.
Confederation of Canadian Unions
To promote the study, defense and development of the economic, social and moral interests of all workers in Canada. The CCU is building a democratic labour movement, where rank and file members reall...
History & Policy
History & Policy: * Demonstrates the relevance of history to contemporary policymaking * Puts historians in touch with those discussing and deciding public policy today * Increases the influence of...
Labor Notes
Labor Notes is a media and organizing project that has been the voice of union activists who want to put the movement back in the labor movement since 1979. Through our magazine, website, books, conf...
LaborNet
Global online communication for a democratic, independent labor movement.
Labour/Le Travail
A bilingual journal holding no rigid position on the definition of labour. The editorial board hopes to foster imaginative approaches to both teaching and research in labour studies through an open ex...
LabourStart
A major site with information about labour activities throughout the world.
Libcom.org
Resource for all people who wish to improve their lives, their communities and their working conditions. We want to discuss with one another, learn from experiences of the past and develop strategies ...
Marxists Internet Archive
Large archive of the writings of Marx and Engels and of others in the Marxist tradition. Searchable.
New Internationalist
New Internationalist reports on issues of world poverty and inequality. We focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and the powerless worldwide in the fight for global justice.
News and Letters
An organization of Marxist-Humanists standing for the abolition of capitalism, both in its private property form and ins its state property form. We stand for the deveopment of new human relations; wh...
Sources
Sources specializes in collecting, indexing, and disseminating information to help journalists, editors, and researchers quickly reach articulate experts and spokespersons who can provide background i...

Sources Experts & Spokespersons

Sources Library

How to Keep Union Records
Nash, Michael (ed.)
2010

From the Connexions Archives

Against the Current
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1986
Bi-monthly magazine oriented toward movements for social and economic justice; radical, socialist and feminist in orientation.
Break Their Haughty Power
Goldner, Loren
Website
Articles on capitalism, socialism, and revolution, from a left-Marxist perspective.
Cleaners' Action Newsletter
Periodical profile published 1979
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1979
Cleaner's Action is a monthly newspaper published in Portuguese, English and Spanish.
The Great Flint Sit-Down Strike Against G.M. 1936-37
How Trade Unionism was Won
Linder, Walter
Article
A history of the Flint strike (1936-1937).
International Labor Rights Forum
Website
An advocacy organization dedicated to achieving just and humane treatment for workers worldwide.
LaborNet
Website
Exists to build a democratic communication network for the labor movement.
Labour in an Affluent Society
Fox, Steve; Kissinger, C. Clark; Mull, Brenda
Article
Put together by the Radical Education Project, this paper includes the following articles: "WILDCAT: anatomy of a work stoppage" by Steve Fox; "THE BRUNS STRIKE: a case study of student participation ...
LabourStart
Website
A major site with information about labour activities throughout the world.
Marxists Internet Archive
Website
Large archive of the writings of Marx and Engels and of others in the Marxist tradition. Searchable.
New Internationalist
Serial Publication (Periodical)
New Internationalist reports on issues of world poverty and inequality. We focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and the powerless worldwide in the fight for global justice.
News and Letters
Serial Publication (Periodical)
Articles from a Marxist-Humanist perspective.
The Newsletter
Periodical profile
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1973
Newsletter published in 1973 and 1974 by the New Tendency, a loose collaboration of independent leftists primarily based in Toronto, Windsor, Winnipeg, and Kitchener-Waterloo. Articles dealt with work...
Organizing for Workers' Power!
Engler, Allan
Article
Allan Engler, author of Economic Democracy, critiques segments of the left for largely ignoring working class power. Recognizing that social change can only be carried through by the working class, En...
Radical America - Volume 6, No. 3 - May - June 1972
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1972
Union Art Service
Organization profile published 1986
Organization
1986