A Troublemaker's Handbook
How to Fight Back Where You Work -- And Win!
La Botz, Dan
Publisher: Labor Notes
Year Published: 2005 First Published: 1991
Pages: 262pp Price: $17 ISBN: 0-914093-04-5
Book Type: Handbooks/Manuals
Resource Type: Book
Cx Number: CX6614
An organizing manual for workers dealing with both major issues and everyday problems in the workplace.
Abstract: Dan La Botz's A Troublemaker's Handbook: How to Fight Back Where You Work and Win! is an organising manual for workers dealing with both major issues and smaller, everyday problems in the workplace. A wide range of workplace issues is covered including, but not limited to, organisation amongst immigrant workers, against racism, around women's issues and around health and safety.
There are also different chapters dedicated to different types of strikes, and instructions on how to go about them, as well as strategic planning for forming and running unions. Large chunks of each chapter contain "inspiring as well as instructive" stories of workers' actual experiences, which help to reinforce the book's underlying premise that "There are common problems and there are collective solutions".
The book contains many photographs of actual strikes and successful workers' campaigns as well as a number of comic strips, which portray serious problems in a humorous light, making the book an even easier read. At the end of each chapter there are action questions/exercises, which encourage the reader to relate the chapter to himself and help organise herself better with regard to finding a solution for his personal workplace problem.
The writer himself has worked as an organiser for a number of unions. He was a truck driver during the 1970's and a founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. He has vast first hand experience about much of the material he covers in this book.
[Abstract by Nabeeha Chaudhary]
Table of Contents
1. The Fight Starts Here
2. Basics of Organizing
3. Shop Floor Tactics
4. Organizing Around Health and Safety
5. Dealing with Labor-Management Cooperation Programs
6. Reaching Out to Other Unions
7. Reaching Out to the Community
8. Contract Campaigns
9. Strikes
10. Wildcat Strikes
11. Sitdown Strikes
12. Inside Strategies
13. Corporate Campaigns
14. Organizing Among Immigrant Workers
15. Organizing Around Women's Issues
16. Organizing Against Racism
17. Organizing in the Non-Union Workplace
18. Organizing the Unorganized
19. Taking Power in Your Local
20. Locals to Learn From
21. Strategic Planning for Unions
22. Beyond the Workplace
Appendix A: Corporate Campaign Questionnaire
Appendix B: Researching Your Employer
Appendix C: Union Newspapers and Rank and File Newsletters
Appendix D: Strategic Planning guides
Appendix E: Resources
Bibliography
Index
Subject Headings
