Middle Class Union

From steel workers, Teamsters, and coal miners to teachers, actors, and civil servants, union members once accounted for more than one third of the American workforce. At a mere 12 percent, union membership today is a shadow of what it once was. What happened to organized labor in America and what can be done to restore it to its role of the defender of middle-class values and economic well-being? Award-winning investigative reporter Philip M. Dine takes us on a riveting journey through America's cities and back roads, its factories and union halls, to answer those questions. From the health.

Examines the birth of the American middle class as white-collar workers used their growing consumer identity to organize politically

Middle-class households feel left behind and have questioned the benefits of economic globalisation.

The income distribution in the United States is, from a middle class perspective, as bad as it has been since the great depression. Wages, even for college graduates, are falling behind inflation. The number of families in poverty is growing. Middle Class*Union Made examines the economic forces of price gouging, wage cutting, and excessive debt that are weakening the middle class and leading us toward a landlord society that benefits none but the very few. The income distribution in the United States is now as tilted toward the hyper-wealthy and against the middle class as it has been since the Great Depression. Government must help in reversing the trend, but it cannot do it alone. Strong and effective unions are an essential part of any strategy that will restore and maintain the American middle class.

First published in 1998, this volume asks: are new social classes in the making in eastern Europe? Are class issues withering away? How do different classes organize their lives, what kind of strategies do they adopt in East and West. Markku Kivinen brings Eastern Europe into the class debate. Recent sociological discussions have touched upon questions of class in Eastern Europe only very provisionally. On the other hand, old analyses of social stratification under conditions of 'actually existed socialism' are no longer relevant in the current situation. This book analyses processes of class relations in Eastern Europe from new theoretical vantage-points, using up-to-date empirical data. Under socialism, power was said to be vested in the working class. However, there was a constant tension between the 'holy proletariat' and the real life of the working class. Today, all political forces in Eastern Europe; leftist and liberal alike, are hankering for the middle class. This book explores the real processes in both East and West. This leads to more concrete political and even moral issues. The new 'sacred middle class' is challenged. The contributors adopt several conceptual approaches and perspectives which enter into a fruitful exchange in this book.

From workers' wages to presidential elections, labor unions once exerted tremendous clout in American life. In the immediate post-World War II era, one in three workers belonged to a union. The fraction now is close to one in five, and just one in ten in the private sector. The only thing big about Big Labor today is the scope of its problems. While many studies have explained the causes of this decline, What Unions No Longer Do shows the broad repercussions of labor's collapse for the American economy and polity. Organized labor was not just a minor player during the middle decades of the twentieth century, Jake Rosenfeld asserts. For generations it was the core institution fighting for economic and political equality in the United States. Unions leveraged their bargaining power to deliver benefits to workers while shaping cultural understandings of fairness in the workplace. What Unions No Longer Do details the consequences of labor's decline, including poorer working conditions, less economic assimilation for immigrants, and wage stagnation among African-Americans. In short, unions are no longer instrumental in combating inequality in our economy and our politics, resulting in a sharp decline in the prospects of American workers and their families.

Because of what my mother and grandparents instilled in me, I live my life daily fighting for the rights of working people. By publishing this book, and sharing my story, I hope that readers will benefit from my experience. The impact from the attacks on labor radiates in all directions, like the ripples from a stone dropped into water The event has such as force that workers around the country feel it in every aspect of their lives. By combing through all that information and then reconstructing the work into cohesive narrative I hope and believe that workers and middle class America can turn this tide around.