Customer Reviews

From the Ashes of the Old: American Labor and America's Future

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Not having read any of Mr. Aronowitz' other books, I came to this one looking for a guide to the history of organized labor and am glad I did. As he points out, labor seems not to exist as far as the media are concerned. Workers appears only in strikes, portrayed as grasping disrupters of business. My interest in organized labor and the plight of the worker came from direct experience in a lock out. Eyes opened by the event, I was eager to put it in perspective and this book was exactly what I was looking for. Things can't go on as they are. Aronowitz rightly points out how both political parties are pro-business, that the conservatives have framed the debate on the economy and labor is confined to a diminished spot with the Democrats, largely taken for granted. If you scratch the surface of material wealth you find discontent with society. The lack of protection for workers; the "temping" of the workforce and the shifting of the costs of benefits to workers from business is spreading like wildfire. Those who never dreamed of associating with organized labor are now having second thoughts. Labor, as Aronowitz points out, must appeal to social issues and working conditions in other countries if it is to survive. This book is a call to take a full place on the stage, a stage set for labor to re-enter from parochialism. Anyone interested in new forms that labor may take and why it should take them should read this book. If you work for a living and wonder about tomorrow, read it.

Stanley Aronowitz is the most important (perhaps one of the only) public intellectual of our age. He argues convincingly for a new agenda for the labor movement, one that takes into account not only the interests of the working class, but opens the possibility for injecting new life into the movement by forcing unions to find ways to link its interests with the interests of all Americans. In other words, Aronowitz shows how labor can finally fulfill its promise to be the vanguard of democracy in America. Anyone interested in the future of our democratic enterprise -- be they middle class or working class -- needs to read this book.

From the beginnings of craft protectionism and built upon a number of militant worker movements from say 1875 to 1920, the Great Depression spurred the rise of industrial unions. The Wagner Act neatly bottled up, with union acquiescence, worker unrest and power to influence US industry. As Aronowitz shows, the limitations of that accord were revealed early on in the failed Southern organizing drives and the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act. But that was then. Now one has to wonder if the notion of a "labor movement" has any real meaning. Is there a recognizable philosophy of labor or worker empowerment in the general public's consciousness. I don't think so. Yes unions have hung on in some industries and teachers, whose situation in terms of public and contract-based employment is unlike that found in the private sector, have hidden the overall decline of unions. Also unions in this age of extremely small voter turnouts that can mobilize a dedicated minority can influence some elections much as can the Christian right. But those have been mostly defensive victories: elect the least conservative of two. One of Aronowitz's key suggestions is the organizing of the huge numbers of professional-technical and white collar workers. But that seems to be mostly hope. Many (probably most) of those folks accept all of the negative stereotypes of unions. Aronowitz briefly mentions European-style works councils, but US unions aren't about to allow that. There just is not much in this book, as well as in scores of others written since John Sweeney took over the helm of the AFL-CIO, that is a realistic assessment of the possibility of going from point A (corporate dominance of the economy and politics) to point B (genuine worker influence within enterprises and the overall economy and political process).