Customer Reviews

Striking Steel (Solidarity Remembered) (Critical Perspectives on the past series)

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Striking Steel is well written. The author did a massive amount of research and shows an understanding of the deeper underlying labor issues. While we may not always agree on the issues, I came away with a better understanding of why it is sometimes necessary for unions to strike. Even though Mr. Metzgar did not drive the point that all of us--even those of us with comfy office jobs--have better working conditions because unions have demanded them, his recitation of working conditions in the 20th century, made me realize this is so. It is when he brings the issues home--literally--to show how they shaped his family and neighborhood that the book takes on life. Statistics, theory, and conjecture are fine--but the reality of the lives of the workers is where the book has its greatest impact.

In these memoirs by the son of a steelworker union rep, Metzger does a great job explaining how steelworkers and their Union created a middle class in steel towns across the U.S. by repeatedly striking during the 1950's. He brings to life the dry legalistic contract language, that steelworkers walked off the job for 119 days to protect and shows how when backed by a strong union and dedicated union reps, these words gave ordinary workers the tools to get respect on the job even when the boss wasn't keen on giving it. His history of the 1959 strike is well documented and he does a good job explaining why so many others got it wrong.

This is interdisciplinary writing at its best--honest memoir, perceptive sociology, informative labor history, clear economics, and tough-minded politics. I not only learned a lot from reading this, but it was engaging and enjoyable, and it made the crucial decades of the 20th century--especially with regard to working class life--come alive for me. It serves as a reminder of how deeply and intensely issues of economics and government policy intersect the human complexity of everyday life.

Metzgar's opening salvo: how does the biggest strike in American history in 1959 rock our Leave it to Beaver understanding of the 1950s? He shows how union power and affluence went hand in hand in this book that is a meditation on how class works, how unions functioned, the industrial golden age, and the decline of steel. Part memoir, part historical analysis, and part political economy, Metzgar explains how the deal worked back when it worked--as well as how it broke down. There is an almost transcendent understanding of the subject matter. Metzgar is somehow empathetic and extraordinarily balanced in his analysis. You won't soon forget his father, Johnny, and the world we have since forgotten.

Jack Metzgar has achieved a rare feat with "Striking Steel" in that he writes a wonderful memoir of his childhood, his family and his father, Johnny Metzgar's days working as a unionized steel worker in Pennsylvania. A must read for anyone who is trying to comprehend their own father and for students of labor history. Its a wonderful read.