From Publishers Weekly
Based on his experiences as a Chicago labor lawyer, Geoghegan contends persuasively that post-industrial Reaganomics have caused a widening rift between the working and professional middle classes. In related episodes, he demonstrates how the combined effects of steel mill closings, leveraged buyouts and Third World competitive labor have contributed to the decline of American organized labor. Even more tragic for the workers is their betrayal by international unions which, he asserts, are run by high-powered lawyers engaged in incessant arbitration; in cahoots with the Labor Department and, in some cases, with the mob--e.g., the Teamsters--labor lawyers are accused here of conspiracy to deprive the rank and file of the rights to organize, vote and air grievances freely. Moreover, Geoghegan declares, government regulations (the Taft-Hartley act, etc.) and a dilatory National Labor Relations Board have further weakened unionism, reducing it to the status of an ineffectual counterculture.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Geoghegan, a labor lawyer employed by Chicago area union locals, provides an interesting and at times incisive "insider's" view of organized labor. While his book is not the comprehensive analysis of the contemporary organized labor malaise that is so desperately needed, it will stimulate considerable reader interest. After all, the plight of American workers thrown on the trash heap of post-industrial capitalism is one of the truly tragic stories of the modern age, and even Geoghegan's periodic straining for effect and descents into maudlinism do not seriously thwart the impact of his narrative. Stressing the theme of the worker as victim, he recounts the way the courts, the politicians, the corporate interests, and all too often the union hierarchies have combined to undermine the health and well-being of the "working stiff." What he is really describing is the end of the period when American workers had at least a chance at getting a fair shake in the Ameri can economic contest.
- Norman Lederer, Thaddeus Stevens State Sch. of Technology, Lancaster, Pa.Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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