Ramparts of Resistance: Why Workers Lost Their Power, and How to Get It Back

Ramparts of Resistance examines the experience of British and US workers during the last three decades to show the urgency of the need for a new independent politics of trade unionism. The twentieth century saw great changes in the trade union movement, from waves of strikes in the 1970s to a battery of employer and state onslaughts, culminating in the anti-union legislation of the 1980s and 1990s. Looking at grassroots labour struggles, Cohen explores issues of reformism, trade union democracy and the political meaning of ordinary workplace resistance, and puts forward ideas for change. Ramparts of Resistance examines the failure of the union movement to rise to the neo-liberal challenge and calls for a new politics of independent unionism and an explicitly class-based renewal of workers' power. Coming at a time when union activity and membership involvement continues despite the odds, this book is an inspiring guide to the direction that unionism should take.

Author: Sheila Cohen
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
Published: 09/20/2006
Pages: 264
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 5.48h x 8.46w x 0.55d
ISBN: 9780745315294

About the Author
Gar Alperovitz is a historian and political economist and is President of the National Center for Economic Alternatives in Washington DC. He has been a fellow of Kings College Cambridge and the Kennedy Institute at Harvard. He has contributed to many publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Nation. A BBC special on Alperovitz's work was screened 1989.