Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 Why Unions Matter -- Unions and the Middle Class -- Corporations Grow, Unions Shrink -- Chapter 2 The Long Slide -- Labor and the Postwar Economy -- The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: Won't It Be Grand -- War on Unions: The Disappearing Middle Class -- The Union Implosion -- Chapter 3 Farmworkers Fight Back -- Racism Drives Progressive Reform: Compromises Cripple Farmworkers -- Immokalee Farmworkers: Community-Based Power Fights Back -- New York's Farmworkers Try To Unionize -- Chapter 4 Worker Centers in Focus -- Worker Centers: Labor's Hope or a Passing Phase? -- California's Gig Workers Struggle to Get Real Jobs -- The False Promises of Virtual Gig Work -- Drivers Turn to the Courts -- From the Courts to the Streets -- After AB5: What's Next? -- Chapter 5 Freelancers Union: Backward to the Future? -- What Is The Freelancers Union? -- The New Mutualism and Its Historical Roots -- The Makeover Takes Off -- What Workers in the Creative Economy Want -- The New Mutualism in Action: Insurance for Freelancers -- Freelancers Union: A Rising Political Force? -- Providing Information and Building Community -- So What? -- Chapter 6 Taking to the Streets -- Can't Lose What You Never Had -- To the Streets! -- The Other NRA -- Making Progress -- Are the Gains Sustainable? -- Chapter 7 All Roads Lead to ... Sectoral Bargaining? -- A New Movement Brings Old Answers -- The Roots of the Direct Action Movements -- The Bumpy Road to Sectoral Bargaining -- A Viable New Partnership? -- What Is to be Done? -- Notes -- Index
Summary
Describes how new kinds of direct-action labor movements are emerging to reshape American labor activism in the twenty-first century
