Labor in America

Even since the last edition of this text was released six years ago, unions have continued to shed members; union membership in the private sector of the economy has fallen to levels not seen since the nineteenth century. The forces of economic liberalization (neo-liberalism), capital mobility, and globalization have affected measurably the material standard of living enjoyed by workers in the United States, and mass immigration from the Southern Hemisphere and Asia has continued to restructure the domestic labor force. Yet even in the face of anti-union legislation, a continuing decline in the number of organized workers, and the fear of stateless, if not faceless terrorism, the shadow of "9/11" in which we still live, the author has hewn to the lines laid out in the previous seven in seeking to encourage today's students of labor history to learn about those who built the United States and who will shape its future. In addition to taking the narrative right up to the present, a recent history that includes the election of 2008 as well as the tumultuous blow suffered by the U.S. and world economy in 2008-09, this eighth edition features an entirely new photographs and a complete overhauling of the book's Further Readings section in order to note the very best works from the profuse recent scholarship that explores the history of working people in all its diversity.