Author: Les Leopold
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1933392630
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
Biography of Tony Mazzocchi, American labor leader and father of Labor Party.

Author: Les Leopold
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603580719
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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Book Description
A CIA-connected labor union, an assassination attempt, a mysterious car crash, listening devices, and stolen documents--everything you'd expect from the latest thriller. Yet, this was the reality of Tony Mazzocchi, the Rachel Carson of the U.S. workplace; a dynamic labor leader whose legacy lives on in today's workplaces and ongoing alliances between labor activists and environmentalists, and those who believe in the promise of America. In The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi, author and labor expert Les Leopold recounts the life of the late Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union leader. Mazzocchi's struggle to address the unconscionable toxic exposure of tens of thousands of workers led to the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act and included work alongside nuclear whistleblower Karen Silkwood. His noble, high-profile efforts forever changed working conditions in American industry--and made him enemy number one to a powerful few. As early as the 1950s, when the term "environment" was nowhere on the political radar, Mazzocchi learned about nuclear fallout and began integrating environmental concerns into his critique of capitalism and his union work. An early believer in global warming, he believed that the struggle of capital against nature was the irreconcilable contradiction that would force systemic change. Mazzocchi's story of non-stop activism parallels the rise and fall of industrial unionism. From his roots in a pro-FDR, immigrant family in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, through McCarthyism, the Sixties, and the surge of the environmental movement, Mazzocchi took on Corporate America, the labor establishment and a complacent Democratic Party. This profound biography should be required reading for those who believe in taking risks and making the world a better place. While Mazzocchi's story is so full of peril and deception that it seems almost a work of fiction, Leopold proves that the most provocative and lasting stories in life are those of real people.

Author: Chad Montrie
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826455727
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
This book offers a fresh and innovative account of the history of environmentalism in the United States, challenging the dominant narrative in the field. In the widely-held version of events, the US environmental movement was born with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962 and was driven by the increased leisure and wealth of an educated middle class. Chad Montrie's telling moves the origins of environmentalism much further back in time and attributes the growth of environmental awareness to working people and their families. From the antebellum era to the end of the twentieth century, ordinary Americans have been at the forefront of organizing to save themselves and their communities from environmental harm. This interpretation is nothing short of a substantial recasting of the past, giving a more accurate picture of what happened, when, and why at the beginnings of the environmental movement.

Author: Paul Le Blanc
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136852875
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Work and Struggle: Voices from U.S. Labor Radicalism focuses on the history of U.S. labor with an emphasis on radical currents, which have been essential elements in the working-class movement from the mid nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Showcasing some of labor's most important leaders, Work and Struggle offers students and instructors a variety of voices to learn from -- each telling their story through their own words -- through writings, memoirs and speeches, transcribed and introduced here by Paul Le Blanc. This collection of revolutionary voices will inspire anyone interested in the history of labor organizing.

Author: Les Leopold
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 164502234X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
"This book gave me a new lens to see the world.”—Robert Krulwich, former co-host of WNYC’s Radiolab Addressing the pressing issues affecting everyday Americans during an election year is essential—and one of our nation's most profound challenges is the devastating impact of mass layoffs. Layoffs upend people’s lives, cause enormous stress, and lead to debilitating personal debt. The societal harm caused by mass layoffs has been known for decades. Yet, we do little to stop them. Why? Why do we allow whole communities to be destroyed by corporate decision-makers? Why do we consider mass layoffs a natural, baked-in feature of modern financialized capitalism? And what are our elected officials going to do about it? In Wall Street’s War on Workers, Les Leopold, co-founder of the Labor Institute, provides a clear lens with which we can see how healthy corporations in the United States have used mass layoffs and stock buybacks to enrich shareholders at the expense of employees. With detailed research and concise language, Leopold explains why mass layoffs occur and how our current laws and regulations allow companies to turn these layoffs into short-term financial gains. Original and insightful, Wall Street’s War on Workers places US labor practices in the broader context of our social and political life, examining the impact financial strip-mining and legalized looting are having on party politics, destroying the integrity of democratic institutions. Leopold expertly lays out how the proliferation of opioids coupled with Wall Street’s destruction of jobs in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin have led to widespread mass layoff fatalism. Democrats have unarguably lost the longstanding support of millions of urban and rural workers, and Leopold points out how party leaders have been wrong about the assumption that the white working class is becoming less progressive and motivated to abandon the Democratic Party by reactionary positions on divisive social issues. With deep analyses, stark examples, and surprisingly simple proactive steps forward, Leopold also asserts that: Surviving and thriving in a competitive global economy does not require mass layoffs. A new virulent, financialized version of American capitalism is policy driven. To end mass layoffs, Wall Street’s domination of our economy must end. The accepted “wisdom” about white working-class populism is wrong. Ending stock buybacks and changing corporate officers’ pay structures could eliminate mass layoffs. Mass layoffs are not the result of inevitable economic “laws” or new technologies like artificial intelligence. Both groundbreaking and urgent, Wall Street’s War on Workers not only offers solutions that could halt mass layoffs but also offers new hope for workers everywhere. "Leopold offers a contrarian yet compelling take on America’s “white working class” . . . [and says] Democrats in 2024 ignore this massive, potentially sympathetic voting bloc at their peril."—Booklist (starred review)

Author: John Abrams
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603581405
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Part memoir and part examination of a new business model, the 2005 release of The Company We Keep marked the debut of an important new voice in the literature of American business. Now, in Companies We Keep, the revised and expanded edition of his 2005 work, John Abrams further develops his idea that companies flourish when they become centers of interdependence, or “communities of enterprise.” Thoroughly revised with an expanded focus on employee ownership and workplace democracy, Companies We Keep celebrates the idea that when employees share in the rewards as well as the responsibility for the decisions they make, better decisions result. This is an especially timely topic. Most of the baby boomer generation—the owners of millions of American businesses— will retire within the next two decades. In 2001, 50,000 businesses changed hands. In 2005, that number rose to 350,000. Projections call for 750,000 ownership transitions in 2009. Employee ownership—in both the philosophical and the practical sense—is gathering steam as businesses change hands, and Abrams examines some of the many ways this is done. Companies We Keep is structured around eight principles—from “Sharing Ownership” and “Cultivating Workplace Democracy” to “Thinking Like Cathedral Builders” and “Committing to the Business of Place”—that Abrams has discovered in the 32 years since he cofounded South Mountain Company on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Together, these principles reveal communities of enterprise as a potent force of change that can—and will— improve the way Americans do business.

Author: Erik Loomis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107125499
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
This is the first book to center labor unions as actors in American environmental policy.

Author: Jefferson Cowie
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 159558532X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
Winner of the 2011 Merle Curti award, an epic account that recasts the 1970s as the key turning point in modern U.S. history, from the renowned historian A wide-ranging cultural and political history that will forever redefine a misunderstood decade, Stayin’ Alive is prizewinning historian Jefferson Cowie’s remarkable account of how working-class America hit the rocks in the political and economic upheavals of the 1970s. In this edgy and incisive book—part political intrigue, part labor history, with large doses of American music, film and television lore—Cowie, with “an ear for the power and poetry of vernacular speech” (Cleveland Plain Dealer), reveals America’s fascinating path from rising incomes and optimism of the New Deal to the widening economic inequalities and dampened expectations of the present.

Author: Douglas Cazaux Sackman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9781444323627
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 696

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Book Description
A Companion to American Environmental History gatherstogether a comprehensive collection of over 30 essays that examinethe evolving and diverse field of American environmental history. Provides a complete historiography of American environmentalhistory Brings the field up-to-date to reflect the latest trends andencourages new directions for the field Includes the work of path-breaking environmental historians,from the founders of the field, to contributions frominnovative young scholars Takes stock of the discipline through five topically themedparts, with essays ranging from American Indian EnvironmentalRelations to Cities and Suburbs

Author: Nora Räthzel
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303071909X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 896

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Book Description
In this comprehensive Handbook, scholars from across the globe explore the relationships between workers and nature in the context of the environmental crises. They provide an invaluable overview of a fast-growing research field that bridges the social and natural sciences. Chapters provide detailed perspectives of environmental labour studies, environmental struggles of workers, indigenous peoples, farmers and commoners in the Global South and North. The relations within and between organisations that hinder or promote environmental strategies are analysed, including the relations between workers and environmental organisations, NGOs, feminist and community movements.