The Unions and the Democrats

The Unions and the Democrats PDF Author: Taylor E. Dark
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501721178
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Although labor unions have faced a decline in membership in recent decades, they have not necessarily lost their political clout. The Unions and the Democrats illuminates the inner dynamics of labor's relationship to the American political system over the past generation. It examines organized labor from the Johnson administration through the 2000 elections, showing that labor's alliance with the Democratic Party has endured despite changes in the economy and the revival of conservatism.Drawing on extensive interviews with union leaders and lobbyists, Taylor E. Dark provides a historical perspective often lacking in studies of union political involvement. He compares the relationship of presidents Johnson, Carter, and Clinton with labor and analyzes cases of union involvement in legislative lobbying, executive decision-making, and both congressional and presidential elections.The book explores such topics as the effects of political reform on union power, the development of union legislative goals, and the impact of unions on economic policymaking, and also evaluates the controversy over union campaign spending in the 1996 elections. It demonstrates that labor's evolving alliance with the Democrats continues to shape America.

The Unions and the Democrats

The Unions and the Democrats PDF Author: Taylor E. Dark
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501721178
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Get Book Here

Book Description
Although labor unions have faced a decline in membership in recent decades, they have not necessarily lost their political clout. The Unions and the Democrats illuminates the inner dynamics of labor's relationship to the American political system over the past generation. It examines organized labor from the Johnson administration through the 2000 elections, showing that labor's alliance with the Democratic Party has endured despite changes in the economy and the revival of conservatism.Drawing on extensive interviews with union leaders and lobbyists, Taylor E. Dark provides a historical perspective often lacking in studies of union political involvement. He compares the relationship of presidents Johnson, Carter, and Clinton with labor and analyzes cases of union involvement in legislative lobbying, executive decision-making, and both congressional and presidential elections.The book explores such topics as the effects of political reform on union power, the development of union legislative goals, and the impact of unions on economic policymaking, and also evaluates the controversy over union campaign spending in the 1996 elections. It demonstrates that labor's evolving alliance with the Democrats continues to shape America.

Union

Union PDF Author: Jordan Blashek
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316423785
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Two friends—a Democrat and a Republican—travel across America "on a deeply personal journey through the heart of a divided nation . . . to find growth, hope and fundamental strength in their own lives" (Bob Woodward) and the country they love, in good times and bad. In the year before Donald Trump was elected president, Jordan Blashek, a Republican Marine, and Chris Haugh, a Democrat and son of a single mother from Berkeley, CA, formed an unlikely friendship. Jordan was fresh off his service in the Marines and feeling a bit out of place at Yale Law School. Chris was yearning for a sense of mission after leaving Washington D.C. Over the months, Jordan and Chris's friendship blossomed not in spite of, but because of, their political differences. So they decided to hit the road in search of reasons to strengthen their bond in an era of strife and partisanship. What follows is a three-year adventure story, across forty-four states and along 20,000 miles of road to find out exactly where the American experiment stands at the close of the second decade of the twenty-first century. In their search, Jordan and Chris go from the tear gas-soaked streets of a Trump rally in Phoenix, Arizona to the Mexican highways running between Tijuana and Juarez. They witness the full scope of American life, from lobster trawlers and jazz clubs of Portland and New Orleans to the streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma and the prisons of Detroit, where former addicts and inmates painstakingly put their lives back together. Union is a road narrative, a civics lesson, and an unforgettable window into one epic friendship. We ride along with Jordan and Chris for the whole journey, listening in on front-seat arguments and their conversations with Americans from coast to coast. We also peer outside the car to understand America's hot-button topics, including immigration, mass incarceration, and the military-civilian divide. And by the time Jordan and Chris kill the engine for the last time, they answer one of the most pressing questions of our time: How far apart are we really?

Class and Power in the New Deal

Class and Power in the New Deal PDF Author: G. William Domhoff
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804779023
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Class and Power in the New Deal provides a new perspective on the origins and implementation of the three most important policies that emerged during the New Deal—the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Social Security Act. It reveals how Northern corporate moderates, representing some of the largest fortunes and biggest companies of that era, proposed all three major initiatives and explores why there were no viable alternatives put forward by the opposition. More generally, this book analyzes the seeming paradox of policy support and political opposition. The authors seek to demonstrate the superiority of class dominance theory over other perspectives—historical institutionalism, Marxism, and protest-disruption theory—in explaining the origins and development of these three policy initiatives. Domhoff and Webber draw on extensive new archival research to develop a fresh interpretation of this seminal period of American government and social policy development.

Defending the Swedish Model

Defending the Swedish Model PDF Author: Gregg Bucken-Knapp
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780739138168
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Across Europe the prospect of a rapidly shrinking workforce has put increased labor migration back on the political agenda However for many on the political left concerns exist that less restrictive labor migration policies threaten core features of the social democratic project. This is perhaps clearest in Sweden which in late 2008 adopted a liberal approach to third-country national labor migration allowing employers to hire freely from outside the European Union. Defending the Swedish Model explores the debate leading up to this reform focusing on the preferences of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) and the Swedish trade union confederation (LO). While generally positive to the economic potential of increased labor migration these allies remained highly skeptical toward calls from employers and bourgeois parties for liberalization Gregg Bucken-Knapp argues that the SAP and LO develop their labor migration policy preference on the basis of whether specific reform alternatives are perceived as being consistent with or as undermining the Swedish model in the case of third-country nationals both allies considered liberalization a threat to full employment aims instead seeking to preserve an influential role for the state labor market board and organized labor. Bucken-knapp also focuses on the Swedish labor migration debate prior to the 2004 enlargement of the European union showing how SAP concerns over potential abuse of the universal welfare sate led to its support for transitional arrangements defending the Swedish model illuminates the challenges faced by social democrats and trade unions when considering the need for increased labor migration Book jacket.

Listen, Liberal

Listen, Liberal PDF Author: Thomas Frank
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1627795405
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of What's the Matter With Kansas, a scathing look at the standard-bearers of liberal politics -- a book that asks: what's the matter with Democrats? It is a widespread belief among liberals that if only Democrats can continue to dominate national elections, if only those awful Republicans are beaten into submission, the country will be on the right course. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all. This is not for lack of opportunity: Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets its bailouts, wages keep falling, and the free-trade deals keep coming. With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, Frank's Listen, Liberal lays bare the essence of the Democratic Party's philosophy and how it has changed over the years. A form of corporate and cultural elitism has largely eclipsed the party's old working-class commitment, he finds. For certain favored groups, this has meant prosperity. But for the nation as a whole, it is a one-way ticket into the abyss of inequality. In this critical election year, Frank recalls the Democrats to their historic goals-the only way to reverse the ever-deepening rift between the rich and the poor in America.

More Than They Bargained For

More Than They Bargained For PDF Author: Jason Stein
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299293831
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
parliamentary maneuvers, a camel slipping on icy Madison streets as union firefighters rushed to assist, massive nonviolent street protests, and a weeks-long occupation that blocked the marble halls of the Capitol and made its rotunda ring. Jason Stein and Patrick Marley, award-winning journalists for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, covered the fight firsthand. They center their account on the frantic efforts of state officials meeting openly and in the Capitol's elegant backrooms as protesters demonstrated outside. Conducting new in-depth interviews with elected officials, labor leaders, cops, protestors, and other key figures, and drawing on new documents and their own years of experience as statehouse reporters, Stein and Marley have written a gripping account of the wildest sixteen months in Wisconsin politics since the era of Joe McCarthy.

The Future of European Social Democracy

The Future of European Social Democracy PDF Author: H. Meyer
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230355048
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
European social democracy is in crisis. In the last decade it has ceased to be about either society or democracy. The authors explore its values, how it can be revived and what kind of political economy it requires to thrive. This book includes a foreword by the two leaders of the 'Building the Good Society' project, Andrea Nahles and Jon Cruddas.

Why Unions Matter

Why Unions Matter PDF Author: Michael Yates
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583671900
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
In this new edition of Why Unions Matter, Michael D. Yates shows why unions still matter. Unions mean better pay, benefits, and working conditions for their members; they force employers to treat employees with dignity and respect; and at their best, they provide a way for workers to make society both more democratic and egalitarian. Yates uses simple language, clear data, and engaging examples to show why workers need unions, how unions are formed, how they operate, how collective bargaining works, the role of unions in politics, and what unions have done to bring workers together across the divides of race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. The new edition not onlyupdates the first, but also examines the record of the New Voice slate that took control of the AFL-CIO in 1995, the continuing decline in union membership and density, the Change to Win split in 2005, the growing importance of immigrant workers, the rise of worker centers, the impacts of and labor responses to globalization, and the need for labor to have an independent political voice. This is simply the best introduction to unions on the market.

Beaten Down, Worked Up

Beaten Down, Worked Up PDF Author: Steven Greenhouse
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 1101874430
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
“A page-turning book that spans a century of worker strikes.... Engrossing, character-driven, panoramic.” —The New York Times Book Review We live in an era of soaring corporate profits and anemic wage gains, one in which low-paid jobs and blighted blue-collar communities have become a common feature of our nation’s landscape. Behind these trends lies a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power. Award-winning journalist and author Steven Greenhouse guides us through the key episodes and trends in history that are essential to understanding some of our nation’s most pressing problems, including increased income inequality, declining social mobility, and the concentration of political power in the hands of the wealthy few. He exposes the modern labor landscape with the stories of dozens of American workers, from GM employees to Uber drivers to underpaid schoolteachers. Their fight to take power back is crucial for America’s future, and Greenhouse proposes concrete, feasible ways in which workers’ collective power can be—and is being—rekindled and reimagined in the twenty-first century. Beaten Down, Worked Up is a stirring and essential look at labor in America, poised as it is between the tumultuous struggles of the past and the vital, hopeful struggles ahead. A PBS NewsHour Now Read This Book Club Pick

No Shortcuts

No Shortcuts PDF Author: Jane F. McAlevey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190624728
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The crisis of the progressive movement is so evident that nothing less than a fundamental rethinking of its basic assumptions is required. Today's progressives now work for professional organizations more comfortable with the inside game in Washington DC (and capitols throughout the West), where they are outmatched and outspent by corporate interests. Labor unions now focus on the narrowest possible understanding of the interests of their members, and membership continues to decline in lockstep with the narrowing of their goals. Meanwhile, promising movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter lack sufficient power to accomplish meaningful change. Why do progressives in the United States keep losing on so many issues? In No Shortcuts, Jane McAlevey argues that progressives can win, but lack the organized power to enact significant change, to outlast their bosses in labor fights, and to hold elected leaders accountable. Drawing upon her experience as a scholar and longtime organizer in the student, environmental, and labor movements, McAlevey examines cases from labor unions and social movements to pinpoint the factors that helped them succeed - or fail - to accomplish their intended goals. McAlevey makes a compelling case that the great social movements of previous eras gained their power from mass organizing, a strategy today's progressives have mostly abandoned in favor of shallow mobilization or advocacy. She ultimately concludes that, in order to win, progressive movements need strong unions built from bottom-up organizing strategies that place the power for change in the hands of workers and ordinary people at the community level. Beyond the concrete examples in this book, McAlevey's arguments have direct implications for anyone involved in organizing for social change. Much more than cogent analysis, No Shortcuts explains exactly how progressives can go about rebuilding powerful movements at work, in our communities, and at the ballot box.