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Real World Labor

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 18, 2009
Contact: Linda Pinkow, (617) 447-2177, ext 204, linda@dollarsandsense.org

New Anthology Explores the State of Labor

Real World Labor
Edited by Immanuel Ness, Amy Offner, Chris Sturr, and the Dollars & Sense Collective

In this time of rapid economic change, the power of organized labor seems to be in decline. But new organizing strategies are emerging to challenge corporate power and the globalization of capital. Real World Labor examines the most pressing issues facing workers today: fundamental changes in the nature of work and wages; new legal impediments to union organizing; the persistence of racial and gender discrimination; migrant workers’ struggle for dignity; militarism and its harmful effects on the working class; union responses to the global financial meltdown; and new forms of rank-and-file organizing and resistance.

Real World Labor provides up-to-date, accessible, and penetrating analysis of the most significant theoretical, historical, and practical issues confronting labor unions and workers on a national and global level. This collection includes 70 authoritative essays by leading writers and scholars of the labor movement, drawn from the pages of Dollars & Sense magazine, Working USA, and Labor Notes.

Real World Labor is an antidote to the misinformation, false arguments, and faulty analysis so common in the mainstream media and among orthodox economists. An excellent classroom resource.

— MICHAEL YATES
associate editor of Monthly Review,
author of Why Unions Matter

For any labor studies course, Real World Labor is the most comprehensive and accessible book available today. Written by authoritative scholars of the labor movement in the United States and worldwide, no book compares to this work in its breadth of coverage and scope of analysis. This is the only collection that provides an in-depth overview of labor issues in an accessible manner to anyone interested in understanding the most significant issues facing workers and the contemporary labor movement. I highly recommend this book to all!

— THOMAS J. KRIGER
Provost, National Labor College

Real World Labor, like decades of Dollars & Sense books, is bound to be a great guide to labor issues, with a wide range of perspectives for both union members and students.

— LARRY COHEN
President, Communications Workers of America

Order an exam copy (pdf’s as well as hard copies are available), and browse our catalog of economics books at www.dollarsandsense.org, or call (617) 447-2177.

Real World Labor
Edited by Immanuel Ness, Amy Offner, Chris Sturr, and the Dollars & Sense Collective
ISBN: 978-1-878585-55-4
Publication date: August 2009
Pages: 330
Price: $34.95
Contributors include: David Bacon, Kim Bobo, Heather Bouchey, Roger Bybee, Aviva Chomsky, Steve Early, Bill Fletcher Jr., Staughton Lynd, Arthur MacEwan, John Miller, Immanuel Ness, Thomas Palley, Frances Fox Piven, Robert Pollin, Paddy Quick, Peter Rachleff, Alejandro Reuss, Jane Slaughter, Lucien Van Der Walt, and others.

Contents:
Chapter 1 – Labor Law, Policy, and Regulation
Chapter 2 – Wages and the Labor Market
Chapter 3 – Employment and Unemployment
Chapter 4 – International Labor Movements
Chapter 5 – Discrimination by Race and Gender
Chapter 6 – Immigration and Migration
Chapter 7 – Unions and Organizing Strategy
Chapter 8 – Competing Forms of Management
Chapter 9 – Labor, Globalization, and Trade
Chapter 10 – Labor and Economic Crisis
Chapter 11 – Labor and Militarism

Read more about Real World Labor at www.dollarsandsense.org.

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Boston, MA 02108

§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on August 22, 2009 at 3:18 am

§ Filed under economic policy, labor movement and tagged alejandro reuss, amy offner, anthology, arthur macewan, aviva chomsky, bill fletcher jr, chris messina, communications workers of america, david bacon, dollars and sense magazine, france fox piven, heather bouchey, immanuel ness, jane slaughter, john miller, kim bobo, larry cohen, lucien van der walt, michael yates, monthy review, national labor college, paddy quick, peter rachleff, rober bybee, robert pollin, steve early, stevie wonder, text book, thomas j kriger, thomas palley

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Privacy Matters

[This post is the the third in a series (1, 2).]

Like Marshall Kirkpatrick, I want it all.

I want my data to be free, I want to be in control of it and I want to have control over my privacy as well. Is that too much to ask? The watchdog group Privacy International released their annual report today about privacy around the world and put the US in the lowest category – “endemic surveillance societies.” Can we figure out how we can minimize surveillance while balancing privacy and the incredible opportunities that come from making at least some of our data open?

In the background of Marshall’s overview of contemporary privacy issues are discussions of our “post-privacy era.” Chris Messina, who has been involved in developing standards and technologies for handling personal data on the internet, writes:

My somewhat pessimistic view is that privacy is an illusion, and that more and more historic vestiges of so-called privacy are slipping through our fingers with the advent of increasingly ubiquitous and promiscuous technologies, the results of which are not all necessarily bad (take a look at just how captivating the Facebook Newsfeed is!)

Still … there needs to be a robust dialogue about what it means to live in a post-privacy era, and what demands we must place on those companies, governments and institutions that store data about us, about the habits to which we’re prone and about the friends we keep…

I think there needs to be a broader, eyes-wide-open look at who has what data about whom and what they’re doing about — and perhaps more importantly — how the people about whom the data is being collected can get in on the game and get access to this data in the same way you’re guaranteed access and the ability to dispute your credit report. The same thing should be true for web services, the government and anyone else who’s been monitoring you, even if you’ve been sharing that information with them willingly.

The history of the US government’s surveillance of its own citizens says to me that privacy has actually always been an illusion. Old FBI files show the government maintaining decades worth of minutia on people’s affiliations and associations. For example, in close to 1000 pages of FBI documents that I have on the Greater NY Council for a Sane Nuclear Policy in the early 1960s (when my father was the Executive Director), for practically every person mentioned there are lists of political meetings they were known to have attended and organizations they had been members of, often dating back to the 1940s.

§ Read the rest of this entry…

§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on January 20, 2008 at 11:36 pm

§ Filed under breaking news, civil liberties, civil rights, disarmament, human rights, immigrants, politics, race and racism, tech and tagged aclu, chris messina, church commission, data portability, david cole, department of homeland security, domestic surveillance, eff, facebook, fbi, fusion centers, google, japanese internment, loren feldman, marshall kirkpatrick, nsa, privacy, sane, shane harris, tangram, total information awareness

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