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January 2015 Vol. 52 No. 5


PM Press


The following review appeared in the January 2015 issue of CHOICE. The review is for your internal use only. Please review our Permission and Reprints Guidelines or email permissions@ala-choice.org.

Social & Behavioral Sciences
Business, Management & Labor

52-2643
HD6477
MARC
New forms of worker organization: the syndicalist and autonomist restoration of class-struggle unionism, ed. by Immanuel Ness. PM Press, 2014. 319p index ISBN 9781604869569 pbk, $24.95.

This volume collects 13 essays by political scientists, sociologists, labor relations specialists, labor activists, a social anthropologist, and a union organizer on various aspects of nontraditional organization and activism in a variety of settings and countries around the world.  Editor Ness (political science, CUNY) contributes a substantive introduction and one of the essays.  The book includes useful chapters on worker protests in Russia and China by well placed and experienced observers, and more specific case studies of Indian car workers, South African mine workers, unskilled workers in conservation in Madagascar, Colombian open-pit coal workers, and transport workers in Argentina.  There follow more historical studies of syndicalism in Sweden and workers’ control in Australia, case studies of the Wobblies in US fast food and British contract cleaners, and finally a historical contrast of IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) ideas to conventional US unionism and the legal framework of collective bargaining and binding contracts.  In general, the committed authors espouse a radical viewpoint, and are open about their advocacy against existing capitalism and in favor of workers and a renewed rise of labor power.  The essays are uneven and many are jargon-laden, but the content is valuable and should be widely available.

--J. H. Cobbe, Florida State University

Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above.