In 1973, David Ranney left his academic position at the University of Iowa to work as an activist in Chicago. To support himself he went to work in a number of factories on the Southeast Side of Chicago. His factory work is the basis for Living and Dying on the Factory Floor. In 1983 he returned to academia where he provided research support to Chicago community organizations that were trying to assist workers who had been displaced by massive deindustrialization. He also worked with international coalitions to fight the development of institutions that were facilitating the collapse of U.S. manufacturing while undermining worker health and safety standards and wages world-wide. These coalitions opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organization and the imposition of neo liberal economic policies by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These experiences became the basis for his 2003 book Global Decisions, Local Collisions. He followed up this work with another book, New World Disorder (2014), which is an analysis of the role of the finance industry in the global economy. He is presently Professor Emeritus in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois Chicago. He received his BA degree at Dartmouth College and his PhD at Syracuse University. He has written a number of recent essays on economic policy, politics, militarism and the environment that can be found on www.david-ranney.com. In addition to writing and speaking, he finds time to be an actor and director in a small community theatre. He is married and has a son, daughter in law and two granddaughters. He splits his time between Chicago, Illinois and Washington Island, Wisconsin.
Living and Dying on the Factory Floor: From the Outside In and the Inside Out
SKU: 9781629636399
Author: David Ranney
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 9781629636399
Published: 4/2019
Format: Paperback, mobi, ePub, PDF
Size: 6 x 9
Page count: 160
Subjects: Memoir, Labor Studies
Praise
“David Ranney’s is our best account of the New Left’s turn to the
factory and other workplaces in the seventies. Reading in some parts
like a novel, it introduces us to a remarkable cast of working-class
characters, while offering a refreshingly critical look at his own
experiences. We get compelling views of factory work, including the
physical dangers and injuries that came with it, as well as a better
understanding of a range of New Left organizing efforts. With the
experience of a radical organizer and the insights of a very good
social scientist, Ranney writes with particular sensitivity about race
relations in the workplace.”
—James R. Barrett, author of History from the Bottom Up & the Inside Out: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Working-Class History
“Apart
from its merits as literature—it made me laugh and weep—Dave’s account
of and reflections upon his experience working in the southeast
Chicago/northwest Indiana region is valuable to young activists for at
least three reasons: 1) It provides information about the nature and
significance of the point of production to a generation that has no more
knowledge of what it was like than would a Martian. 2) It offers an
example of persistence to a generation that tends to measure commitment
in days or weeks rather than years or a lifetime. 3) It shows the
possibility of personal transformation, both in those like Dave who set
out consciously to change the world and in those he met in the course
of his efforts to do so—transformation which is, after all, the whole
point.”
—Noel Ignatiev, author of How the Irish Became White
“David
Ranney has produced a riveting memoir of his years working industrial
jobs on the southeast side of Chicago. Compellingly written and thought
provoking, Living and Dying on the Factory Floor brings to
life the daily realities of race, class, and gender in an urban
community on the brink of joining the rust belt. Ranney pairs vivid
depictions of everyday forms of social struggle with timely reflections
on the political implications for contemporary readers. This book will
be required reading for the next generation of radicals, particularly
those hoping to understand how we arrived at the postindustrial ‘gig
economy,’ and how we dismantle it and construct a truly free society.”
—Michael Staudenmaier, author of Truth and Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization, 1969–1986
Book Events
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Reviews
- Memories of the class— A review of “Living and Dying on the Factory Floor”
- Memories of the class— A review of “Living and Dying on the Factory Floor”
- Living and Dying in the ILR Review
- Who Gets Solidarity?— Living and Dying in the South Side Weekly
- Heinz and Lawrence: Experience in auxiliary jobs
- Living and Dying on the Factory Floor— An Angry Workers World Review
- In defence of working class existence as choice—
- Living and dying on the factory floor: Class and race at work
- Living and Dying in the Institute for Anarchist Studies
- Living and Dying on the Factory Floor in May Day Books Blog
- Living and Dying on the Factory Floor in Antipode
- Solidarity and Manufacturing
- Deflating the Legend of America’s Golden Age of Industry
- Fourth Shift Chicago
Interviews
- Living and Dying on the Factory Floor: An Interview with David Ranney
- Unmade in America— David Ranney on The Interchange
- David Ranney on WORT FM
- David Ranney on KSFR
- David Ranney on KBOO
- David Ranney on By Any Means Necessary
- “We’re Gonna Shut This Place Down”
- David Ranney on Living and Dying on the Factory Floor in the Chicago Reader