Rand Wilson has extensive experience as a union organizer and labor communicator. Originally a member of the Oil Chemical & Atomic Workers union (OCAW), Wilson has served in a staff capacity at many different unions and the AFL-CIO. In 1992, he was the founding director of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice. Hired by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 1995, he worked as Communications Coordinator for the historic 1997 UPS contract campaign and strike. In 2016, he was elected as a Sanders’ delegate to the Democratic National Convention and has remained active in the party. Wilson is board chair for the ICA Group and the Fund for Jobs Worth Owning. He is a trustee for the Somerville Job Creation and Retention Trust, an elected member of the Ward Six Somerville Democratic Committee and convener of a community-labor coalition: Somerville Stands Together.
Labor Power and Strategy
SKU: 9781629639741
Author: John Womack Jr. • Edited by Peter Olney and Glenn Perušek
Series: PM Press
ISBN: 9781629639741
Published: 01/24/23
Format: Paperback
Size: 5×8
Pages: 208
Subjects: Political Science, Labor, Political Economy, Activism, and Globalization
Praise
“In Our Revolution we shout, ‘When we Organize, We Win,’ but organize who and win what? Labor Power and Strategy is a great collection of Womack and ten organizers debating strategic workplace organizing versus associational or more general organizing at workplaces or in communities. Womack, in a long initial interview and in the conclusion, argues that without organizing workplace choke points, we are left with the spontaneous movements that come and go. Several of the organizers essentially argue that the spontaneous can become conscious and long-lasting. Grab the book and take up the debate.”
—Larry Cohen, board chair of Our Revolution, past president of Communications Workers of America
“In this fascinating and insightful dialogue, the distinguished historian John Womack and a set of veteran labor activists probe the most fundamental of questions: How do we organize the twenty-first-century working class and give it the power to transform world capitalism? Are workers with vital skills and strategic leverage the key to a labor resurgence, or should organizers wager upon a mobilization of working people whose relationship to the economy’s commanding heights is more diffuse? Or can we arrive at some dialectical symbiosis? Whatever the answer, this is the kind of constructively radical conversation essential to the rebirth of working-class power in our time.”
—Nelson Lichtenstein, historian and author of Capitalism Contested: The New Deal and Its Legacies
“Put this unique collection of strategic insights into the hands of the new generation of militants excited about revitalizing the US labor movement and ‘working-class power’ might once again become something other than an abstract slogan in this country. Couldn’t be more timely.”
—Max Elbaum, editor at Convergence Magazine and author of Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che
“Labor Power and Strategy is essential reading for activists and organizers seeking to understand how in a constantly changing world of work workers can marshal power.
—Elaine Bernard, former executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School
“The comprehensive campaigns model is essential to labor’s efforts to rebuild power. This book, focusing on workers’ positional power in production and distribution, explores a key element of such an overall approach.”
—Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research and a senior lecturer at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations
“Womack’s focus upon the essential ingredients of effective and strategic organizing resonates today, as elements in labor now attempt to bestir themselves in the midst of unrelenting decline. His view that workers must seek forward movement through their own initiatives, independent of law, political process and formal machinery represents an important clarion call, rooted in the practical historical experience of more than a century. Womack’s instructive views and observation warrant careful attention.”
—William B. Gould IV, author of For Labor to Build Upon: Wars, Depression and Pandemic
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