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Ritch Whyman, Canadian Dimension, May/June 2005

A TROUBLEMAKER'S HANDBOOK 2: HOW TO FIGHT BACK WHERE YOU WORK AND WIN

by Ritch Whyman

With union leaderships that refuse to mount any serious and sustained resistance to employers, this book couldn't have been re-issued and updated in a more timely manner.

A Troublemaker's Handbook is a manual for both the experienced and for newcomers to the union movement. Its purpose is to give a guide to rank-and-file activists on how to fight both their employer, and, when need be, their union leadership. Throughout, the book's emphasis is on workers themselves fighting back.

It covers everything from where workers' power lies (on the shop floor) to building organizing drives, rebuilding the union in your workplace, contract campaigns, solidarity work, reform caucuses, running a contract campaign and everything in between. It covers the basics of unions — stewards, committees, grievances, health and safety, laws governing unions and how workers have used them to their advantage — but also how workers have built campaigns by going around official union structures and the law.

Each section of the Handbook presents stories and articles by workers. These stories are in and of themselves a joy to read, but also help bring home the point that the tactics and ideas put forward have been used with success before. The example of a group of workers that got their boss back to the bargaining table by getting the local golf club to refuse his membership is one I especially like.

At the core of the Handbook is the understanding that if something is to revitalize and change the labour movement it is the rank and file. Along with this is an understanding that the changes needed are not just about shop-floor issues, but broader issues like fighting for immigrants’ rights, the rights of the unorganized and against neoliberalism.

Any serious union activist should have a copy, and should get their union to use it as a manual for all activists. Despite the fact that most of the information and stories are American, the Handbook has a lot to offer anyone who wants to fight their employer and revitalize their union from the shop floor up.

—Ritch Whyman, CAW Local 303