Buy A Troublemakers Handbook 2

Reviews of A Troublemakers Handbook 2

Subscribe to Labor Notes

Support Our Work--Donate to Labor Notes

Request a Free Copy of Labor Notes

Sign Up for Labor Notes Email Updates

Labor Notes Homepage

Chris Townsend, Labor Party News, May 2005

A ROAD MAP OUT OF A JAM

by Chris Townsend, Capitol Hill Shop Steward

As the big debate about labor’s future and direction unfolds, I have been struck more by what has been missing from the discussion than what has been in it. But right now, I’m tired of reading page after page of this stuff. I know that unions are in a jam. You know that unions are in a jam. For me, for you, for the rank and file, and the many millions of unorganized, the question is: “How do we get out of this jam?” What can we do today, right now, in the workplace, to start turning things around?

I joined the labor movement in 1979 because the wages, benefits, and working conditions of my job sucked. I was a garbageman in Florida—and take my word for it—things really sucked. We started a union for one simple reason: we wanted to fight back at work and win. No big reason other than that. We were tired of losing. We were tired of being humiliated and treated like “apes.” That’s what our City Manager called us. We organized our union because we wanted to win—for a change. And we pulled it off.

I still think that unions exist to fight back against the employers, every day if necessary. If you agree, buy this book: A Troublemaker’s Handbook 2: How to Fight Back Where You Work—and Win! Published by Labor Notes, edited by Jane Slaughter, and featuring a foreword by Baldemar Velasquez, President of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (and Labor Party Co-chair), this 372-page volume is made up of articles by 70+ authors who have waged workplace struggles of every size and shape and, more often than not, won. In a labor movement that seems on most days to be in a headlong retreat on all fronts, this book is a potent boost to morale. This book is a road map out of the jam we are in.

Here’s a sample … chapter 3, “Shop Floor Tactics” is loaded with good ideas, suggestions, and experiences on how to go far beyond the ordinary grievance process. It explains how to work-to-rule as part of a campaign to push back against the boss, and how to produce and use an in-shop newsletter to keep the members informed and mobilized. Another chapter on “Creative Tactics” offers numerous cool suggestions about how to launch a real show right in the boss’ face. “Fighting Discrimination/Building Unity” is a chapter loaded with ideas and experiences on how to combat employers’ constant schemes to divide and conquer.

There’s more: how to run a winning contract campaign, actually save good jobs, drum up community support, organize new members, welcome and involve immigrant members, revitalize and clean up your union if it needs it, deal with the media, develop new leadership, prevent burnout, you name it and more. Every chapter is loaded with detailed references and lists of sources for more information, along with questions that easily can be used to stimulate a good discussion at your next union meeting. This is the long-awaited follow-up to the original A Troublemaker’s Handbook in 1991, and I don’t think that it’s an overstatement in any way to refer to the new edition as “The Owners Manual for a Real Union.”

We will never rebuild our labor movement unless we first rebuild the front-line shop steward structures—and better support the ones we have already. Working people want to know that you can make the boss change his mind, and do so in their lifetimes. But we won’t rebuild the fighting capacity of our unions in the workplace until we have the tools needed to engage the boss. This book is a toolbox full of those tools. I urge you to buy this book. And buy copies for your shop stewards. Add this to what you know already, go into action, and begin to write the history that’s bound to get collected for the Troublemaker’s Handbook 3.

Chris Townsend is Political Action Director of the United Electrical Workers Union (UE)

A Troublemaker’s Handbook 2
Available from: Labor Notes
7435 Michigan Avenue, Detroit, MI 48210
Telephone: (313) 842-6262
Email: labornotes@labornotes.org
$24 plus $4 postage (discounts for quantities)