This book serves as an action guide for the Union Rep, Steward and Union Activist Leader whose hard work, labor and unyielding sacrafices often go un-noticed by the people whom they serve and the Union leadership from whom they get their direction. It is a book of empowerment in dealing with the day to day trials and tribulations within the labor movement. In this book you will be empowered in terms of learning how to: motivate a Steward Council, effectively deal with members who get on your last nerve, understand the psychological mind-set you need when reprsenting members in grievances and arbitration, a detailed analysis of the 7 Steps of Just Cause and its proper application, and much much, more. The A.C.T.I.O.N Guide for Union Reps, Stewards, and Leaders will motivate you, excite you, agitate you, and hopefully move you into action. If this book serves any purpose at all, it is my hope that after reading it, you will view your work not as a job, but a calling--in a movement--for social change!

This book serves as an action guide for the Union Rep, Steward and Union Activist Leader whose hard work, labor and unyielding sacrafices often go un-noticed by the people whom they serve and the Union leadership from whom they get their direction. It is a book of empowerment in dealing with the day to day trials and tribulations within the labor movement. In this book you will be empowered in terms of learning how to: motivate a Steward Council, effectively deal with members who get on your last nerve, understand the psychological mind-set you need when reprsenting members in grievances and arbitration, a detailed analysis of the 7 Steps of Just Cause and its proper application, and much much, more. The A.C.T.I.O.N Guide for Union Reps, Stewards, and Leaders will motivate you, excite you, agitate you, and hopefully move you into action. If this book serves any purpose at all, it is my hope that after reading it, you will view your work not as a job, but a calling--in a movement--for social change!

For those who want to build a fighting labor movement, there are many questions to answer. How to relate to the union establishment which often does not want to fight? Whether to work in the rank and file of unions or staff jobs? How much to prioritize broader class demands versus shop floor struggle? How to relate to foundation-funded worker centers and alternative union efforts? And most critically, how can we revive militancy and union power in the face of corporate power and a legal system set up against us? Class struggle unionism is the belief that our union struggle exists within a larger struggle between an exploiting billionaire class and the working class which actually produces the goods and services in society. Class struggle unionism looks at the employment transaction as inherently exploitative. While workers create all wealth in society, the outcome of the wage employment transaction is to separate workers from that wealth and create the billionaire class. From that simple proposition flows a powerful and radical form of unionism. Historically, class struggle unionists placed their workplace fights squarely within this larger fight between workers and the owning class. Viewing unionism in this way produces a particular type of unionism which both fights for broader class issues but is also rooted in workplace-based militancy. Drawing on years of labor activism and study of labor tradition Joe Burns outlines the key set of ideas common to class struggle unionism and shows how these ideas can create a more militant, democtractic and fighting labor movement.

Organizing Matters demonstrates the interplay between two distinct logics of labour’s collective action: on the one hand, workers coming together, usually at their place of work, entrusting the union to represent their interests and, on the other hand, social bargaining in which the trade union constructs labour’s interests from the top down. The book investigates the tensions and potential complementarities between the two logics through the combination of a strong theoretical framework and an extensive qualitative case study of trade union organizing and recruitment in four countries – Austria, Germany, Israel and the Netherlands. These countries still utilize social-wide bargaining but find it necessary to draw and develop strategies transposed from Anglo-American countries in response to continuously declining membership.