Reading, Writing, and Union-Building

[Omaha Steve]

http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/reading-writing-and-union-building/

Posted on April 12, 2009 by dsalaborblogmoderator

By Steve Early

“It’s a well-established fact,” reports The New York Times Book Review, “that Americans are reading fewer books than they used to.” (1) According to the National Endowment for the Arts, more than 50% of those surveyed haven’t cracked a book in the previous year. In labor circles, the percentage of recent readers may be even smaller. Eric Lee, the UK-based founder of Labour Start, recalls an encounter he had, a few years ago, at a union conference in Chicago. There, a “labor intellectual” was “bemoaning the fact that even the most intelligent and best-informed union leaders he knew simply did not read the books that they should be reading, if they read any books at all.”

“Even though there are millions of union members,” Lee notes, “the books aimed at unionists are never listed” on best-seller lists. “If you’re a gardener or a cook or a movie-goer, the books targeted at you may sell in the tens of thousands. History books are sometimes big best sellers-but not books about labor history.”

Lee’s own on-line promotion of labor books notwithstanding , he now offers the following advice to authors seeking large audiences:

“Don’t write books about and for trade unionists. Our movement does many things well, but one thing we do not do well is buy and read books that are written for us.”
(2)

As evidenced by a forthcoming Monthly Review collection of labor-related “literary journalism” (available in May, 2009), I’ve long been an “optimist of the will,” rather than a “pessimist of the intellect,” on the subject of reading, writing, and union-building.(3) I agree with Lee that unions need to do a much better job connecting labor writers to readers. Yet, in my experience, the work of labor educators in this area has actually become easier in recent years. That’s because management’s unrelenting assault on the pay, benefits, and job conditions of millions of workers has had the salutary effect of raising political consciousness. Within organized labor–an institution not known in the past for the richness of its intellectual life-the marketplace for new ideas has grown even as union density has shrunk.

Labor activists today are often desperate for any information, insight, or inspiration that can aid the difficult task of re-building unions. While many labor education programs continue to focus on developing basic union skills, more shop stewards, local officers, and union staffers realize they need to think critically and analytically about “the big picture” in their occupation, industry, and society. The challenges facing 15 million union members-and eight times as many unorganized workers-are a product of past workplace struggles, won and lost, and powerful economic and political forces that need to be analyzed and better understood. As Lee argues, trade unionists can even find out “what works and what doesn’t” by studying “the experience of others in our globalized world.”
Labor Books Mini-boom

FULL story at link.

[dcsmart]

1. Thanks for posting a story from the DSA labor site K&R