Organizing for Power: Building a 21st Century Labor Movement in Boston

by Aviva Chomsky, Steve Striffler

Overview

Boston’s economy has become defined by a disconcerting trend that has intensified throughout much of the United States since the 2008 recession. Economic growth now delivers remarkably few benefits to large sectors of the working class – a phenomenon that is particularly severe for immigrants, people of color, and women. Labor in 21^st Century Boston explores this nation-wide phenomenon of “unshared growth” by focusing on Boston, a city that is famously liberal, relatively wealthy, and increasingly difficult for working people (who service the city’s needs) to actually live in.

Labor in 21^st Century Boston is the only comprehensive analysis of labor and popular mobilizing in Boston today, the volume contributes to a growing body of academic and popular literature that examines urban America, racial and economic inequality, labor and immigration, and the right-wing assault on working people.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642596458
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	03/02/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Aviva Chomsky is professor of history at Salem State University in Massachusetts. Her recent books include They Take Our Jobs! And 20 Other Myths about Immigration; Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal; A History of the Cuban Revolution. She has been active in Latin America solidarity and immigrant rights movements since the 1980s.

Steve Striffler is Director of the Labor Research Center and Professor of Anthropology at UMass Boston

 

Table of Contents

Introduction: Race, Immigration, and Labor in Boston Aviva Chomsky Steve Striffer 1

Part I Labor, Power, and Inequality in Boston

1 Unshared Growth: Earners and Earnings Inequality in Boston Before and After the Great Recession Randy Albelda Aimee Bell-Pasht, MA Urata Blakaj, MA Trevor Mattos, MA 23

2 Boston's Public Sector and the Fight for Union Survival Enid Eckstein 41

3 A Tangle of Exclusion: Boston's Black Working Class and the Struggle for Racial and Economic Justice Aviva Chomsky 59

Part II Boston's Workers and Unions Confront the Twenty-First Century

4 It's Not in the Water: Surviving the Neoliberal Onslaught in Lynn, Massachusetts An interview Jeff Crosby Aviva Chomsky (April 26, 2018) 83

5 If We Don't Get It, Shut it Down!: University Cafeteria-Worker Organizing, the Information Economy, and Boston's Inequality Problem Carlos Aramayo 99

6 Non-tenure-track Faculty: On the Vanguard of a Renaissance in the Boston Labor Movement? Amy Todd 115

7 Raise Up Massachusetts: Experiment in a New, Universal Labor Movement Harris Gruman 133

8 Coalition Building in the Age of Trump?: Lessons from the Solidarity School Eric Larson 151

9 Immigrants and Worker Centers in Boston in the Shadow of Trump Aviva Chomsky 167

10 Policy Group on Tradeswomen's Issues: A Collaborative Learning Community Crushing the Barriers to Women's Careers in the Construction Trades Susan Moir Elizabeth Skidmore 185

11 Organizing under Criminalization: Policing and Sex Workers' Rights in Rhode Island Bella Robinson Elena Shih 201

12 Conclusion Erik Loomis

Notes 225

Index 249