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Kim Moody, US Labor in Trouble and Transition: The Failure of Reform from Above, the Promise of Revival from Below.

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Kim Moody, US Labor in Trouble and Transition: The Failure of Reform from Above, the Promise of Revival from Below (London: Verso 2007)

IN MARCH 2005, hundreds of tomato pickers in Immokalee, Florida won their four-year campaign to secure a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked for Taco Bell. The raise, which doubled the labourers' wages, was attained after a campaign that included nation-wide informational tours by the workers and their representatives, a month-long hunger strike, three general sympathy strikes, a public relations campaign targeting Taco Bell and its giant parent company Yum! Brands, and most importantly, a national boycott against Taco Bell itself. Like the United Farm Workers' boycotts of the 1960s this struggle involved massive outpourings of community support from church, student, and social justice groups. By March 2005 the farm labourers had gained all their demands from Taco Bell; later they brought both McDonald's and Burger King to heel with similar tactics.

A year after the agreement between Taco Bell and the Immokalee pickers, on May Day 2006, upwards of six million immigrant workers participated in the "Day without Immigrants," a one-day general strike. The strike was initially called to protest a restrictive immigration bill before Congress. But it also served notice to much of the American public - including the unions - that immigrant workers possessed significant economic power, including the ability to strangle production and transportation capabilities for several key us industries. The one-day strike gave a vivid demonstration of the latent potential of militant immigrant workers, who, when equipped with the necessary resources, were able to effectively fight back against exploitation by their bosses and state oppression, in spite of the high risk of employer retailation and deportation. Like the Immokalee farm workers, the May Day strikers enjoyed a wide degree of community support, including that offered by several labour unions. Just as important was that the "Day Without Immigrants" vividly demonstrated the promise of an often overlooked segment of the us workforce to act militantly in the face of enormous pressures, and to have those acts arise from below.

Stories such as these occupy a central place in Kim Moody's welcome new book, US Labor in Trouble and Transition: The Failure of Reform from Above, the Promise of Revival from Below. These labour actions stand in stark contrast to most activity by American labour over the past three decades. These actions were strikes, the traditional best weapon of unions, and yet one that has fallen by the wayside since the early 1980s. Equally, their impetus came from below.

The Professional Air Traffic Controller Organization's (PATCO) strike of 19801981 differed greatly from the events described above. In this strike, usually cited as the turning point in the history of the American labour movement's fortunes, a concerted demonstration of working-class militancy was quashed under the heel of a united employer offensive, led, in this instance, by President Ronald Reagan. The offensive was met by an equally uniform retreat by American labour as several union leaders abandoned the strikers to twist in the wind.

Despite its significance as a major loss for the air traffic controllers and a symbol of labour's impotence, the PATCO strike was far more a symptom of a diseased labour movement than the onset of the disease itself. The labour leaders who let the unionized air traffic controllers go down to defeat had been raised during an era of post-militancy, in which rank-and-file direct action was...

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