Journey for Justice

Journey for Justice
Author: Gayle Romasanta
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2018-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9781732199323

This book, written by historian Dawn Bohulano Mabalon with writer Gayle Romasanta, richly illustrated by Andre Sibayan, tells the story of Larry Itliong's lifelong fight for a farmworkers union, and the birth of one of the most significant American social movements of all time, the farmworker's struggle, and its most enduring union, the United Farm Workers.

Militant Labor in the Philippines

Militant Labor in the Philippines
Author: Lois A. West
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1997
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781566394918

Using extensive interviews and first-hand observations, West traces the KMU's rise and eventual fragmentation in a time of economic and political crisis.

Organizing Insurgency

Organizing Insurgency
Author: Immanuel Ness
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021
Genre: Collective bargaining
ISBN: 9780745343594

Workers in the Global South are doomed through economic imperialism to carry the burden of the entire world. While these workers appear isolated from the Global North, they are in fact deeply integrated into global commodity chains and essential to the maintenance of global capitalism. Looking at contemporary case studies in India, the Philippines and South Africa, this book affirms the significance of political and economic representation to the struggles of workers against deepening levels of poverty and inequality that oppress the majority of people on the planet. Immanuel Ness shows that workers are eager to mobilise to improve their conditions, and can achieve lasting gains if they have sustenance and support from political organisations. From the Dickensian industrial zones of Delhi to the agrarian oligarchy on the island of Mindanao, a common element remains – when workers organise they move closer to the realisation of socialism, solidarity and equality.

Workers, Unions, and Global Capitalism

Workers, Unions, and Global Capitalism
Author: Rohini Hensman
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 585
Release: 2011-01-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231519567

While it's easy to blame globalization for shrinking job opportunities, dangerous declines in labor standards, and a host of related discontents, the "flattening" of the world has also created unprecedented opportunities for worker organization. By expanding employment in developing countries, especially for women, globalization has formed a basis for stronger workers' rights, even in remote sites of production. Using India's labor movement as a model, Rohini Hensman charts the successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses, of the struggle for workers' rights and organization in a rich and varied nation. As Indian products gain wider acceptance in global markets, the disparities in employment conditions and union rights between such regions as the European Union and India's vast informal sector are exposed, raising the issue of globalization's implications for labor. Hensman's study examines the unique pattern of "employees' unionism," which emerged in Bombay in the 1950s, before considering union responses to recent developments, especially the drive to form a national federation of independent unions. A key issue is how far unions can resist protectionist impulses and press for stronger global standards, along with the mechanisms to enforce them. After thoroughly unpacking this example, Hensman zooms out to trace the parameters of a global labor agenda, calling for a revival of trade unionism, the elimination of informal labor, and reductions in military spending to favor funding for comprehensive welfare and social security systems.

Reworking Race

Reworking Race
Author: Moon-Kie Jung
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2010-02-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0231135351

In the middle decades of the twentieth century, Hawai'i changed rapidly from a conservative oligarchy firmly controlled by a Euro-American elite to arguably the most progressive part of the United States. Spearheading the shift were tens of thousands of sugar, pineapple, and dock workers who challenged their powerful employers by joining the left-led International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union. In this theoretically innovative study, Moon-Kie Jung explains how Filipinos, Japanese, Portuguese, and others overcame entrenched racial divisions and successfully mobilized a mass working-class movement. He overturns the unquestioned assumption that this interracial effort traded racial politics for class politics. Instead, the movement "reworked race" by incorporating and rearticulating racial meanings and practices into a new ideology of class. Through its groundbreaking historical analysis, Reworking Race radically rethinks interracial politics in theory and practice.

Philip Vera Cruz

Philip Vera Cruz
Author: Craig Scharlin
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2011-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0295802952

Filipino farmworkers sat down in the grape fields of Delano, California, in 1965 and began the strike that brought about a dramatic turn in the long history of farm labor struggles in California. Their efforts led to the creation of the United Farm Workers union under Cesar Chavez, with Philip Vera Cruz as its vice-president and highest-ranking Filipino officer. Philip Vera Cruz (1904–1994) embodied the experiences of the manong generation, an enormous wave of Filipino immigrants who came to the United States between 1910 and 1930. Instead of better opportunities, they found racial discrimination, deplorable living conditions, and oppressive labor practices. In his deeply reflective and thought-provoking oral memoir, Vera Cruz explores the toll these conditions took on both families and individuals. Craig Scharlin and Lilia V. Villanueva met Philip Vera Cruz in 1974 as volunteers in the construction of Agbayani Village, the United Farm Workers retirement complex in Delano, California. This oral history, first published in 1992, is the product of hundreds of hours of interviews. Elaine H. Kim teaches Asian American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context.

Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement

Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement
Author: William E. Forbath
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0674037081

Why did American workers, unlike their European counterparts, fail to forge a class-based movement to pursue broad social reform? Was it simply that they lacked class consciousness and were more interested in personal mobility? In a richly detailed survey of labor law and labor history, William Forbath challenges this notion of American “individualism.” In fact, he argues, the nineteenth-century American labor movement was much like Europe’s labor movements in its social and political outlook, but in the decades around the turn of the century, the prevailing attitude of American trade unionists changed. Forbath shows that, over time, struggles with the courts and the legal order were crucial to reshaping labor’s outlook, driving the labor movement to temper its radical goals.