Get hold of Jane McAlevey’s new book about the labor movement

This is a bit of an unusual request, but one I think you will thank me for later. My good friend, Jane McAlevey, has a forthcoming book titled, “Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell),” being published by Verso Press in this month. The actual book release date is November 13th. I’d love it if you would consider buying at least one copy, if not more, and doing so between now and the release date of November 13th.  The more advance sales the better for all future sales (early sales influences a slew of key publishers who study these trends). If you have 3 minutes to go to Amazon Customer Review section and write even just a one sentence review saying something positive about the book that would be extremely helpful as well (check out the book’s impressive endorsements below). These crazy metrics matter more than you think.

 

Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) is about her decade helping workers in the US form unions and win great contracts—all at a time when most labor leaders thought this to be impossible. The fast-paced campaigns discussed in the book translate into an informative and engaging read. The book outlines a new vision for unions in the USA that benefits all working people. It is filled with lessons about how we can challenge the forces of greed who are trying to balance the worst economy on the backs of those already hardest hit—the working class (be they unemployed or employed; poor or precarious), and the more fragile parts of the professional/managerial class.

 

If you go to Amazon, you can pre-order the book now. It will be available in a Kindle edition as well as in hardcover.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Expectations

 

An alternative is to go to your local book store and ask them to order it for you before the November 13th release date.

 

Here are just a few comments by some of the book’s early endorsers:

 

[Yours truly…] Bill Fletcher, Jr., author of “They’re Bankrupting Us!”: And 20 Other Myths About Unions:

“This book is gripping, funny, sad, and very thought-provoking  Jane uses her own experiences in a movement that has been undergoing dramatic changes–within a workforce that has undergone even greater changes–to suggest to the reader the necessity and potential for a transformation of the union movement into a real labor movement.  Once I started reading it, there was no stopping.”

 

Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed:

“Raising Expectations is a breath-taking trip through the union-organizing scene of America in the  21st century. In the battles McAlevey recounts, hardly anyone comes out standing tall. But her story, along with those of so many brave health care workers, fills me with hope.”

 

Van Jones, author of Rebuild the Dream:

“This book renews my faith that organizing works. It calls for a new kind of unionism and makes a compelling case for a new vision for the American labor movement. In the ‘whole worker theory’ that McAlevey tested and retested in real life campaigns, all the issues negatively impacting the poor, working and middle class become the cause of unions, not simply wages and narrowly defined workplace conditions. At a time when climate change is wreaking havoc at home and abroad and communities of color are becoming the vital center of progressive social change, this book offers one path to building a movement that can and must tackle many issues. Raising Expectations is so refreshing because it aspires to tell us how we can rebuild a movement that can win.”

 

Frances Fox Piven, author of Poor Peoples Movements:

“This book casts a bright light on the problems of American unions.  Jane McAlevey gives us an on-the-ground account of the obstacles the union hierarchy throws in the path of a bold and energetic organizing effort that scored a string of brilliant successes before the hierarchy cracked down. We need to read this book and learn its lessons partly for what it tells us is wrong about unions, but also because it demonstrates that good organizers can in fact succeed.  That message is heartening because the simple truth is that we can’t rebuild a democratic left in the United States without a revived labor movement.”

 

 

One thought on “Get hold of Jane McAlevey’s new book about the labor movement

  1. book purchased. thanks for the heads up. this is exactly the type of book I’ve been looking for as a young organizer and student of unions.

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