No comments about The Gloves-off Economy: Workplace Standards at the Bottom of America's Labor Market (Labor and Employment Relations Association).

No comments about Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers.

No comments about The Bigness Complex: Industry, Labor, and Government in the American Economy, Second Edition (Stanford Economics & Finance).

3 comments about Love the Work, Hate the Job: Why America's Best Workers Are Unhappier Than Ever.

1. "Love the Work, Hate the Job" is a book that basically discusses how the relationship between employers and employees has dramatically changed over the years. It all began in the early days with a master-slave approach, then turned into making the work environment as pleasant as possible with the implementation of "human management", and finally due to global competition and other related evil, stepped backwards by companies starting to treat employees as disposable resources, or "costs to be cut instead of assets to be invested in", as the book mentions.
   
   It is claimed that companies are today more focused on costs reductions instead of making quality products, putting their trust built over years into serious risk. Innovative and creative projects that is often brought by the most competent professionals inside the companies are often blocked by "bean counters" who have no vision of the technology evolution and think that expensive investments are just useless for the short run, completely ignoring the benefits for the long run. If one informed reader thinks about what is said in this book, he/she will certainly have to agree with it. Just look around and see that even though we live in a high-tech environment with possibilities that no one has ever predicted before, it is often easy to buy brand new - but defective - products supported by an awful customer service. One might even say - and not without reason - that there's nothing like the old products. They might not be as fancy as today's ones, but used to work like a Swiss watch.
   
   Terrible and disastrous modern management practices based on maximizing profitability at all costs (including disrespectful treatment to the scientific and professional workers rights and benefits as employees) caused even the elitist white collar professionals to unionize in certain industries, like high-tech. The middle of this book puts a great emphasis on the everlasting tense relationship between WashTech and Microsoft. Revelations under this theme that can be found on the book is just astonishingly unbelievable, and sadly represents the reality of a great deal of workers today.
   
   Incompetent managers and corporate greed is making skilled professionals to have a great sense of dissatisfaction in their functions, and the feeling of being exploited and ripped off is constant. They love their work, their knowledge, the challenges, the solutions they can provide, but stays trapped into a world that dictates them what to do with no right to argue. When pathetic corporate policies fail, it's just easy to blame it on globalization. What could be an opportunity for growth and innovation, is used as an excuse for their bad moves and desperately unreasonable tactics. Some youngsters feel unmotivated to pursue tech jobs because they know their function could easily be outsourced somewhere else. Technology, as most people are aware of, is one of the key drivers to the prosperity of a country, and all of this know-how is just being given away.
   
   I have the feeling that almost everybody who decides to pick this book to read will relate to it at some point or another, if not in all. That's a good reading experience. It tells that I am not alone on this situation, neither are you.



2. I was really looking forward to this book. Many of my career clients can relate to the title. They like what they're doing but get frustrated by the company or the boss.
   
   Readers will be surprised if they choose this book based on title and jacket The book'is really about frusrations among whole classes of workers who used to be considered professional. Author Kusnet seems to think unions represent the prime resource to help.
   
   Kusnet begins with a summary of the 1999 Seattle labor riots. suggests this riot "foreshadows" future labor struggles. But nearly ten years later, not much has changed. For example, the model of hiring a core of permanent workers and a large force of temps (who receive no benefits) seems increasingly popular.
   
   I don't envy part-timers. Kusnet describes their frustration: no meaningful evaluations, no relationship to their employers who can seem cruelly indifferent.
   
   But let's get real: these arrangements offer solid economic benefits to the hiring company. Companies aren't nice to employees out of kindness. They're nice when they want to get and keep hard-to-find employees.
   
   A second category of unhappy workers: nurses and other professionals who can't do their job the way they want. Nurses are too busy to provide proper care, let alone comfort their patients. Doctors are caught up in mountains of paperwork.
   
   Kusnet suggests the answer comes from unions. His book is featured on the website of "Wash Tech," the Washington Alliance of Technological Workers.
   
   But why should workers expect unions to help? Working in a union shop is like having 2 bosses: your company and your union.
   
   Unions make deals on behalf of employees - and they can trade outcomes (OK, you can fire Mary, but we want to protect Ted...) The union leaders decide how much effort they'll put into fighting a case.
   
   Unions tend to be very close to company officers. A Fortune 500 VP told me about a deal with a union president, where they jointly pretended to engage in all-night bargaining but actually slept. Many railroad employees felt their unions sold them out, as new work rules were implemented.
   
   Kusnet argues that professionals want to do their jobs. Unions often act aggressively to protect the weakest, least competent, and least marketable employees.
   
   Unions can't do anything about economic conditions. Thousands of unionized airline and auto industry employees have been laid off. Insurance companies have created at least some of the health care crisis.
   
   Rather than take on the fight with Microsoft, hospitals and other big companies, I would encourage workers to focus on becoming more marketable. When you're marketable, you can say "No thanks" to those temp offers. It's not easy but also not impossible. You have to plan and strategize.
   
   If you're looking for a thoughtful, insightful discussion of what's wrong with today's jobs, I recommend William Bridges's book, JobShift Bridges recommends a different career model: Always think of yourself as a contractor. Keep your allegiance to your craft, not the company.
   
   Sure, we need changes in infrastructure. If we could separate health care from employment, a lot of these problems would go away. And rather than look for handouts from unions, I'd like to see legislation that smoothes the path to self-employment.



3. This is a "must-read" for workers and employers, told by a master storyteller. The author offers insights into work life in modern America through interesting stories of people and the companies for which they work. You will see behind-the-scenes what's really going on in Microsoft, Boeing, and other top corporations. So gracefully written, this book is a joy to read. Give yourself and treat and get it today.

4 comments about The Wobblies: The Story of the IWW and Syndicalism in the United States.

1. A great book for readers interested in labor, social, and radical history. This book is excellent in revealing the clash between socialists, anarchists, communists, and industrial unionists. The IWW was the home of American radicals from 1905-1930. From Eugene V. Debs of the Socialist Party of America & the American Railway Union to Daniel DeLeon of the Socialist Labor Party & the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, from John Reed of the Communist Labor Party to William Z. Foster of the Communist Party of America, from Big Bill Haywood of the Western Federation of Miners to Lucy Parsons - widow of Albert (Haymarket Square Martyr), from Mother Jones to Victor Berger, and notable sympathizers such as Hellen Keller and Margaret Sanger. Check out this great book on revolutionary unionism today.



2. The Card Catalog Description for this book is very misleading. It treats the Wobblies as if they are a thing of the past, whereas in reality the IWW is still very much alive and working for the same ideals it has always worked for.



3. The definitive work on the IWW has yet to have been written. If you have no real knowledge of the IWW's history, this is the best available commercial overview. This isn't to say there are many flaws in it, there are. But it does mention the IWW as an international movement. It acknowledges the IWW was a going concern in the 20s and 30s and that it continues to exist today.

   If you want an even better history, search out "The IWW: it's first 50 years" by Fred Thompson. It is tragically out of print, but is available in many libraries. This an official history of the IWW, but is a acknowledged labor classic for its honesty and even handedness. Its only weakness is its brevity because the IWW was too poor to print a larger volume.




4. A well documented book, that is slow going at the start,but gives adecent report on the IWW. I think the author was a little weak on the genesis of the union, but he gives a good feeling for the times in the blow-by-blow actions by and against the IWW. The book was written in the late 1960's,
   but really has a conservative edge more like you'd read about the 1950's. A good primer on the IWW--it got me interested in finding out more!

5 comments about The Revolution Betrayed.

1. In my humble opinion, Trotsky's "Revolution Betrayed" is the best analysis of not only the Russian revolution, but revolutions in general. I have studied revolutions in the modern world quite extensively, and re-reading this book at this particular time in history was a true eye-opener - again. To be simplistic, revolutions do not provide lasting success when nothing is to be gained. Those who rise against existing power expect to be rewarded, not with poverty, but with a certain degree of wealth and privilege. If there is nothing to be distributed, then what is the use in fighting? Stalin unfortunately stepped in at the right place, at the right time. Not good for the outcome of that revolution, not good for socialism, but good for Stalin's kind of power.
   
   A few years ago I visited Komsomolsk, Stalin's "Youth" city. It was decaying, a pitiful sight to behold. Buildings on ultra-wide neglected avenues in need of repair, high weeds everywhere, crime uncontrolled. Power gone bad?
   
   Stalin and his compulsive bureaucracy were feared all over Europe. Blessed with clear early childhood memories that include the conversation of adults, I vividly remember my grandmother's fear of Stalin discussed with friends and family members. They witnessed the rise of this awful bureaucracy next door, word of the killings and the horrible brutality didn't just dribble out, it flowed out. I want to say that the Stalinist bureaucracy is unique, but all bureaucracies are designed to increase continuously and feed of themselves, and exist everywhere in the world. And people flock to them for employment, protection, security, in great masses, because bureaucracies deliver security. And if people do not fly into bureaucratic arms directly, they deal with them on a daily basis. There is no getting away from that apparatus of suffocation, nowhere.
   
   Bureaucracy does not have to be bad, and Trotsky dwells on the need for leadership from within the workers, the suppressed, creating a bureaucracy that is just and fair. Is that ever possible? I believe that capitalism and bureaucracy are a contradiction, and unless corruption reigns, they cannot coexist. What comes next?
   
   Trotsky's book raises more questions than it answers, but I am sure it was written for that purpose as well as enlightening the scholar of his interpretation of a betrayed revolution. And where do we go from here?



2. A reader of 'The Revolution Betrayed' will find invaluable insight into the 'intellectual response' of a leading Soviet politician. Trotsky was a very important contributor to the theoretical idiom which frames the 'conceptual creation' of the USSR. He had a part to play in many critical phases of the October Revolution and Civil War, organizing and propagandizing, enforcing harsh discipline and imposing his theoretical brand of Marxism on the Soviet State. His distinguished position in Lenin's party is beyond debate. Reading this text gives the reader a deeper analytical impression into the changes and transformations that occurred in the highest echelons of the Soviet bureaucracy, as Stalin began to accrue power. Indispensable reading for anybody with an interest in Russia history.



3. If one wants to understand contemporary world politics then one ought to read this book.The Russian Revolution WAS and IS the most important event of the 20th century. Trotsky, the consumate Marxist, explains to us the whole story from the inside ---looking out. I might add that as a companion to Trotsky's works one should read the British historian E.H. Carr's History of the Russian Revolution. Carr was no Marxist but gives us as a view of the revolution from the outside--- looking in.
   ET Seattle



4. I decided I wanted to explore Trotsky. I began by reading Isaac Duetscher's Prophet Armed, and then this book. In my distant past I read about the Revolution mainly through the eyes Anarchists (Emma Goldman among them), Rosa Luxembourg, and at Maknho (spelling?), and have also read a little Lenin (such as State and Revolution) for a political science college course, a long time ago. My guess and my rough experience is disciplined revolutionary elites must be filled with cadres who are focused and narrow and can bring great danger because they are eager to follow and very often do not reflect. A great movement is apt to commit acts as bad as many of the ones they fight. Revolutions and wars more often than not bring terrible things to and from all sides.
   
   I sympathize with the 1917 Russian Revolution. The orders of the day, from the Czars to the Robber Barons were unjust, not free, not equal. For the majority of people, ordidnary people who worked for a living, racial and ethnic minorities (in particular ways) throughout the world, and women have not enjoyed freedom and democracy. This is more sharpley true if we go back to 1917, and examine the world as it was then. To be sure, freedom and democracy, declared as the foundations of many countries, were never more than formal or were facades, more a decoration than a reality anywhere. So imagine having a revolution for the lower class, the proletariat, and having it be Interantionalist and universal.
   
   That is what happened in Russia, it was the first workers republic that existed for any longer than a few weeks or months. From this book and the earlier book, things did not happen well at all. These Revolutionaries had an opportunity and they took it, and this book tells the story very well of what then happened. I can gather from the whole of it that it was not quite the right place or time for it to be a good revolution. Trotsky's belief is that Socialism requires the abundance of production of the most productive Capitalist country's, so there is enough for the abundance to go around for everyone. It was also true that ounce this abundance and socialism was achieved, 'the State would begin to wilt away'. Classes are empowered by limited resources. People want to be on top where there is great need. When Socialism is achieved, authority, the police and strong armed methods of running things would not be needed because there was no one on top who had to be protected from the people below who had much less than they needed. (Just as Trotksy was proclaiming this wonderful world of human production and abundance, I immediately reflected about the limitations nature puts on us if we are not to destroy our world, but that is not a subject very many were thinking about in 1936. Back to the book Russia was not close in anyway to where such Socialism or the Revolution could succeed, and never by itself. However, it was the right place to have something different that can survive, being so huge and having the physcical attributes that buried Napoleon's army and would bury Hitler's as well. This gets to the core of Trotsky's theory of the Permanent Revolution. If the Revolution to succeed, or one that is worthy, It requires revolutions in at least some of the highest developed abundant Capitalist countries by the working class to achieve socialism, and aid poor Russia in it's development out of the pit and toward socialism.
   
   Getting back to the beginning of the Revolution. Trotsky, the devoted Revolutionary, at this point was willing to commit some brutal acts, but not more brutal than most other welders of power under similar circmstances all over the world. It appears later, still as one of the major leaders, he fought hard and vocally for better things until he was driven out of power and into exile, and continued until he was assasinated 11 years later. I think this was in keeping with whom Trotsky the man was. He was reflective and critical, and he was for a revolution for the sake of all humanity. He was against Totalitarianism and reducing art and literature to be an instrument of Regime. he was insightful enough to recognize how a priveleged bureaucracy where industry was state owned,(but where there was a great lack of abundanceand a great amount for the priveleged to have to protect) became a ruthless ruling class.
   
   One thing I recognized about the Revolution Betrayed is how it can in fact be taken more than one way. I can read between the lines how conservative supporters of the Capitalist ruling class could and did use Trotksy's very perceptive ideas for their own purposes. However Trotsky was a revolutionary Communist and he wrote in defense of Communists and the Communist revolution, and he was writing in favor of Communists such as his friend Lenin. Lenin was a very interesting man, whom I cannot judge because have not read enough of or about him. I do understand, to use an metaphor of this book, that Lenin was not like Stalin, he was not the Bonapartist face of a bureaucratic class sponsored totalitarian dictactorship. Whatever hope there is the honor and future of Communism, maybe springs from this book, which is a defense of the Communist Revolution and a comdemnation of Stalinism Totalitarianism by one of the great Communists. Maybe it stands like Atlas in keeping it from being obliterated.
   
   In closing, I cannot descibe myself as a Trotskist or any other kind of
   -IST, I do appreciate the man, but I am not going to make him into an idol to be worshipped. I also realize he was a man of war, he had a tough side. This is a very educating and worthwhile book, and I look forward to reading some more of his books. One negative, I don't know if the translator is to blame, but his style of writing is sometimes a little difficult, and I found myself having to read carefully, sometimes rereading a confusing expressed phrase to understand what he was writing.



5. The great Russian Bolshevik Leon Trotsky wore many hats in his revolutionary career. Organizer of revolutionary upheavals in 1905 and 1917 and military defender of the Soviet state in the early days. Withering political journalist and literary critic from the beginning of his career as a professional revolutionary. Soviet official in various capacities, depending on which way the political winds were blowing. Polemicist against Social Democratic revisionism and later the Stalinist degeneration of Leninism, the Bolshevik party and the Soviet state. Still later, in exile, he was the seemingly last independent defender of that Soviet state and the traditions of the Bolshevik party as Stalin turned the political landscape into a bloody battlefield in the late 1930's. Of all of these hats probably Trotsky's last struggles; to create a new international revolutionary party (the Fourth International)and trying to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia while at the same time defending the Soviet state, were the most important political battles of his life. That, in essence, is the purpose of his book the Revolution Betrayed under review here.
   
   The question of the fate of the Soviet state at various points in the 20th century may seem a rather academic question at this time, especially since the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990's. At a practical level it is hard to fault that argument. But let me make a little point here. Until the Gorbachev-directed political thaw in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980's the possibilities of discussing Trotsky's book about what when wrong "back in the days" was either done clandestinely or not at all. I, however, remember being at a meeting during that period where a Russian émigré spoke about the then current situation in Russia. He mentioned, in passing, that he had recently read Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed and found that the arguments made by him in the mid-1930's about the nature of Soviet society, the state governmental apparatus and the Communist Party sounded like they could have been made in the mid-1980's. This, my friends, is why we still read this little work.
   
   Obviously some of Trotsky's argument is historically obsolete, even assuming conditions of a future socialist revival. The specific problem of Russia as the first workers state having been created in a predominantly agrarian society, then isolated by world imperialism and not augmented by revolutions in the capitalist West that would have given Soviet officials the life line they needed to turn that society around will not be replicated in the 21st century. What is not obsolete in Trotsky's argument, and is germane today in the struggle to turn China around, are the questions of the purposes that a workers state are created for, the nature of economic policy and who will guide it, the role of pro-socialist political parties and how to allocate cultural resources so that the goal- and this is important- of a stateless society gets a fair chance at implementation. Thus Trotsky here, donning the enlightened Soviet official hat that he never really took off even in exile, provides textbook examples of what to do and not to do to push socialism forward even under conditions of isolation.
   
   If I was asked today what part of this document still has relevance I would pick out that chapter that deals with the question of Soviet Thermidor. All great revolutions, and the Russian Revolution was a great revolution, have contained ebbs and flows during the revolutionary period and then after the consolidation of power by the new regime have fallen back, not to the ways of the old regime but back nevertheless. One would have thought in 1921, let's say, that once the question of the existence of the Soviet state was essentially settled then the push toward socialism, even in isolation and given the vast economic dislocations of World War I and the Civil War, would be headed forward. That was not the case and Trotsky does a great service by putting the reasons for that, political as well as personal in perspective, particularly the responses of the Soviet working class to the revolutionary defeats in Europe and Asia in the 1920's. That said, where does this book fit into your list of Trotsky readings. Not first, that place is taken by his three-volume History of the Russian Revolution- the high point. But sometime shortly after that you need to address the issues presented in this book to see what went wrong and why.

1 comments about The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America).

1. A brilliant novel that sets precedents.

1 comments about Proletarians of the North : Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917-1933 (Latinos in American Society and Culture, #1).

1. Zaragosa Vargas has done an outstanding job in researching and explaining the historical bond Mexican workers have with the United States. His chapters on migration and the causes of northern migration from Mexico, as well as the hardhitting chapter about the plight of Mexican autoworkers in Detroit, in 1927 and subsequent years is non-biased and telling of this author's passion to fully explain, without political or racial bias. I highly recommend this book. I have studied race and population migrations to the United States, and those dynamics which influence and indeed sought and continue to exploit these populations. I was impressed with Vargas' handling of Diego Rivera and Fried Kahlo. The author does not bend to one side or the other of the political debate surrounding communism' repatration or the expectations of the Mexican worker. A fine text and a job well done. 5 stars and a hardy recommedation for PROLETARIANS OF THE NORTH: ZARAGOSA VARGAS.

1 comments about The Migrant Project: Contemporary California Farm Workers.

1. Reminiscent of both Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives and James Agee and Walker Evans' Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Rick Nahmias' The Migrant Project is a revelatory and provocative book. Nahmias' black and white photographs of California migrant workers are haunting and starkly beautiful. The grinding poverty and arduous workplace conditions these people endure is heartbreaking and infuriating, yet their strength and dignity emerges in Nahmias' images and direct, unaffected prose. It's a deeply humanistic and necessary work of art that stays with you. Highly recommended!

1 comments about Busy Family's Guide to Money (USA TODAY/Nolo Series).

1. Way too much going out and not enough coming in - that is essentially the summary describing most people's money troubles. "The Busy Family's Guide to Money: Simple Steps to Financial Security" is what it says it is - a guide for families for which every day seems like some variation of chaos for them, to get their finances in order. With plenty of easy to follow advice to how to start saving money, getting the most out of your mortgage, simple investment tips, tax breaks, and so much more to help families put themselves back on the right track. Deftly composed, "The Busy Family's Guide to Money: Simple Steps to Financial Security" is highly recommended for community library finance collections and for any head of a busy household.