Solidarity Forever! Reading List for a Wise New Working Class
9 min read
RabbleRouse Reads – Labor Day 2024
RabbleRouse News’ local bibliophile, Henry (Book)Case has delivered the 2024 Labor Day Reading List. Solidarity Forever!
Hi, Henry (Book)Case back again. I volunteered to put together a Labor Day reading list, so fill up your Francis Perkins mug with your beverage of choice and let’s have a go at some of the stacks of books that have been living by my couch recently.
We’ll have a look at some of the history of the labor movement and put that in a bit of a larger context, but I think it’s hard to discuss the labor movement without also covering song, and some wider concepts of mutual aid. So let’s dive in!
I want to start with Erik Loomis’ excellent A History Of America in Ten Strikes. If you start with that book only, you will get an amazing perspective of US labor history, seeing not only the conditions leading up to strikes, but some of what it took to organize. One of the things that struck me in recent readings is how that labor is really a reflection of our democracy at work. I picked this one up after completing Matt Stoller’s Goliath (as mentioned in the summer reading list) and then Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s The Big Myth (they of Merchants of Doubt fame). A History Of America in Ten Strikes really tied these books all together as I saw that what labor is fighting for has an uphill battle against not just the structure of capitalism but the very stories that embed themselves in our image of ourselves and how we define democracy. Phew! So, yeah, those 3 books are a great triple bill.
If you want to dig into a bit more traditional labor history, I think Philip Dray’s There Is Power In A Union, or Kim Kelly’s Fight Like Hell are a good jumping off point. You will probably want a trip to the library (as if we ever need an excuse) to source John T. Dunlop’s 1958 fairly academic look from the late 50’s at Industrial Relations Systems, which covers the minutiae of what labor relationships looked like around the negotiating table. Only for the very dedicated.
John Womack Jr’s Labor Power and Strategy and Stanton Lynd and Andrej Grubacic’s Wobblies & Zapatistas are 2 different conversations about how we need to keep our arms open to a wide group of collaborative partners in the struggle. Stanton Lynd discusses the need to “lead by obeying” and the importance of listening over talking that I think are particularly important.
I think this is a good point to switch from history to song (although we’ll approach the history of the songs as well.)
“May there always be a song in your heart”
The somewhat now frayed copy of The Fireside Book of Favorite American Songs from 1952 that my grandmother inscribed “May there always be a song in your heart” to my mom has more than 100 pages of songs under the “Conflict and Expansion: from 1850” heading, which includes Rev. Jesse H. Jones classic line from “Eight Hours”:
“Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will.”
Although the initial Eight Hour Day strikes didn’t succeed, articulating the demands in song became an art form with the I.W.W. (the Wobblies) and in particular, songs from Joe Hill rang out from many a picket line. Two books: Franklin Rosemont’s Joe Hill The IWW & The Making Of A Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture and The Big Red Songbook (Rosemont was one of the editors, along with Archie Green, David Roediger, and Salvatore Salerno) are a great deep dive into both the songs, and the era that birthed them.
Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People
Hard Hitting Songs For Hard-Hit People, the collaboration from Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger is a classic worth having! A lot of these songs relied on traditional melodies, often from familiar hymns (or familiar to those at the time.). Mat Callahan and Yvonne Moore’s Working Class Heroes is kind of a great overview that draws from some of these sources. And if you’re traveling light, the IWW Little Red Songbook tucks away into a corner of your pack so you can lead people in song the next time the airlines screw up a bunch of flights (if you read the 3 books at the start, you’ll also have a lot to talk with your fellow strandees about, too.)
I’d like to talk about some of various labor issues (or labour issues, in some cases) that affect musicians. I believe there is a warmth in RabbleRouse News’ heart for musicians, so let’s delve into some things around working musicians.
Musicians Unite
We’ll hop over the pond to look at Players’ Work Time by John Williamson for a more than 100 year span of the British Musicians’ Union, and then Michael James Roberts’ Tell Tchaikovsky The News which looks at how the American Federation of Musicians lost it’s bargaining power with the record industry. Both chronicle some of the issues involved when an established union has to deal with how the culture evolves around them. That’s a challenge for many labor organizations: how to keep the structure both flexible and relevant. The music industry saw a shift over the last 30 or so years as the mechanism that it’s workers could count on for income shifted significantly – from enough work at the local level for live music to allow a musician to build up to a recording career, and then to tour to support that, to one where almost all of the income must be derived from touring, which has brought the stress from needing to be on the road and physically playing in different venues regularly to the fore.
Tamir Embleton’s Touring And Mental Health covers a wide range of insights and approaches to deal with the realities of this that it should probably be in a lot of road cases. If you are a touring musician, please reach out, there may be ways to connect you with a copy. I’m saying that without know what the response will be, so please be considerate.
Gig Work
And last in this group of books, Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Siri’s Ghost Work explores some of the aspects of the gig work that represent some of the plumbing for the large tech companies that we may or may not think about. I’m grouping this with the discussion of work and organizing by musicians because for many musicians, the gig economy is not all about the gigs you do, but all of the side hustles needed to get by. This applies to many many other industries as well.
So let’s look at a different stack of books. This one is around some different perspectives on working in general:
Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor is an in-depth look at working conditions in nineteenth century London. If you, like me, were always amazed at how Sherlock Holmes could look at how somebody’s shoes were scuffed and deduce their occupation, or if you are researching a book or movie of that time period, this is for you. Studs (“our man in Chicago”) Terkel’s amazing Working is a deeply American, 1970s look: “People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do.” This was my dad’s copy. I think it would make him happy to see it in this discussion.
The next three cover what is just the grinding reality for most of us: David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs (work so pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that the employee can’t justify it’s existence), Work Won’t Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe which looks at why we believe that certain work is not really work and all of the side effects from that belief, and Jeffrey Pfeffer’s Dying For A Paycheck delves into toxic workplaces, and the impact of the gig economy and economic instability (he lays a lot of this at the feet of poor management choices.)
The Work of Art
The Work of Art by Adam Moss is an fascinating look at just what is involved in being creative. He looks at an amazing range of creative endeavors: writers, painters, filmmakers, journalists, cookbook creators, sandcastle builders. As many RabbleRousers may be yelling at the screen right now: “Artists are hard working!” A good book to help you decide what you want to do before you grow up, regardless of how many decades you take. (Some of us never grow up.) You don’t have to decide, but you will have to work at it.
The Soundtrack of Solidarity
Alrighty – time for some music to listen to and movies to watch. Have some friends over and make it a potluck!
Two songs from Margo Price’s 2017 album All American Made. Check out the whole album if you can.
Two albums from Otis Gibbs – Joe Hill’s Ashes and Grandpa Walked A Picket Line.
He’s a great storyteller too – chase down his YouTube channel for some wonderful interviews and stories.
Ry Cooder’s Into The Purple Valley probably deserves a spin. Decidedly Americana tilt to this particular list. What other RabbleRousing suggestions would you add?
For the movies:
1913 Massacre – Ken Ross and Louis V. Galdieri’s film based on the Woody Guthrie ballad about the Christmas Eve massacre of striking Calumet Michigan’s copper miners.
Salt Of The Earth – the 1954 film based on the 1951 Empire Zinc Company strike in Grant County NM. This dramatic rendition explores both the discrimination that triggered the strike as well as struggles of gender roles of the striking workers. This film was blacklisted, and many of the creators were themselves blacklisted as well.
Who Needs Sleep – Haskell Wexler’s very personal 2006 documentary about the impact of long hours on film crews.
A couple of science fiction movies that deal with work in a way that turns out to probably be a lot less fiction than you might imagine.
Sleep Dealer – this 2008 debut film from Alex River is a personal favorite with several interesting twists on working remote, the rise (and explotation) of creator culture, and a look at water exploitation.
Lapsis – Noah Hutton creates an alternate present exploring the gig economy and some tech that fits a bit between crypto and something AI-ish. From 2020.
And as a closing note to this segment (but there’s still a little more on this after this!), Perfect Days – Wim Wenders’ 2023 post pandemic gentle look at living in the now, while cleaning toilets in Tokyo. Work is only what you make it.
We Look Out For Each Other
I want to wrap up the list with a couple of books about mutual aid, because really all we have is each other. No matter where your labor struggles take you, when you look out for the people around you, and they look out for you, it’s a beautiful thing.
The collection of essays, edited by Wren Awry, in Nourishing Resistance, provide perspective on some of the people who are cooking to feed those on the front lines. It starts with the question “is there a food or meal that transports you to a memory of organizing, resistance, or mutual aid?” I love that! Food and memory are so intertwined, and when it connects you to a time you did something for someone else, it’s the best. (For me, that would be cooking big pots of vegetable stew, rice, and beans with the Food Not Bombs folks to feed to homeless people around Pershing Square.)
I don’t know where I acquired Weavers of Dreams in my travels, but this history of the Rochdale Pioneers cooperative store in Lancashire on the edge of the Pennines by David J. Thompson is included because sometimes the labor movements are not always about struggling against but rather how we can band together to create with.
Recipes For the Union!
Let’s close out with the Union Cookbook, from the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers Of America. Out of New York, from 1973. Maybe you can imagine your mom/grandma/uncle/neighbor sharing some of these recipes – the food sensibilities may have changed in 50 years, but if you’ve ever pulled a cookbook like this off a shelf, there is a palpable sense of community – it likely has the contributor’s name as part of the dishes name, and you can get a sense of the mixture of cultures in the community. (The Library of Congress has a great archive of community cookbooks)
I hope this list carries you far beyond just the one day celebration of Labor Day, and that you are encouraged to read, share, debate, and maybe even pass along some of this to others. It’s really that spirit of not only shared struggle but as much a sense of shared joy that you pass around as you celebrate.
Henry (Book)Case
Labor Day, 2024
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