Steve Early, Save Our Unions. Monthly Review Press (2013). $19.95 (paperback), 344 pages

Elliott-Negri, Luke

English

ScholarWorks at WMU

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare Volume 41 Issue 3 September Article 12 2014 Review of Save Our Unions. Steve Early. Reviewed by Luke Elliott-Negri Luke Elliott-Negri City University of New York, stationing@gmail.com Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw  Part of the Social Work Commons Recommended Citation Elliott-Negri, Luke (2014) "Review of Save Our Unions. Steve Early. Reviewed by Luke Elliott-Negri," The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 41 : Iss. 3 , Article 12. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol41/iss3/12 This Book Review is brought to you by the Western Michigan University School of Social Work. For more information, please contact wmu-scholarworks@wmich.edu. 191Book Reviewscreate jobs. In this he is clearly a Hooverite. And his pitiful stimulus effort showed it. Canova connects this failure of jobs creation to the backlash of the 2010 midterm elections. Had he attacked and defeated unemployment first, argues Goldberg, his reform of health care might have had more enthusiastic support.Though I have emphasized Roosevelt’s successes, this book is no hagiography. It is as alert to the failures of the New Deal as to Obama’s missed opportunities. There is still time to learn from both.Robert D. Leighninger, Jr., University of California, BerkeleySteve Early, Save Our Unions. Monthly Review Press (2013). $19.95 (paperback), 344 pages. Save Our Unions is a sprawling collection of essays, cover-ing everything from the Bread and Roses strike of 1912 to the current struggles of the British Labour Party. The text includes movie and book reviews, as well as journalistic accounts of many contemporary U.S. labor struggles, and even author Steve Early’s personal experience over many years of working for the Communication Workers of America (CWA). The book will offer practitioners a wealth of details with strategic impli-cations for ongoing efforts. Academics will find hints of theory throughout, and a series of cases with implications for long-standing debates in labor and social movement studies.The seven thematic sections are bookended by an introduc-tion and conclusion that contain a positive assessment of Sol Roselli’s National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). The union was formed in the midst of a an intra-Service Employees International Union (SEIU) conflict that came to the surface in early 2009 when the SEIU International Union placed Roselli’s massive California-based SEIU Local union under trusteeship in a successful effort to remove him from power. Indeed Early’s assessment of the conflict is woven throughout the book, and anyone curious to understand the recent labor movement civil wars—about which the author has written extensively in his book The Civil Wars in US Labor—will be thoroughly engaged. The first section of Save Our Unions addresses several cases Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, Vol. 41, Issue 3, 2014192  Journal of Sociology & Social Welfareof intra-union movements for greater democracy, including Teamsters for a Democratic Union and Minors for Democracy, analyzing the successes and failures of these projects in useful detail. Section two provides an account of the labor move-ment’s failure to come to the rescue of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) in their infamous defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan and goes on to assess the prospects for the strike’s revival today. The third section covers two seemingly disparate topics: salting—that is, union activists who get rank and file jobs in order to organize—and global campaigns that involve strategies developed in coor-dination with unions in other countries. Both tactics, Early argues, require “organizing for the long haul.” The subsequent section critically analyzes the labor move-ment’s relationship to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and healthcare reform more generally. In the fifth section, Early draws on his extensive organizing experience with the CWA to offer a detailed assessment of organized labor’s current pros-pects in the telecom industry. Section six opens with a nod to the sociologist C. Wright Mills (who is mentioned in passing several times throughout Save Our Unions), drawing on his early writing, when Mills still believed in the transformative potential of organized labor. The section assesses labor leaders past and present from William “Wimpy” Winpisinger of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) to Mary Kay Henry of SEIU. The seventh and final section offers a compel-ling general analysis of the exceptionally progressive Vermont, as well as an up-to-date assessment of the state’s success in moving forward “single payer” healthcare legislation, even as the insurance-friendly ACA continues to roll out at the na-tional level.Though there is no single unifying argument to Save Our Unions, certain themes emerge throughout, namely the im-portance of internal union democracy, the centrality of slow-building, one-on-one organizing, and the key role of militant leaders and a politically independent left in the labor move-ment’s fortunes. Early offers those interested in the U.S. labor movement a rare combination of insider detail and critical distance. And while much academic theory leans on the lan-guage of structure to explain movement outcomes, the agency Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, Vol. 41, Issue 3, 2014193Book Reviewsof labor activists and, to some extent, powerful business inter-ests, are laid bare in the text. Early is particularly concerned with the role of labor leaders and activists in the decline of the labor movement and in its potential for revival. Yet the story of the past decades is as much one of tragically bril-liant business-side strategists as it is of failed labor leadership. Early mentions a number of clever business-side maneuver-ers—such as Verizon’s success in the early 2000s at slipping out of a CWA-won neutrality agreement, which was supposed to have made new organizing easier and more direct for many workers on the east coast—but a comprehensive effort to ‘save our unions’ would benefit from understanding these efforts in even greater detail.In short, Save Our Unions is a book filled with a diverse array of first-hand and secondary source labor movement anal-ysis that will be of interest both to practitioners and academics, particularly scholars of labor relations and social movements. Luke Elliott-Negri, Graduate Center, City University of New YorkLeslie Irvine, My Dog Always Eats First: Homeless People and Their Animals. Lynne Rienner (2013). $55.00 (hardcover), 140 pages.In the United States, the sociological study of homeless-ness and the homeless has a rich history, beginning with Nels Anderson’s seminal work in the 1920s. In the 1980s, we saw a resurgence of interest in the topic as homelessness became a recognized social problem for the first time and again during our latest recession in the late 2000s. There has always been, however, a lack of research on the specific subpopulation of the homeless who have animals. Leslie Irvine, sociologist and self-proclaimed humaniac, addresses this important subpopu-lation in her book, My Dog Always Eats First: Homeless People and Their Animals. Irvine collected stories from homeless persons with animals in four locations across the nation. From that expe-rience she developed a typology of homeless persons with animals roughly based on Snow and Anderson’s (1993) Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, Vol. 41, Issue 3, 2014

Review of \u3cem\u3eSave Our Unions\u3c/em\u3e. Steve Early. Reviewed by Luke Elliott-Negri

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare 
Volume 41 
Issue 3 September Article 12 
2014 
Review of Save Our Unions. Steve Early. Reviewed by Luke Elliott-
Negri 
Luke Elliott-Negri 
City University of New York, stationing@gmail.com 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw 
 Part of the Social Work Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Elliott-Negri, Luke (2014) "Review of Save Our Unions. Steve Early. Reviewed by Luke Elliott-Negri," The 
Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 41 : Iss. 3 , Article 12. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol41/iss3/12 
This Book Review is brought to you by the Western 
Michigan University School of Social Work. For more 
information, please contact wmu-
scholarworks@wmich.edu. 
191Book Reviews
create jobs. In this he is clearly a Hooverite. And his pitiful 
stimulus effort showed it. Canova connects this failure of jobs 
creation to the backlash of the 2010 midterm elections. Had he 
attacked and defeated unemployment first, argues Goldberg, 
his reform of health care might have had more enthusiastic 
support.
Though I have emphasized Roosevelt’s successes, this 
book is no hagiography. It is as alert to the failures of the New 
Deal as to Obama’s missed opportunities. There is still time to 
learn from both.
Robert D. Leighninger, Jr., University of California, Berkeley
Steve Early, Save Our Unions. Monthly Review Press (2013). 
$19.95 (paperback), 344 pages. 
Save Our Unions is a sprawling collection of essays, cover-
ing everything from the Bread and Roses strike of 1912 to the 
current struggles of the British Labour Party. The text includes 
movie and book reviews, as well as journalistic accounts of 
many contemporary U.S. labor struggles, and even author 
Steve Early’s personal experience over many years of working 
for the Communication Workers of America (CWA). The book 
will offer practitioners a wealth of details with strategic impli-
cations for ongoing efforts. Academics will find hints of theory 
throughout, and a series of cases with implications for long-
standing debates in labor and social movement studies.
The seven thematic sections are bookended by an introduc-
tion and conclusion that contain a positive assessment of Sol 
Roselli’s National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). The 
union was formed in the midst of a an intra-Service Employees 
International Union (SEIU) conflict that came to the surface in 
early 2009 when the SEIU International Union placed Roselli’s 
massive California-based SEIU Local union under trusteeship 
in a successful effort to remove him from power. Indeed Early’s 
assessment of the conflict is woven throughout the book, and 
anyone curious to understand the recent labor movement civil 
wars—about which the author has written extensively in his 
book The Civil Wars in US Labor—will be thoroughly engaged. 
The first section of Save Our Unions addresses several cases 
Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, Vol. 41, Issue 3, 2014
192  Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
of intra-union movements for greater democracy, including 
Teamsters for a Democratic Union and Minors for Democracy, 
analyzing the successes and failures of these projects in useful 
detail. Section two provides an account of the labor move-
ment’s failure to come to the rescue of the Professional Air 
Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) in their infamous 
defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan and goes on to assess 
the prospects for the strike’s revival today. The third section 
covers two seemingly disparate topics: salting—that is, union 
activists who get rank and file jobs in order to organize—and 
global campaigns that involve strategies developed in coor-
dination with unions in other countries. Both tactics, Early 
argues, require “organizing for the long haul.” 
The subsequent section critically analyzes the labor move-
ment’s relationship to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and 
healthcare reform more generally. In the fifth section, Early 
draws on his extensive organizing experience with the CWA to 
offer a detailed assessment of organized labor’s current pros-
pects in the telecom industry. Section six opens with a nod to 
the sociologist C. Wright Mills (who is mentioned in passing 
several times throughout Save Our Unions), drawing on his 
early writing, when Mills still believed in the transformative 
potential of organized labor. The section assesses labor leaders 
past and present from William “Wimpy” Winpisinger of the 
International Association of Machinists (IAM) to Mary Kay 
Henry of SEIU. The seventh and final section offers a compel-
ling general analysis of the exceptionally progressive Vermont, 
as well as an up-to-date assessment of the state’s success in 
moving forward “single payer” healthcare legislation, even 
as the insurance-friendly ACA continues to roll out at the na-
tional level.
Though there is no single unifying argument to Save Our 
Unions, certain themes emerge throughout, namely the im-
portance of internal union democracy, the centrality of slow-
building, one-on-one organizing, and the key role of militant 
leaders and a politically independent left in the labor move-
ment’s fortunes. Early offers those interested in the U.S. labor 
movement a rare combination of insider detail and critical 
distance. And while much academic theory leans on the lan-
guage of structure to explain movement outcomes, the agency 
Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, Vol. 41, Issue 3, 2014
193Book Reviews
of labor activists and, to some extent, powerful business inter-
ests, are laid bare in the text. Early is particularly concerned 
with the role of labor leaders and activists in the decline of 
the labor movement and in its potential for revival. Yet the 
story of the past decades is as much one of tragically bril-
liant business-side strategists as it is of failed labor leadership. 
Early mentions a number of clever business-side maneuver-
ers—such as Verizon’s success in the early 2000s at slipping 
out of a CWA-won neutrality agreement, which was supposed 
to have made new organizing easier and more direct for many 
workers on the east coast—but a comprehensive effort to ‘save 
our unions’ would benefit from understanding these efforts in 
even greater detail.
In short, Save Our Unions is a book filled with a diverse 
array of first-hand and secondary source labor movement anal-
ysis that will be of interest both to practitioners and academics, 
particularly scholars of labor relations and social movements. 
Luke Elliott-Negri, Graduate Center, 
City University of New York
Leslie Irvine, My Dog Always Eats First: Homeless People and 
Their Animals. Lynne Rienner (2013). $55.00 (hardcover), 
140 pages.
In the United States, the sociological study of homeless-
ness and the homeless has a rich history, beginning with Nels 
Anderson’s seminal work in the 1920s. In the 1980s, we saw a 
resurgence of interest in the topic as homelessness became a 
recognized social problem for the first time and again during 
our latest recession in the late 2000s. There has always been, 
however, a lack of research on the specific subpopulation of 
the homeless who have animals. Leslie Irvine, sociologist and 
self-proclaimed humaniac, addresses this important subpopu-
lation in her book, My Dog Always Eats First: Homeless People 
and Their Animals. 
Irvine collected stories from homeless persons with 
animals in four locations across the nation. From that expe-
rience she developed a typology of homeless persons with 
animals roughly based on Snow and Anderson’s (1993) 
Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, Vol. 41, Issue 3, 2014


https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3975&amp;context=jssw

Review of \u3cem\u3eSave Our Unions\u3c/em\u3e. Steve Early. Reviewed by Luke Elliott-Negri

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

ScholarWorks at WMU

ScholarWorks at WMU