Beaten Down, Worked Up

From the longtime New York Times labor correspondent, an in-depth look at working men and women in America, the challenges they face, and how they can be re-empowered

The solution to economic insecurity could once be stated in three words: "Get a job." But this is no longer so. Even as corporate profits have climbed to new records, the number of low-wage workers has soared, while wages have stagnated for the vast majority of Americans. Behind these trends is a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power.

Steven Greenhouse sees this decline reflected in some of the most pressing problems facing our nation today, including income inequality, declining social mobility, the gender pay gap, and the concentration of political power in the hands of the wealthy. He rebuts the prevalent view that labor unions are outmoded--or even harmful--by recounting some of labor''s historic victories, the damaging pushback against unions, and the efforts of several of today''s most innovative and successful worker groups. He shows us the modern labor landscape through the stories of dozens of American workers, and we see how unions have empowered the most marginalized, including young women garment workers in New York in 1909, black sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968, and hotel housekeepers today. And he proposes concrete, feasible ways in which workers'' collective power can be--and is already beginning to be--rekindled and reimagined in the twenty-first century.