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On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women's Epic Fight to Build a Union
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About This Book
"Riveting and intimate. It is hard to imagine a more humanizing portrait of the American labor movement. A remarkable debut." —Francisco Cantú, New York Times bestselling author of The Line Becomes a River On the Line takes us inside a bold five-year campaign to bring a union to the dangerous industrial laundry factories of Phoenix, Arizona. The fight is led by two courageous women: Daisy Pitkin, a young labor organizer, and Alma, a second-shift immigrant worker who risks her livelihood fighting for safer working conditions. On the Line illuminates the harsh realities that workers in these factories face—routine exposure to biohazardous waste, surgical tools left in hospital sheets, and overheating machinery—as well as the ways broken US labor law makes it nearly impossible for them to fight back. Forged in the flames of a vicious anti-union crusade and a grueling legal battle, the relationships that grow between Daisy, Alma, and the other factory workers show how a union, at its best, can reach beyond the workplace and form a solidarity so powerful that it can transcend friendship and transform communities. But when political strife divides the union, and her bond with Alma along with it, Daisy is forced to reflect on her own position of privilege and the power imbalances inherent in any top-down organizing movement. In the social tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, Stephanie Land's Maid, or Matthew Desmond's Evicted, and capturing the deeply personal nature of organizing, On the Line offers an exhilarating and long overdue look at the modern-day labor movement, how difficult it is to bring about social change, and why we can't afford to stop trying. At this moment, when interest in collective action is rising, On the Line is a vital contribution to our national conversation.
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Reviews
"Alongside the fraught emotional minutiae of organizing (a complicated process that will expand many readers' conceptions of unions themselves), this book explores the history of women's involvement in unions throughout the labor history of the 19th and 20th centuries."
"Even in a country as hostile to workers' rights to organize as the United States, while fighting under labor's banner, she has witnessed innumerable miracles ..."
"Pitkin goes to extraordinary lengths to amplify the voices of workers who are bullied, interrogated, fired and spied on during the course of a viciously contested union organizing campaign."
"Throughout, Pitkin draws an extended analogy linking the biological process of metamorphosis to how union organizing transforms communities and individuals (she and Alma call each other las polillas, or the moths) and highlights the role of women workers in the American labor movement."
"In the end, Pitkin entwines these various threads into a heartfelt and persuasive argument for organized labor now more than ever."
"Some passages address Alma directly, documenting her and the author's shared union activities and bringing immediacy to Alma's experiences ..."
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