"From steel workers, Teamsters, and coal miners to teachers, actors, and civil servants, union members once accounted for more than one-third of the American workforce. At a mere 12 percent, union membership today is a shadow of what it once was. What happened to organized labor in America and what can be done to restore it to its role of the defender of middle-class values and economic well-being?" "Award-winning investigative reporter Philip M. Dine takes us on a journey through America's cities and back roads, its factories and union halls, to answer those questions. From the health-care crisis to massive job flight overseas, from rampant home foreclosures to illegal immigration, he clearly shows how virtually every major economic, political, and social trend impacting our way of life is tied to the state of America's unions."--BOOK JACKET. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Union membership has been in a decades-long decline, a trend the AFL-CIO has fought by weighing in on elections. This is an ineffective strategy, according to Dine, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, who surveys the contemporary labor union scene from a sympathetic yet critical posture. Recounting anecdotes from his career, Dine depicts union organizing as having more potential to revive the union movement, citing a story he covered about the organization of a union shop at a catfish farm. Arguing that a local and regional emphasis better propagates workers' values in communities than do campaign endorsements, Dine expands the point by scoring the wariness, if not outright hostility, from leaders of locals that he has experienced. Advice on image improvement through better communications then follows, which is consonant with Dine's counseling union leadership to try something different. With big unions such as the SEIU and the Teamsters in agreement, symbolized by their exit from the AFL-CIO in 2005 over the politics-versus-organizing question, Dine's account will find favor from labor's friends. Taylor, Gilbert. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Foreword	ix
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction	xvii
Chapter 1 Dead Man Walking	1
Chapter 2 Delta Pride	57
Chapter 3 Heartland Values	107
Chapter 4 From Dialogue to Division	145
Chapter 5 Up on the Roof (or Silencing the Working Class)	175
Chapter 6 Joe T! Joe T!	211
Chapter 7 What it Means for the Future	249
Notes	259
Bibliography	265
Index	269

Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.