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Ramparts of Resistance: How Workers Lost Their Power and How to Get It Back

by Sheila Cohen - £26.99  Pluto Press (2006)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9780745315294 | ISBN 10: 0745315291

Ramparts of Resistance examines the experience of British and US workers during the last three decades to offer a broad analysis of the need for a new independent politics of trade unionism. Recent years have seen great changes in the trade union movement, from waves of strikes in the 1970s to a battery of employer and state onslaughts, culminating in the anti-union legislation of the 1980s & 1990s. Looking at grassroots labour struggles, Cohen explores issues of reformism, trade union democracy and the political meaning of ordinary workplace resistance, and puts forward ideas for change. Ramparts of Resistance examines the failure of the union movement to rise to the neo-liberal challenge and calls for a new politics of independent unionism and an explicitly class-based renewal of “workers power”. Coming at a time when union activity and membership involvement continues despite the odds, this book is an inspiring guide to the direction that unionism should take.
 
Sheila Cohen has been involved in the trade union movement for two decades, as an academic and an activist. Between 1990 and 1995 she produced and edited Trade Union News, and during her time in the US she was closely involved with the Labor Notes project. She has taught courses on Labour and Trade Union Studies at London Metropolitan University and at the Centre for Worker Education in New York.

(Price & availability last checked: June 2018)