A timely, in-depth, and vital exploration of the American labor
movement and its critical place in our society and politics today,
from acclaimed labor reporter Hamilton Nolan.
Inequality is
America's biggest problem. Unions are the single strongest tool that
working people have to fix it. Organized labor has been in decline
for decades. Yet it sits today at a moment of enormous opportunity.
In the wake of the pandemic, a highly visible wave of strikes and new
organizing campaigns have driven the popularity of unions to historic
highs. The simmering battle inside of the labor movement over how to
tap into its revolutionary potential--or allow it to be
squandered--will determine the economic and social course of American
life for years to come.
In chapters that
span the country, Nolan shows readers the actual places where labor
and politics meld. He highlights how organized labor can and does
wield power effectively: a union that dominates Las Vegas and is
trying to scale nationally; a successful decades-long campaign to
organize California's child care workers; the human face of a
surprising strike of factory workers trying to preserve their pathway
to the middle class. Throughout, Nolan follows Sara Nelson, the fiery
and charismatic head of the flight attendants' union, as she
struggles with how (and whether) to assert herself as a national
leader, to try to fix what is broken. The Hammer draws the
line from forgotten workplaces in rural West Virginia to Washington's
halls of power, and shows how labor solidarity can utterly transform
American politics--if it can first transform itself.
A labor journalist
for more than a decade, Nolan helped unionize his own industry. The
Hammer is a urgent on-the-ground excavation of the past, present,
and future of the American labor movement.