Union Strategies for Hard Times

By Bill Barry

What can unions do as the Great Recession ravages workers and their unions and threatens to destroy decades of collective bargaining gains? What must local union leaders do to help their laid-off members, protect those still working, and prevent the gutting of their hard-fought contracts – and their very unions themselves?

How, in fact, can local union leaders seize the time and turn crisis into opportunity?

Bill Barry, director of labor studies at the Community College of Baltimore County and a 40-year veteran of the movement, calls on his long history of activism and years of "what works, what doesn’t" discussions with other leaders to come up with a plan to survive these terrible times and even use this crisis to build a better future.

Union Strategies for Hard Times: Helping Your Members and Building Your Union in the Great Recession outlines a frank and systematic program for union leaders, stewards and activists who want to respond aggressively to those employers and financial interests that would have working people and their institutions just shut up, be nice and accept what’s given them.

Topics in the book include: Hanging Tough at the Table; New Tactics on Grievances; Aiding and Mobilizing Members on Layoff; Confronting Financial Strains; Effective Communications for a New Day; Where We Are and How We Got Here.

The book describes today’s challenges to unions representing workers in every sector of the economy and offers concrete, Organizing Model tactics to deal with them. No union activists who want to help their members -- working or laid off -- while defending and even growing their unions should be without this important book. 44 pages paperback