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A review by bgg616
On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women's Epic Fight to Build a Union by Daisy Pitkin
4.0
Daisy Pitkin's account of her work organizing workers, mostly Mexican immigrants, in industrial laundries in Arizona is hair raising. The sheer amount of work involved to get access to these workers, and talk to them about their work conditions was almost beyond belief. In many of these workplaces, safeguards had been removed from machinery to speed up the work. While in smaller, "better" laundries, hospital loads were pre-washed before sorting by workers to remove dangerous items such as syringe needles (very common), blood and even body parts, in these industrial laundries, workers were often injured. Not only was the work dirty, it was dangerous.
Daisy forges a friendship with Alma, a Mexican immigrant, who works in the laundry Daisy and others are organizing. The stories of how management broke almost every rule and law on the books beggars belief. And sadly, because of the ineffectiveness of the National Labor Relations Board, and Arizona courts, they got away with it. Alma proves to be a leader, and becomes a target for management at her workplace.
Pitkin worked for UNITE then UNITE/HERE then Workers United/SEIU. These unions were also guilty of dirty tricks, and a lot of big egos. I finished the book not knowing why anyone would want to work as a union organizer when even their own union wasn't totally on the up and up. But as a former teachers' union activist, as imperfect as my own union in Boston was, I still believe I was, and other teachers were, better off because we had it.
Pitkin describes the decline of unions in the second half of the 20th century:
In 2020 industrial laundry workers made $10.13 an hour on average. The CEO of the largest laundry corporation in the US made almost $10 million. Union density has fallen to 6.4 percent in the private sector…around 11 percent overall, similar to the percentage it was in 1910, when the ILGWU was formed…Since union density fell below 25 percent in 1977, income inequality has risen exponentially every year. She goes on to say "The right to organize is almost nonexistent as those rights, established in 1935, have eroded over the past decades."
Yet, we have seen a trend towards organizing that is rapidly growing - teachers, Amazon, Starbucks. And Pitkin believes that rather than being led by anger, these efforts are led by solidarity. I hope she is right. I have a younger sister who works in an Amazon warehouse. We don't talk about her job much, except when she is on mandatory overtime. It's a job she needs.
Daisy forges a friendship with Alma, a Mexican immigrant, who works in the laundry Daisy and others are organizing. The stories of how management broke almost every rule and law on the books beggars belief. And sadly, because of the ineffectiveness of the National Labor Relations Board, and Arizona courts, they got away with it. Alma proves to be a leader, and becomes a target for management at her workplace.
Pitkin worked for UNITE then UNITE/HERE then Workers United/SEIU. These unions were also guilty of dirty tricks, and a lot of big egos. I finished the book not knowing why anyone would want to work as a union organizer when even their own union wasn't totally on the up and up. But as a former teachers' union activist, as imperfect as my own union in Boston was, I still believe I was, and other teachers were, better off because we had it.
Pitkin describes the decline of unions in the second half of the 20th century:
In 2020 industrial laundry workers made $10.13 an hour on average. The CEO of the largest laundry corporation in the US made almost $10 million. Union density has fallen to 6.4 percent in the private sector…around 11 percent overall, similar to the percentage it was in 1910, when the ILGWU was formed…Since union density fell below 25 percent in 1977, income inequality has risen exponentially every year. She goes on to say "The right to organize is almost nonexistent as those rights, established in 1935, have eroded over the past decades."
Yet, we have seen a trend towards organizing that is rapidly growing - teachers, Amazon, Starbucks. And Pitkin believes that rather than being led by anger, these efforts are led by solidarity. I hope she is right. I have a younger sister who works in an Amazon warehouse. We don't talk about her job much, except when she is on mandatory overtime. It's a job she needs.