In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement by Thomas Geoghegan
  • Marc Dixon
Thomas Geoghegan, Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement (New York: The New Press 2014)

These are bleak times for the middle and working classes in the United States. The story is a familiar one. Wages remain stagnant, having been far outpaced by productivity gains. Work is increasingly precarious. Upward mobility appears to have stalled for many. And unions continue to shrink. Union density in the United States, currently hovering around 11 per cent of the workforce, is just over a third of that in neighbouring Canada. Scholars debate just how this new economic landscape shapes our political and civic life, but the early results do not look promising. Not all of these features are unique to the US, of course. But it is here that inequality and middle class stagnation have been especially pronounced and attempts to address these problems have mostly fallen flat.

What is to be done? The answer offered by Thomas Geoghegan in his recent book, Only One Thing Can Save Us, is to revive the labour movement. It is only labour that can give us a raise, get us out of debt, make education pay, and bring back democratic participation in everyday life. But it isn’t today’s labour movement that is going to do this. Indeed, the kind of movement this book prescribes sounds quite different than any of the current union revitalization projects. Exactly what it will look like and how contemporary unions can transform themselves to get there is not always clear, but it will require significant legal reform to take shape. And here Geoghegan is never short of ideas.

The rationale for a new kind of labour movement to restore purchasing power, meaningful work, and political participation is grounded in an eclectic group of thinkers ranging from Keynes to John Dewey and Martin Luther King Jr., headlined by witty chapters like “What Keynes Would Do” and “What Would Dewey Do?” A main thrust of the book, however, comes with the spate of legal reforms needed for this new kind of labour movement to come about. There are small and seemingly easy moves like changing governmental procurement policies to favour pro-worker firms, something that can be done (and taken away) with an executive order. Then there are seismic changes like reforming corporate law to introduce co-determination along the lines of German work councils and altering civil rights law to include union activity as a protected category from discrimination like race and gender. All of these require changing the way the Democratic Party thinks and talks about labour. Getting a Democratic majority in Congress seems hard enough in today’s climate, but getting them to pass reforms that make it easier for workers to organize and which given workers more power in corporate decision-making seems nearly impossible. Indeed, when confronted with the inequality problem, Democrats only consistent answer is more education. Geoghegan’s critique of the Democrats heavy reliance on education, and college in particular, as the solution to all economic ills when the vast majority of workers are high school graduates underscores the muted state of the labour movement. “Why beat up on your base for not having BAs? …That means, in effect, for 68 percent of your constituents, you’re saying there’s no hope, give up: pound sand, it’s over.” (112) Even when most do not have college degrees, and when there is no strong empirical backing for more college as the solution to inequality, labour has not been able to significantly alter Democratic Party positions or even their language.

So, what would it take to get Democrats to push for labour reform? Geoghegan’s [End Page 317] answer is sustained disruption to force a crisis within the Democratic Party much the way the civil rights movement did some 50 years ago. Enough disruption to split liberal and neo-liberal Democrats. The current Fight For 15 movement offers some guidance. In about three years, a quixotic campaign by low wage fast-food workers has...

pdf

Share