Labor Pains: Stories from Inside America's New Union Movement

Ever since John Sweeny displaced the old guard at the AFL-CI0 and began to revive a moribund but important labor movement, we've read a great deal about this new face of labor. We've read about the focus on service employees -- who are predominantly women and people of color -- we've learned about aggressive organizing tactics and corporate campaigns, we've seen the leaders of the movement featured in labor publications and we've even heard about the members, activists and staffers who are the ground troops in this war.Suzan Erem's book, Labor Pains, is unusual in that it makes us live through the beginnings of that movement. We don't just read about it; Erem's writing has the ability to bring you into it and you see if from the inside -- warts and all.She does this by conncecting with reader not as an activist or leader -- but as a human being. The labor movement is made up of human beings who have the same problems and concerns that everyone else has, including raising children, paying the rent and even keeping warm during the long Chicago winter. It has been a shortcoming of writing about labor that the authors seem to think that the only humans are the "objects" of the organizing drives, the potential and actual bargaining unit employees, except, of course, when they have something bad to say about the leaders.Erem doesn't have something bad to say -- or something good, for that matter. She just tells it as it is. Yes, the movement is made up of men and women struggling to create a better world, but these men and women can -- like everyone else -- be motivated by racism or nationalism, sexism and careerism. Not to say that is to patronize the reader and to call into question all of the "happy" truths of the movement. Those interested in the new labor movement can balance the truth about our humanity with the fact of our commitment.I especially recommend this book to those many young people who come to the movement with high hopes of making a difference. It says that you have good reason for those hopes, but here are some landmines to avoid. These readers will all thank Erem for sharing the shortcomings of our activists and our movement -- including her own --with them, while also confirming that their hope to make a difference by organizing working people into unions is still well placed.

Often Poetic Picture of the Gritty Side of Labor OrganizingLabor Pains is a good read and a thoughtful and perceptive description of the work of a labor organizer for SEIU Local 73. The author, Suzan Erem, is a woman with the soul of a poet who fought on behalf of workers to organize. Much that I had read previously about such efforts to establish and maintain unions has been either inspirational, like the splendid song of the French Revolution, the Marseillaise, or tedious, like descriptions of Madam Lafarge's knitting. This is neither: it is the well-observed descriptive account of activities of a dedicated witness to, and participant in, the efforts by the labor movement to secure power and justice. In some senses it is about love and perhaps even the ecstasy of the moment but more important it is as the title, Labor Pains, perceptively suggests, about what comes after the love and the moment and before the exhilarating and painful moment of birth. Labor Pains is about Suzan Erem's moments of discomfort and doubt. It is also about her persistence and her effort to maintain balance and idealism. She does not always succeed and tells us about the failure of her marriage and the organizing efforts that didn't work. But she also provides graphic descriptions of efforts that did work and the pleasure she took in those moments. Erem is particularly good at describing the people she worked with and the role of the media in the struggle to organize. Her primary job was not only to organize, but also to get the story out. The story is not always happy or glamorous but it is well described. In one scene a small band of organizers hang a banner over an overpass to draw the media's attention to a strike they are organizing against a Chicago hospital. It is a very cold early winter Chicago morning on Lake Shore Drive and the effort seems almost futile, perhaps crazy. But it works and the media event draws attention to the union's struggle and helps in the winning effort organize the hospital and bring about an improved wage scale and other benefits through the protection of the union.Erem describes her work in the labor movement both as an attempt to "scratch our mark on history" and to tell the story of the workers, a story that might otherwise not be told. She has done this well in Labor Pains and she has also told us her own story. It was a story worth telling. I expect she will have more stories to tell us.