Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement

by Jane Mcalevey, Bob Ostertag

Overview

This “breath-taking trip through the union-organizing scene of America in the 21st century” reveals the victories and unconventional strategies of a renowned—and notorious—militant union organizer (Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed)
 
In 1995, in the first contested election in the history of the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney won the presidency of the nation’s largest labor federation, promising renewal and resurgence. Today, less than 7 percent of American private-sector workers belong to a union, the lowest percentage since the beginning of the twentieth century, and public employee collective bargaining has been dealt devastating blows in Wisconsin and elsewhere. What happened?

Jane McAlevey is famous—and notorious—in the American labor movement as the hard-charging organizer who racked up a string of victories at a time when union leaders said winning wasn’t possible. Then she was bounced from the movement, a victim of the high-level internecine warfare that has torn apart organized labor. In this engrossing and funny narrative—that reflects the personality of its charismatic, wisecracking author—McAlevey tells the story of a number of dramatic organizing and contract victories, and the unconventional strategies that helped achieve them.

Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) argues that labor can be revived, but only if the movement acknowledges its mistakes and fully commits to deep organizing, participatory education, militancy, and an approach to workers and their communities that more resembles the campaigns of the 1930s—in short, social movement unionism that involves raising workers’ expectations (while raising hell).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781683156
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	05/06/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	332
Sales rank:	121,711
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jane McAlevey Jane McAlevey spent twenty-five years as an organizer in the student, environmental, and trade union movements. She is a Contributing Writer at the Nation, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Florida, November 2000 1

Introduction: Organizing Is About Raising Expectations 12

1 Whole-Worker Organizing in Connecticut 27

2 The Yo-yo: Into and Out of the National SEIU 60

3 Bumpy Landing in Las Vegas 84

4 Round One: Reorganizing Desert Springs and Valley Hospitals, and Why Labor Should Care More about Primaries than about General Elections 110

5 Laying the Foundation: At Catholic Healthcare West, an Enlightened CEO; at SEIU, an Unenlightened President 143

6 Government Workers Get Militant: Big, Representative Bargaining Versus Bad Laws and Bullies 161

7 Launching the 2006 Las Vegas Labor Offensive 184

8 The Gloves Come Off: Union Busters, the NLRB, and a Purple RV 191

9 The Gold Standard: What a Good Contract Looks Like, and How It Relates to Patient Care 208

10 The CEO, the Union Buster, and the Gunrunner 216

11 Full Court Press 229

12 Strike! Victory at Universal Health Services, Victory in the Public Sector 247

13 Things Fall Apart: How National and Local Labor Leaders Undermined the Workers of Nevada 274

Epilogue: New York, May 2012 309

Acknowledgments 316

Index 319

Editorial Reviews

This book is gripping, funny, sad, and very thought-provoking. Jane McAlevey uses her own experiences in a movement that has been undergoing dramatic changes—within a workforce that has undergone even greater changes—to suggest to the reader the necessity and potential for a transformation of the union movement into a real labor movement. Once I started reading it, there was no stopping.”
—Bill Fletcher Jr., author of “They’re Bankrupting Us!” And Twenty Other Myths about Unions

“This book casts a bright light on the problems of American unions. Jane McAlevey gives us an on-the-ground account of the obstacles the union hierarchy throws in the path of a bold and energetic organizing effort that scored a string of brilliant successes before the hierarchy cracked down. We need to read this book and learn its lessons partly for what it tells us is wrong about unions, but also because it demonstrates that good organizers can in fact succeed. That message is heartening because the simple truth is that we can’t rebuild a democratic left in the United States without a revived labor movement.”
—Frances Fox Piven, author of Who’s Afraid of Frances Fox Piven?

“Raising Expectations is a breath-taking trip through the union-organizing scene of America in the 21st century. In the battles McAlevey recounts, hardly anyone comes out standing tall. But her story, along with those of so many brave health care workers, fills me with hope.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed

“This book renews my faith that organizing works. It calls for a new kind of unionism and makes a compelling case for a new vision for the American labor movement. In the ‘whole worker theory’ that McAlevey tested and retested in real life campaigns, all the issues negatively impacting the poor, working and middle class become the cause of unions, not simply wages and narrowly defined workplace conditions. At a time when climate change is wreaking havoc at home and abroad and communities of color are becoming the vital center of progressive social change, this book offers one path to building a movement that can and must tackle many issues. Raising Expectations is so refreshing because it aspires to tell us how we can rebuild a movement that can win.”
—Van Jones

“McAlevey’s message—that unions alone give working people voice at the bargaining table and the ballot box—burns with conviction. She makes for bracing company in interesting times.”
—The Plain Dealer

“McAlevey burns with a passion for the cause”
—Keith Richmond, Tribune

“McAlevey promotes the concept of ‘whole worker’ organizing, which seeks to go beyond the ‘labor-community’ paradigm in a manner that recognizes that workers are rooted in, and not separate from, communities and also recognizes the value of bringing community organizing techniques into the realm of labor and vice versa.”
—Book News

From the Publisher

This rousing memoir of McAlevey's decade-long experience as a union organizer spares neither the companies nor the union bosses. After success as a union organizer of home health care workers in Stamford, Connecticut, McAlevey was sent to do the same in Pittsburgh. There she ran up against a union executive vice-president who effectively sabotaged her work. After another successful assignment, McAlevey headed for Las Vegas to organize employees of for-profit "scumbag" hospitals where the hard work of getting decent contracts for nurses provides a roller coaster experience. She makes certain the reader learns how to organize; the fine points of agreements are dissected thoroughly, including how to keep union members in "right to work" states. McAlevey is not afraid to name names, offering millionaire CEOs with government contacts their fair dose of scorn. But her strongest fury is with the union leadership who seem to thwart her at every turn. Politics and turf wars are a recurrent theme in this book, which result in the destruction of the health care workers union in Nevada and McAlevey's departure from union work. This is a passionate defense of her efforts and a plea for others to pick up the gauntlet for workers.
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Publishers Weekly

This book casts a bright light on the problems of American unions. Jane McAlevey gives us an on-the-ground account of the obstacles the union hierarchy throws in the path of a bold and energetic organizing effort that scored a string of brilliant successes before the hierarchy cracked down. We need to read this book and learn its lessons partly for what it tells us is wrong about unions, but also because it demonstrates that good organizers can in fact succeed. That message is heartening because the simple truth is that we can’t rebuild a democratic left in the United States without a revived labor movement.

Francis Fox Piven

This book is gripping, funny, sad, and very thought-provoking. Jane McAlevey uses her own experiences in a movement that has been undergoing dramatic changes—within a workforce that has undergone even greater changes—to suggest to the reader the necessity and potential for a transformation of the union movement into a real labor movement. Once I started reading it, there was no stopping.

Bill Fletcher Jr.

This book renews my faith that organizing works. It calls for a new kind of unionism and makes a compelling case for a new vision for the American labor movement. In the ‘whole worker theory’ that McAlevey tested and retested in real life campaigns, all the issues negatively impacting the poor, working and middle class become the cause of unions, not simply wages and narrowly defined workplace conditions. At a time when climate change is wreaking havoc at home and abroad and communities of color are becoming the vital center of progressive social change, this book offers one path to building a movement that can and must tackle many issues. Raising Expectations is so refreshing because it aspires to tell us how we can rebuild a movement that can win.

Van Jones

Raising Expectations is a breath-taking trip through the union-organizing scene of America in the 21st century. In the battles McAlevey recounts, hardly anyone comes out standing tall. But her story, along with those of so many brave health care workers, fills me with hope.

Barbara Ehrenreich