With God on Our Side: The Struggle for Workers' Rights in a Catholic Hospital
When unions undertake labor organizing campaigns, they often do so from strong moral positions, contrasting workers’ rights to decent pay or better working conditions with the more venal financial motives of management. But how does labor confront management when management itself has moral legitimacy? In With God on Our Side, Adam D. Reich tells the story of a five-year campaign to unionize Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, a Catholic hospital in California. Based on his own work as a volunteer organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Reich explores how both union leaders and hospital leaders sought to show they were upholding the Catholic "mission" of the hospital against a market represented by the other. Ultimately, workers and union leaders were able to reinterpret Catholic values in ways that supported their efforts to organize.
More generally, Reich argues that unions must weave together economic and cultural power in order to ensure their continued relevancy in the postindustrial world. In addition to advocating for workers’ economic interests, unions must engage with workers’ emotional investments in their work, must contend with the kind of moral authority that Santa Rosa Hospital leaders exerted to dissuade workers from organizing, and must connect labor’s project to broader conceptions of the public good.
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With God on Our Side: The Struggle for Workers' Rights in a Catholic Hospital
When unions undertake labor organizing campaigns, they often do so from strong moral positions, contrasting workers’ rights to decent pay or better working conditions with the more venal financial motives of management. But how does labor confront management when management itself has moral legitimacy? In With God on Our Side, Adam D. Reich tells the story of a five-year campaign to unionize Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, a Catholic hospital in California. Based on his own work as a volunteer organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Reich explores how both union leaders and hospital leaders sought to show they were upholding the Catholic "mission" of the hospital against a market represented by the other. Ultimately, workers and union leaders were able to reinterpret Catholic values in ways that supported their efforts to organize.
More generally, Reich argues that unions must weave together economic and cultural power in order to ensure their continued relevancy in the postindustrial world. In addition to advocating for workers’ economic interests, unions must engage with workers’ emotional investments in their work, must contend with the kind of moral authority that Santa Rosa Hospital leaders exerted to dissuade workers from organizing, and must connect labor’s project to broader conceptions of the public good.
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With God on Our Side: The Struggle for Workers' Rights in a Catholic Hospital
When unions undertake labor organizing campaigns, they often do so from strong moral positions, contrasting workers’ rights to decent pay or better working conditions with the more venal financial motives of management. But how does labor confront management when management itself has moral legitimacy? In With God on Our Side, Adam D. Reich tells the story of a five-year campaign to unionize Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, a Catholic hospital in California. Based on his own work as a volunteer organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Reich explores how both union leaders and hospital leaders sought to show they were upholding the Catholic "mission" of the hospital against a market represented by the other. Ultimately, workers and union leaders were able to reinterpret Catholic values in ways that supported their efforts to organize.
More generally, Reich argues that unions must weave together economic and cultural power in order to ensure their continued relevancy in the postindustrial world. In addition to advocating for workers’ economic interests, unions must engage with workers’ emotional investments in their work, must contend with the kind of moral authority that Santa Rosa Hospital leaders exerted to dissuade workers from organizing, and must connect labor’s project to broader conceptions of the public good.
Adam D. Reich is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Hidden Truth.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Work's Meaning and Labor's Power 1. The Labor of Love: Vocational Commitments in the Hospital 2. Losing It: The Limits of Economic Interests and Political Power 3. A Struggle over New Things: Contesting Catholic Teaching 4. Winning the Heart Way: Organizing and Cultural Struggle 5. Trouble in the House of Labor: Alternative Visions of New Unionism Conclusion: What Should Unions Do?
What People are Saying About This
Ruth Milkman
This richly textured case study of the expanding arena of health care organizing brilliantly exposes the emotional, cultural, and moral dimensions of struggles between workers and their employers—dimensions far too often ignored by union organizers and labor scholars alike. Adam D. Reich brings an insider's perspective to this vivid account—he worked for more than a year on the lengthy union campaign that his book chronicles— along with a nuanced and sophisticated sociological analysis. With God on Our Side is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of the U.S. labor movement.
Dan Clawson
With God on Our Side is an engaging read that will appeal to those interested in labor, religion, social justice, and health care. Adam D. Reich examines the tensions both within hospital management, pulled one way by Catholic religious teaching and another by trying to hold down labor costs, and within the union, facing internal divisions and struggles..
Marshall Ganz
Adam D. Reich's deeply engaging book should be required reading for organizers and scholars alike. In this finely textured account of the twenty-first-century struggle of health care workers to unionize, he reminds us that workers and managers are moral creatures to whom values matter. They are not the simple-minded economic utility functions imagined by far too many social scientists and, alas, organizers, politicians, and policymakers. We learn from his portrayal of the people who drive the conflict and as well as his analysis of conditions that shape it. And... it's a great read!
Randy Shaw
Adam D. Reich's With God on Our Side is a powerful and inspiring account of the historic struggle of workers at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital to form a union. Anyone looking for a road map for how workers can achieve greater justice should read this book.
