Public Employee Press

Media Beat

Book Review
How to fight back at work — and win

The first lesson in “A Troublemaker’s Handbook 2: How to Fight Back Where You Work — and Win!” is that you can’t fight your boss by yourself.

Workers must be organized and involved on the shop floor level. With an impressive collection of case studies, “Troublemaker’s” goes through a variety of united actions workers can engage in to discipline an unruly boss.

There are, of course, numerous stories of strikes, boycotts, corporate campaigns, and community labor alliances told from the shop floor level — a virtual history of contemporary labor victories and losses.

There are also descriptions of lesser-known innovative tactics, such as when workers’ allies prevented the boss from entering the workplace (they locked out the boss), and suggestions for using management’s own rulebook for slowdowns in addition to quickie, rolling and sit-down strikes. And there are many everyday activities of concerted action of solidarity on the shop floor to let the boss know that the workers’ organizations must be respected in the workplace.

In hundreds of first-person accounts, workers tell how they organized to take control over their lives at work. We hear from public workers, construction workers, industrial workers, clerical workers and others who address similar problems in dissimilar workplaces and learn how they come up with creative and realistic fight-back campaigns.

This is a big book and is not meant to be read at one sitting. It’s more like an encyclopedia to be delved into time and again.

“A Troublemaker’s Handbook 2,” edited by Jane Slaughter and available from Labor Notes for $24, presents our own stories, allowing us to learn from each other. Troublemakers of the world unite!

— Ken Nash
DC 37 Education Fund Library,
Room 211