Describes how new kinds of direct-action labor movements are emerging to reshape American labor activism in the twenty-first century.

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Why Unions Matter
  • Unions and the Middle Class
  • Corporations Grow, Unions Shrink
• Chapter 2 The Long Slide
  • Labor and the Postwar Economy
  • The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: Won’t It Be Grand
  • War on Unions: The Disappearing Middle Class
  • The Union Implosion
• Chapter 3 Farmworkers Fight Back
  • Racism Drives Progressive Reform: Compromises Cripple Farmworkers
  • Immokalee Farmworkers: Community-Based Power Fights Back
  • New York’s Farmworkers Try To Unionize
• Chapter 4 Worker Centers in Focus
  • Worker Centers: Labor’s Hope or a Passing Phase?
  • California’s Gig Workers Struggle to Get Real Jobs
  • The False Promises of Virtual Gig Work
  • Drivers Turn to the Courts
  • From the Courts to the Streets
  • After AB5: What’s Next?
• Chapter 5 Freelancers Union: Backward to the Future?
  • What Is The Freelancers Union?
  • The New Mutualism and Its Historical Roots
  • The Makeover Takes Off
  • What Workers in the Creative Economy Want
  • The New Mutualism in Action: Insurance for Freelancers
  • Freelancers Union: A Rising Political Force?
  • Providing Information and Building Community
  • So What?
• Chapter 6 Taking to the Streets
  • Can’t Lose What You Never Had
  • To the Streets!
  • The Other NRA
  • Making Progress
  • Are the Gains Sustainable?
• Chapter 7 All Roads Lead to … Sectoral Bargaining?
  • A New Movement Brings Old Answers
  • The Roots of the Direct Action Movements
  • The Bumpy Road to Sectoral Bargaining
  • A Viable New Partnership?
  • What Is to be Done?
• Notes
• Index