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The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor
A timely, in-depth, and vital exploration of the American labor movement and its critical place in our society and politics by acclaimed labor reporter Hamilton Nolan.
The thesis is simple: Inequality is America’s biggest problem. Unions are the single strongest tool that working people have to fix this problem. But the labor movement of today has failed to enable enough individuals to join unions. Thus, organized labor’s powerful potential is being wielded incompetently. And what is happening inside of organized labor will—far more than most people realize—determine the economic and social course of American life for years to come.
In deeply reported chapters that span the country, Nolan shows readers how organized labor can and does wield power effectively—in spots—but also why it has long been unable to build itself into the powerful institution that the working class needs. These narratives both inspire by example and motivate by counter-example. Whether it’s a union that has succeeded in a single city, and is trying to scale that effectiveness nationally, or the ins and outs of a historically large and transformative union campaign, or the human face of a strike, or a profile of the most anti-union state in America, Nolan highlights the actual mechanisms that connect labor to politics to real change. Throughout, Nolan follows Sara Nelson, the powerful and charismatic head of the flight attendants union, as she struggles with how (and whether) to assert herself as a national leader of the labor movement, to try to fix what is broken about it. The Hammer draws the line from forgotten workplaces to Washington's halls of power, and shows how labor can utterly transform American politics—if it can first transform itself.
Nolan is an expert who has covered labor and politics for more than a decade, and has helped to unionize his own industry. The time has come for his poignant and enlightening book as we prepare for the historic 2024 presidential election. The Hammer is a unique on-the-ground excavation of the present and the future of the labor movement. It is the story of what the labor movement can be, and why it isn’t that…yet.
The thesis is simple: Inequality is America’s biggest problem. Unions are the single strongest tool that working people have to fix this problem. But the labor movement of today has failed to enable enough individuals to join unions. Thus, organized labor’s powerful potential is being wielded incompetently. And what is happening inside of organized labor will—far more than most people realize—determine the economic and social course of American life for years to come.
In deeply reported chapters that span the country, Nolan shows readers how organized labor can and does wield power effectively—in spots—but also why it has long been unable to build itself into the powerful institution that the working class needs. These narratives both inspire by example and motivate by counter-example. Whether it’s a union that has succeeded in a single city, and is trying to scale that effectiveness nationally, or the ins and outs of a historically large and transformative union campaign, or the human face of a strike, or a profile of the most anti-union state in America, Nolan highlights the actual mechanisms that connect labor to politics to real change. Throughout, Nolan follows Sara Nelson, the powerful and charismatic head of the flight attendants union, as she struggles with how (and whether) to assert herself as a national leader of the labor movement, to try to fix what is broken about it. The Hammer draws the line from forgotten workplaces to Washington's halls of power, and shows how labor can utterly transform American politics—if it can first transform itself.
Nolan is an expert who has covered labor and politics for more than a decade, and has helped to unionize his own industry. The time has come for his poignant and enlightening book as we prepare for the historic 2024 presidential election. The Hammer is a unique on-the-ground excavation of the present and the future of the labor movement. It is the story of what the labor movement can be, and why it isn’t that…yet.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published February 13, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
March 19, 2024
(This review first appeared at Unherd.)
People fret about how high the divorce rate has become; it’s at a 60-year low. People talk about how the United States has lost its status as an educational powerhouse; but we’ve done terribly for as long as there has been rigorous international comparisons. Even though we live in a world of unlimited information, many people believe things that just aren’t true. I bring this up as a form of confession: when it comes to the labour movement in the United States I do the same — possibly for self-defensive reasons.
In day-to-day life, I unthinkingly conceive of our current era as one of union ascendancy. The rise of the Bernie Sanders Democrat helped push labour back to the forefront of Left-of-centre debate: where Clintonite neoliberals found unions distasteful, today’s young liberals are reflexively pro-labour. Joe Biden’s National Labor Review Board, easily the most influential body for such issues in the United States, is the most union-friendly iteration in generations. And there have been a number of high-profile battles in recent years — everywhere from Amazon warehouses to Starbucks coffee shops. Actors’ and screenwriters’ unions held long and more-or-less successful strikes last year. In short, there is more coverage of and excitement about union issues right now than at any other point in my adult life.
And yet, Reuters tells us, last year, the American unionisation rate fell slightly, to a record low of 10%. In the metric that matters, unions are stagnant or declining. That contradiction begs a question: why has the renewed abstract interest in labour movements not coincided with an increase in actually-existing workers joining actually-existing unions?
Americans are interested in unions because we’ve spent decades in a system with no counterweight to the influence of capital. After a half-century of spiralling inequality, repetitive scandals in our banking and finance sector, and stagnation in salaries for ordinary workers, there has been a broad embrace of further-Left politics. But the American conservative movement has fought vociferously for over a century to disempower labour — and they’re aided in this fight by the corporations and plutocrats that would be hurt by more and more powerful unions. The laws are bent against organising.
For generations, Republicans have been the labour movement’s persistent, passionate foe, while Democrats have been only tentatively committed to it. It seems strange that the institutions of the American Left haven’t done more to revitalise unions, given how much they empower workers. (If you’d like a prominent example, last year UPS described the demands of the Teamsters Union that represents its workers as extortionate for months — then folded once an actual work stoppage drew near.) But then again, corporations have almost as much influence in the Democratic party as they do with the Republicans.
Hamilton Nolan, a heart-on-his-sleeve labour leftist who has done as much as any journalist of his generation to centre unions, is inspired by the maddening reality that, even though labour organising is one of the most consistently potent forms of Left-wing power, it is constantly marginalised by the Democrats and establishment liberals. His recent book, The Hammer, laments years of bad decisions by union management, before issuing a call to action, concerning how the movement could grow. It’s the argument of a pessimist’s intellect and an optimist’s soul. Which is pretty much the only combination that makes sense if you are, like Nolan and myself, a supporter of America’s unions.
Organising is harder than it used to be. One of the virtues of The Hammer is it reminds us how much of it now takes place in worksites that look nothing like a car assembly plant. The advantages of the factory were multiple for unions: these were centralised workplaces with significant employee populations, and often the largest and most important employer for a local community. The actual work was frequently dangerous and physically demanding. Those conditions lent themselves to workers coming together to demand better pay and conditions.
Nolan points out that the effectiveness of the culinary unions in Nevada, one of the major recent labour success stories, is down to similar reasons:
“Just as the United Mine Workers, the United Steelworkers, and the United Auto Workers grew out of factory towns where workers chafed under the iron hand of all-powerful companies, so, too, has the Culinary Union’s growth been driven by a clear-eyed understanding that they were the only thing standing between thousands of workers and a life of absolute domination by casino companies.”
But most modern workplaces are not like factories. Workforces tend to be atomised into various departments and offices, and their interactions are often limited and filtered through electronic mediums. The most dangerous threat to such workers is often a papercut. It’s harder to muster the motivation to organise.
But the union movement can’t afford to stand around being nostalgic; the old model of factory unions, though still in place in a few industries, can’t be the model. It’s common for people to scoff at the idea of having unions in workplaces like Starbucks or, for that matter, Gawker Media, where I first encountered Nolan’s work. But unions must go where the jobs are and, most of all, where the employees who want to be organised are.
I frequently thought of two different sets of workers as I read The Hammer: home health aides — or carers — and people like me.
You often see home health aides named as perhaps the fastest-growing profession in the United States. America is a rapidly-greying country, with a vast population of ageing Baby Boomers reaching their senescence; we’re also a society where the average number of children per family has significantly declined and where multigenerational living has become uncommon. This is a recipe for a lot of senior citizens who need help getting around their homes, preparing meals, taking their medicines. Hence the rise of the home health aide, people who are often paid by Medicare or various government assistance programs — and paid poorly, at around $10/hour. Benefits are often minimal, and these carers are afforded little social status. This is a group that could definitely benefit from union representation, and unions would be very happy to increase their ranks with such a large and growing worker base.
And yet, organising this group is difficult, despite efforts by The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Home Healthcare Workers of America (HHWA). These workers rarely or ever congregate in a central place of employment; the vast majority of their working hours are spent in the homes of their clients. So, there’s little opportunity for the organic back-and-forth that has been so crucial to unionising workplaces in the past. The lack of a site of organising means it’s hard for union organisers to introduce themselves to employees — to make the case for unionising, or explain where dues go. And given its low-paying nature, the profession is fairly transient, with many people drifting into and out of these jobs.
Though dogged efforts to organise fast food workers continue, there, too, the lack of stability in the workforce poses problems for unions: employees who stay on the job for a matter of months, or who frequently leave and return to employment, are less likely to be enthusiastic union members. They have less natural investment in the working experience.
And then there are people like me. Digital media has been a rare bright spot in the labour movement, with a broad expansion of workplace organising — although the industry has been subject to such violent contraction that it’s hard to feel good about that growth. More and more of my peers are turning to a crowdsourced model of funding, with subscription-based newsletters or similar; Nolan himself derives some of his income this way. Though I freelance for publications such as this one and am steadily writing books, the bulk of my income stems from a paid newsletter. I would like to be part of a union, as I was when in the American Federation of Teachers. But it really wouldn’t make much sense. I don’t control the means of my production — Substack does, thanks to owning its servers — but I also have no specific employer. I’m not living on the rents derived from ownership, but I also have no management with which I can negotiate. It’s hard to imagine how I could ever belong to a union in this capacity, and yet the fact remains that I work, and that corporations capture the value I create, resulting in my exploitation. If the labour movement can’t incorporate independent contractors like me — somehow, some way — it’s losing out on a large and growing slice of the workforce. But incorporate us how?
“It’s hard to imagine how I could ever belong to a union, and yet the fact remains that I work, and that corporations capture the value I create.”
Nolan offers no easy answers. Indeed, his book catalogues mistake after mistake made by the labour movement. This willingness to engage directly and unapologetically with a seemingly endless stream of self-inflicted wounds is one of the book’s central strengths — a sign that labour is more than a symbol for Nolan and instead a living, breathing engine of potential progress. And yet, The Hammer’s bifurcated status, as both an invocation of labour’s potential and an indictment of its present reality, made the book frequently feel at war with itself. It’s too worshipful towards what labour might be to function as a screed, and too repetitively pessimistic to serve as a rousing call to action. And that’s fine! It doesn’t have to be either. But when I’ve recommended the book to friends, I’ve struggled to tell them exactly what it is. Every statement of hope seems offset by a discouraging detail.
But if the book sometimes seems unsure of its own level of optimism, the state of Nolan’s heart is clear. He has said, in describing the genesis of the book: “I could see, as clear as day, how unions could be the singular tool that could solve the inequality crisis gripping America — the big, deep problem that was eroding the foundations of our society, the underlying cause of a lot of other problems.” If this is an exaggeration, it’s barely one; the ability to bring work to a halt still represents just as much of a threat to plutocratic rule as it always did. Labour is never far from the heart of Left-wing politics, can never be; the Left is labour. For however unfashionable Marxism may be now, the fact that the most important Left-wing movement of all time placed the relationship between workers and management at the heart of political struggle holds a lesson for the rest of us.
And at the same time, the situation frequently does seem hopeless. Politicians from one party occasionally invoke unions as a feel-good afterthought; those from the other party relentlessly work to make labour organising impossible. Many Americans still reflexively see unions as synonymous with worker greed and laziness, after being force-fed a steady drip of Reaganite propaganda. And as in all things in 21st-century life, the workplace seems destined to remain under the tight grip of an unaccountable financial elite that government won’t confront and certainly can’t control.
Ultimately, The Hammer left me grasping at the same platitudes that I always grasp at when it comes to the labour movement — pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will; workers of the world, unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. The potential for a muscular American union movement, a lever of power in a world where workers have precious little, will never be erased. But only we can take advantage of such power, and it’s hard not to conclude that we simply don’t want to.
I know Nolan wants to believe that American unions can rise again, but I’m not sure he actually believes that American unions can rise again. I know how he feels. I’m living in the space between realism and idealism, between the potential and the actual, and it seems that so is he. The urge for workers to organise in some capacity to secure better working conditions will never leave us, and as long as that is true there is hope for unions. But precisely because of the heights reached in the heyday of American labour, now literally a century ago, the forces of reaction are that much more committed to defeating the threat of organised workers. And yet still, I can’t deny: there is power in a union.
People fret about how high the divorce rate has become; it’s at a 60-year low. People talk about how the United States has lost its status as an educational powerhouse; but we’ve done terribly for as long as there has been rigorous international comparisons. Even though we live in a world of unlimited information, many people believe things that just aren’t true. I bring this up as a form of confession: when it comes to the labour movement in the United States I do the same — possibly for self-defensive reasons.
In day-to-day life, I unthinkingly conceive of our current era as one of union ascendancy. The rise of the Bernie Sanders Democrat helped push labour back to the forefront of Left-of-centre debate: where Clintonite neoliberals found unions distasteful, today’s young liberals are reflexively pro-labour. Joe Biden’s National Labor Review Board, easily the most influential body for such issues in the United States, is the most union-friendly iteration in generations. And there have been a number of high-profile battles in recent years — everywhere from Amazon warehouses to Starbucks coffee shops. Actors’ and screenwriters’ unions held long and more-or-less successful strikes last year. In short, there is more coverage of and excitement about union issues right now than at any other point in my adult life.
And yet, Reuters tells us, last year, the American unionisation rate fell slightly, to a record low of 10%. In the metric that matters, unions are stagnant or declining. That contradiction begs a question: why has the renewed abstract interest in labour movements not coincided with an increase in actually-existing workers joining actually-existing unions?
Americans are interested in unions because we’ve spent decades in a system with no counterweight to the influence of capital. After a half-century of spiralling inequality, repetitive scandals in our banking and finance sector, and stagnation in salaries for ordinary workers, there has been a broad embrace of further-Left politics. But the American conservative movement has fought vociferously for over a century to disempower labour — and they’re aided in this fight by the corporations and plutocrats that would be hurt by more and more powerful unions. The laws are bent against organising.
For generations, Republicans have been the labour movement’s persistent, passionate foe, while Democrats have been only tentatively committed to it. It seems strange that the institutions of the American Left haven’t done more to revitalise unions, given how much they empower workers. (If you’d like a prominent example, last year UPS described the demands of the Teamsters Union that represents its workers as extortionate for months — then folded once an actual work stoppage drew near.) But then again, corporations have almost as much influence in the Democratic party as they do with the Republicans.
Hamilton Nolan, a heart-on-his-sleeve labour leftist who has done as much as any journalist of his generation to centre unions, is inspired by the maddening reality that, even though labour organising is one of the most consistently potent forms of Left-wing power, it is constantly marginalised by the Democrats and establishment liberals. His recent book, The Hammer, laments years of bad decisions by union management, before issuing a call to action, concerning how the movement could grow. It’s the argument of a pessimist’s intellect and an optimist’s soul. Which is pretty much the only combination that makes sense if you are, like Nolan and myself, a supporter of America’s unions.
Organising is harder than it used to be. One of the virtues of The Hammer is it reminds us how much of it now takes place in worksites that look nothing like a car assembly plant. The advantages of the factory were multiple for unions: these were centralised workplaces with significant employee populations, and often the largest and most important employer for a local community. The actual work was frequently dangerous and physically demanding. Those conditions lent themselves to workers coming together to demand better pay and conditions.
Nolan points out that the effectiveness of the culinary unions in Nevada, one of the major recent labour success stories, is down to similar reasons:
“Just as the United Mine Workers, the United Steelworkers, and the United Auto Workers grew out of factory towns where workers chafed under the iron hand of all-powerful companies, so, too, has the Culinary Union’s growth been driven by a clear-eyed understanding that they were the only thing standing between thousands of workers and a life of absolute domination by casino companies.”
But most modern workplaces are not like factories. Workforces tend to be atomised into various departments and offices, and their interactions are often limited and filtered through electronic mediums. The most dangerous threat to such workers is often a papercut. It’s harder to muster the motivation to organise.
But the union movement can’t afford to stand around being nostalgic; the old model of factory unions, though still in place in a few industries, can’t be the model. It’s common for people to scoff at the idea of having unions in workplaces like Starbucks or, for that matter, Gawker Media, where I first encountered Nolan’s work. But unions must go where the jobs are and, most of all, where the employees who want to be organised are.
I frequently thought of two different sets of workers as I read The Hammer: home health aides — or carers — and people like me.
You often see home health aides named as perhaps the fastest-growing profession in the United States. America is a rapidly-greying country, with a vast population of ageing Baby Boomers reaching their senescence; we’re also a society where the average number of children per family has significantly declined and where multigenerational living has become uncommon. This is a recipe for a lot of senior citizens who need help getting around their homes, preparing meals, taking their medicines. Hence the rise of the home health aide, people who are often paid by Medicare or various government assistance programs — and paid poorly, at around $10/hour. Benefits are often minimal, and these carers are afforded little social status. This is a group that could definitely benefit from union representation, and unions would be very happy to increase their ranks with such a large and growing worker base.
And yet, organising this group is difficult, despite efforts by The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Home Healthcare Workers of America (HHWA). These workers rarely or ever congregate in a central place of employment; the vast majority of their working hours are spent in the homes of their clients. So, there’s little opportunity for the organic back-and-forth that has been so crucial to unionising workplaces in the past. The lack of a site of organising means it’s hard for union organisers to introduce themselves to employees — to make the case for unionising, or explain where dues go. And given its low-paying nature, the profession is fairly transient, with many people drifting into and out of these jobs.
Though dogged efforts to organise fast food workers continue, there, too, the lack of stability in the workforce poses problems for unions: employees who stay on the job for a matter of months, or who frequently leave and return to employment, are less likely to be enthusiastic union members. They have less natural investment in the working experience.
And then there are people like me. Digital media has been a rare bright spot in the labour movement, with a broad expansion of workplace organising — although the industry has been subject to such violent contraction that it’s hard to feel good about that growth. More and more of my peers are turning to a crowdsourced model of funding, with subscription-based newsletters or similar; Nolan himself derives some of his income this way. Though I freelance for publications such as this one and am steadily writing books, the bulk of my income stems from a paid newsletter. I would like to be part of a union, as I was when in the American Federation of Teachers. But it really wouldn’t make much sense. I don’t control the means of my production — Substack does, thanks to owning its servers — but I also have no specific employer. I’m not living on the rents derived from ownership, but I also have no management with which I can negotiate. It’s hard to imagine how I could ever belong to a union in this capacity, and yet the fact remains that I work, and that corporations capture the value I create, resulting in my exploitation. If the labour movement can’t incorporate independent contractors like me — somehow, some way — it’s losing out on a large and growing slice of the workforce. But incorporate us how?
“It’s hard to imagine how I could ever belong to a union, and yet the fact remains that I work, and that corporations capture the value I create.”
Nolan offers no easy answers. Indeed, his book catalogues mistake after mistake made by the labour movement. This willingness to engage directly and unapologetically with a seemingly endless stream of self-inflicted wounds is one of the book’s central strengths — a sign that labour is more than a symbol for Nolan and instead a living, breathing engine of potential progress. And yet, The Hammer’s bifurcated status, as both an invocation of labour’s potential and an indictment of its present reality, made the book frequently feel at war with itself. It’s too worshipful towards what labour might be to function as a screed, and too repetitively pessimistic to serve as a rousing call to action. And that’s fine! It doesn’t have to be either. But when I’ve recommended the book to friends, I’ve struggled to tell them exactly what it is. Every statement of hope seems offset by a discouraging detail.
But if the book sometimes seems unsure of its own level of optimism, the state of Nolan’s heart is clear. He has said, in describing the genesis of the book: “I could see, as clear as day, how unions could be the singular tool that could solve the inequality crisis gripping America — the big, deep problem that was eroding the foundations of our society, the underlying cause of a lot of other problems.” If this is an exaggeration, it’s barely one; the ability to bring work to a halt still represents just as much of a threat to plutocratic rule as it always did. Labour is never far from the heart of Left-wing politics, can never be; the Left is labour. For however unfashionable Marxism may be now, the fact that the most important Left-wing movement of all time placed the relationship between workers and management at the heart of political struggle holds a lesson for the rest of us.
And at the same time, the situation frequently does seem hopeless. Politicians from one party occasionally invoke unions as a feel-good afterthought; those from the other party relentlessly work to make labour organising impossible. Many Americans still reflexively see unions as synonymous with worker greed and laziness, after being force-fed a steady drip of Reaganite propaganda. And as in all things in 21st-century life, the workplace seems destined to remain under the tight grip of an unaccountable financial elite that government won’t confront and certainly can’t control.
Ultimately, The Hammer left me grasping at the same platitudes that I always grasp at when it comes to the labour movement — pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will; workers of the world, unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. The potential for a muscular American union movement, a lever of power in a world where workers have precious little, will never be erased. But only we can take advantage of such power, and it’s hard not to conclude that we simply don’t want to.
I know Nolan wants to believe that American unions can rise again, but I’m not sure he actually believes that American unions can rise again. I know how he feels. I’m living in the space between realism and idealism, between the potential and the actual, and it seems that so is he. The urge for workers to organise in some capacity to secure better working conditions will never leave us, and as long as that is true there is hope for unions. But precisely because of the heights reached in the heyday of American labour, now literally a century ago, the forces of reaction are that much more committed to defeating the threat of organised workers. And yet still, I can’t deny: there is power in a union.
October 11, 2023
This book is basically a state of the union on unions. Discussing the major happenings in the organized labor movement all over the country from West Virginia to Miami, California to South Carolina. I found the base story interesting but not engaging. Reflective of the labor movement itself, I was intrigued by the sentiments but not necessarily moved by them. At times the writing felt disjointed and the stories didn't seem very connected. The stories also felt thematically very repetitive. A union is either badly curtailed by the company they work for or they have power but its overarching impact is limited. I understand that that is that state of affairs but I think perhaps the writing style could have been a bit more inventive or creative so as not to seem like the same five sentiments were repeated just with different characters in a new setting. I was slightly disappointed because I had high hopes but essentially it is a rather fine book.
August 25, 2024
In 2020, I attempted to unionize my workplace in the face of hazardous working conditions, poor wages, and poor sick leave protections. I faced the brunt of many of the issues Nolan lays out in this book: we had no union lawyers or strategists to help us basebuild. In a fire-at-will state like Texas, we had no idea about what was "safe" to do and not. In the end, nothing really was safe, and the dreams of an organized workplace fizzled out.
Nolan's thesis is one that I heartily agree with: unions are one of few bastions of real participatory democracy left in the world. They're a tried and true way to materially do the work of democracy, across the silos increasingly separating us from one another. It is because union organizing has a transformative power to build community and collective action that it's so frustrating it is continually thwarted from doing so. For decades, the divisive powers of racism, sexism and homophobia held labor back from a rainbow coalition that could rein in the monopoly capitalists for good. Now, the vestiges of labor are too content hiding in their bastions of membership dues and corners of protected trades to go out there and do the work to organize more people. Labor is having a moment in this country, the likes of which have not been seen in decades. We've seen real wins in places like Amazon and Starbucks, and a general agreement that workers do need to be cared for hangs in the air.
Organized labor has rarely held more positive sentiment in the general populace than it does now, but the lack of bold strategy from existing unions and associations like the AFL-CIO risk letting this moment snuff out as well. We must share tactics, resources, and strategy to let small fries stand up to the big guy. Frustrating but galvanizing read. I want a union! 4/5 stars.
Nolan's thesis is one that I heartily agree with: unions are one of few bastions of real participatory democracy left in the world. They're a tried and true way to materially do the work of democracy, across the silos increasingly separating us from one another. It is because union organizing has a transformative power to build community and collective action that it's so frustrating it is continually thwarted from doing so. For decades, the divisive powers of racism, sexism and homophobia held labor back from a rainbow coalition that could rein in the monopoly capitalists for good. Now, the vestiges of labor are too content hiding in their bastions of membership dues and corners of protected trades to go out there and do the work to organize more people. Labor is having a moment in this country, the likes of which have not been seen in decades. We've seen real wins in places like Amazon and Starbucks, and a general agreement that workers do need to be cared for hangs in the air.
Organized labor has rarely held more positive sentiment in the general populace than it does now, but the lack of bold strategy from existing unions and associations like the AFL-CIO risk letting this moment snuff out as well. We must share tactics, resources, and strategy to let small fries stand up to the big guy. Frustrating but galvanizing read. I want a union! 4/5 stars.
June 12, 2024
I'm doing my part as a union member!
But seriously, my union should probably have been (illegally) striking four years ago, and the fact that it was never considered tells you how little power they actually have and how little they will have in the future.
Teachers got their power by illegally striking, and they'll only keep it by having the courage to do it again. But the NEA is one of those problem unions in the AFL-CIO that Nolan convincingly criticizes for doing a bad job of constantly organizing. If my state fined or fired all the striking teachers, would the NEA help out? Nope.
But seriously, my union should probably have been (illegally) striking four years ago, and the fact that it was never considered tells you how little power they actually have and how little they will have in the future.
Teachers got their power by illegally striking, and they'll only keep it by having the courage to do it again. But the NEA is one of those problem unions in the AFL-CIO that Nolan convincingly criticizes for doing a bad job of constantly organizing. If my state fined or fired all the striking teachers, would the NEA help out? Nope.
September 20, 2024
Probably the best non-fiction book I’ve read over the past few years, the author does a fantastic job in his description of how unions have become an institutional failure in many senses, which is directly tied to the economic inequality of our country and the widening gap between classes. Before reading this book, I really had no concrete grasp of how unions operated or how they were such a significant force in the early 20th century, and whose power has dwindled away since Reaganism, especially in blue-collar occupations. The case studies presented by the author are all very heart-wrenching, though some do provide the inspiration to spread the word of bringing unions back to the forefront of our nation and restoring a sense of true democracy.
February 23, 2024
A powerful state of the union(s) and comprehensive overview of the labor movement’s present struggle. Feeling more mad at the dems than I already did (incapable of keeping their promises? unwilling to take risks and instead only strategize election to election begging for campaign donations and votes to save us while never actually taking the hard and fast actions that could?? shocking!). as a girl who’s held MANY jobs that should have had unions in (tragically) right to work states, I feel more compelled to support labor organizing than I ever have.
Also!!! Imagine my surprise when in chapter 2 he is name dropping my colleagues!! SC has people power - just needs to unify it.
Also!!! Imagine my surprise when in chapter 2 he is name dropping my colleagues!! SC has people power - just needs to unify it.
January 1, 2025
made me more motivated to do union stuff, wish it went a little more into internal union politics (though it did a bit!)
February 24, 2024
Great, great overview of the current status of the labor movement in America. Sara Nelson is a dynamic central character throughout the book and I learned a lot from his various stories with union members all across the country.
I'm surprised that, for the number of studies Nolan cites, that he did not include footnotes or endnotes in his book. I would've liked to have read those. Plus, I was also surprised that he did not include nearly anything about public sector unions, which make up the vast majority of unions in America today. I would've liked to hear more about these unions.
I'm surprised that, for the number of studies Nolan cites, that he did not include footnotes or endnotes in his book. I would've liked to have read those. Plus, I was also surprised that he did not include nearly anything about public sector unions, which make up the vast majority of unions in America today. I would've liked to hear more about these unions.
March 3, 2024
The personal coverage and broader picture that Nolan shows here is quite impressive and does much to explain worker rights, meagre as they are, in the US. In Germany as an American I am automatically protected and under the care of a works council which is viewed as a necessity here and not a hindrance to business interests. Meanwhile, in the US Nolan shows what has been lost and not imagined and what could be gained in coalescing workers’ voices. It’s sad what he shows about labor leader in the AFL-CIO and others protecting their sinking turf. As he says in the final chapter, ‘Ten percent of the workforce ain’t gonna cut it in a world of trillion-dollar corporations. We will organize more people, or we will anticlimactically with away.’
August 13, 2024
Absolute ripper. I'm certainly part of the intended audience (leftie, disappointed in Democrats constantly stepping on rakes, hate that avoiding the poorhouse via medical debt is directly proportional to employment, will likely work my whole career to enrich powerful bankrollers of value/profit/growth machines) but I gotta say that feels like it tugged my eyes open. I signed up and subscribed to Nolan's Substack as a result of reading this, and am considering a far-future career path of plying my trade for or in support of a union. That feels worthy of five stars.
August 7, 2024
Journalist Hamilton Nolan highlights current leaders in the labor movement detailing the strengths and struggles of people leading large unions and forming new ones. His interviews with labor leaders detail the personal and organizing challenges faced by individuals and organizations. A labor organizer and union member himself, Nolan has the bona fides to praise and criticize the current state of the movement. His observations are informative and fair. As the labor movement is not well covered in the mainstream press, Nolan's book is a much needed encapsulation of the issues facing workers and the efforts of workers looking to create and advance unions. He also effectively details why strong unions will continue to be a necessary part of the quality of life equation for most Americans. The third chapter discussing the organizing efforts in California by SEIU and AFSCME to create the Child Care Providers United Union is important documentation of the 20 years of work for child care providers to be legally recognized as having the right to negotiate as a group.
I may be quick to praise Nolan because I am a proud member of SEIU 521. However, he is fair in his assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of unions and knowledgeable on the state of wages, child care, and other issues of economic equity. I encourage anyone interested in unions or unionizing to read this book.
I may be quick to praise Nolan because I am a proud member of SEIU 521. However, he is fair in his assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of unions and knowledgeable on the state of wages, child care, and other issues of economic equity. I encourage anyone interested in unions or unionizing to read this book.
Read
December 8, 2024Fantastic. The prose was a little purple, but I thought this was great.
The book is in many parts a love letter to Sara Nelson, and one has to wonder along with the author what would have happened if the charismatic Nelson had been able to campaign for AFL-CIO president.
There are profiles of various organizing campaigns and union members, but overall the book is about making the case that “every single worker needs a union.” And if you have no union at your workplace, you probably owe your pay and safety to the work of unions in general.
Even larger than that, “there is no better way to make people understand class war than having them participate in it” via unions and the bigger concept that a labor union represents: community.
The book is in many parts a love letter to Sara Nelson, and one has to wonder along with the author what would have happened if the charismatic Nelson had been able to campaign for AFL-CIO president.
There are profiles of various organizing campaigns and union members, but overall the book is about making the case that “every single worker needs a union.” And if you have no union at your workplace, you probably owe your pay and safety to the work of unions in general.
Even larger than that, “there is no better way to make people understand class war than having them participate in it” via unions and the bigger concept that a labor union represents: community.
February 26, 2024
“Change rising from the bottom up is inherently more stable than trying to push change from the top down. That’s why you do squats if you want to be strong, and that’s why the key to organized labor’s politics must be to give power to many more regular people, not to try to use laws to save us from the already immense power of capital.”
A great survey of where organized labor currently is, even if that becomes a bit repetitive at times. More importantly he comes to a strong conclusion and call to action for what is needed - new union organizing. A must-read for anyone who works and thinks things could be better.
A great survey of where organized labor currently is, even if that becomes a bit repetitive at times. More importantly he comes to a strong conclusion and call to action for what is needed - new union organizing. A must-read for anyone who works and thinks things could be better.
May 26, 2025
Exciting and engaging read; the chapters about Unite Here’s place based power building are, in my view, the most valuable. Nolan is at his best when telling the stories of people in struggle.
I think it suffers a bit from Nolan’s nearly hagiographic depiction of Sara Nelson; if charisma & vision were sufficient to alter the fiction and structure of the AFL-CIO the Sweeney administration would have been truly transformative.
I think it suffers a bit from Nolan’s nearly hagiographic depiction of Sara Nelson; if charisma & vision were sufficient to alter the fiction and structure of the AFL-CIO the Sweeney administration would have been truly transformative.
January 6, 2025
I don't know much about unionizing personally, but I support labor rights. That said, this book leaned heavily on anecdotes that became rather redundant to listen to. I was hoping for more intellectual appeal or a synthesis of history, political science, and sociological studies.
February 23, 2025
Accessibly written overview of the current state of unions. Also super helpful for learning what good union organizing looks like and how to support folks in active struggle. Offers a compelling strategy for national unions.
May 28, 2024
“Ten Percent of the workforce ain’t gonna cut it in a world of trillion dollar corporations”
I was drawn to The Hammer because I wanted to learn more about unions from a journalistic perspective, and WOW, this book delivers on that front. While I would have appreciated more historical context, as the book focuses more on the current state of unions and profiles specific people and unions across the United States, this approach doesn't lessen its impact or importance.
Nolan’s book is highly informational, not just highlighting the significance of unions, but also shedding light on what happens when unions become complacent and fail. The final chapter ties everything together perfectly. I particularly enjoyed learning about the efforts of the Childcare Workers of California, which is a powerful display of resilience and the idea that change requires relentless pursuit. Similarly, the chapter on the Culinary Union of Las Vegas captures the passion and dedication of those involved. This book smacked me in the face and told me it’s not enough to want the change I seek, because change won’t come without continuous action, engagement, and unity.
This book is a stark reminder of the systems in place that prevent everyday workers from forming communities, speaking up, and realizing their strength. Despite presenting multiple stories, it pieces together a complete picture of how the efforts of a few can benefit many. This is powerful, especially in a time when we're often told that our individual voices and efforts don’t matter.
I was drawn to The Hammer because I wanted to learn more about unions from a journalistic perspective, and WOW, this book delivers on that front. While I would have appreciated more historical context, as the book focuses more on the current state of unions and profiles specific people and unions across the United States, this approach doesn't lessen its impact or importance.
Nolan’s book is highly informational, not just highlighting the significance of unions, but also shedding light on what happens when unions become complacent and fail. The final chapter ties everything together perfectly. I particularly enjoyed learning about the efforts of the Childcare Workers of California, which is a powerful display of resilience and the idea that change requires relentless pursuit. Similarly, the chapter on the Culinary Union of Las Vegas captures the passion and dedication of those involved. This book smacked me in the face and told me it’s not enough to want the change I seek, because change won’t come without continuous action, engagement, and unity.
This book is a stark reminder of the systems in place that prevent everyday workers from forming communities, speaking up, and realizing their strength. Despite presenting multiple stories, it pieces together a complete picture of how the efforts of a few can benefit many. This is powerful, especially in a time when we're often told that our individual voices and efforts don’t matter.
August 10, 2025
3.5 stars, maybe 3.25, rounded down, but for different reasons than any other 3-star reviewers with downward rounding.
A sentence in the epilogue chapter says it all:
“The unfortunate of the labor movement is that it doesn’t really exist.”
After that, Hamilton Nolan notes the heavy lifting, in dollars and other things, that will be involved with changing that. He also notes that a new enthusiasm for unions will go away again if existing unions, and the para-union AFL-CIO, don’t start that work.
The book is fairly good overall, but I can’t go four full stars. From my POV, there's one definite problem that pops up more than once.
I’d read Nolan before at The Splinter and elsewhere, so I knew his bona fides. I didn’t know how far left his parents had been.
The book is well organized, threading the story of American Flight Attendants union president Sara Nelson through parts of every second or third chapter, as she struggles with the airline industry’s struggles during COVID, and also with personal health crises that attack the possibility of her running to head the AFL-CIO.
Page 26 has a good description of the willful bureaucratic ineptitude and other problems the AFL-CIO has. But Nolan spoils it on page 27 by talking about how it for the union movement is like the Democratic Party for progressives: “It’s the army we have.”
Not for this non-duopoly voter, Nolan.
Nolan later talks about the “leftists” of the Democratic Socialists of America. You mean “the pressure group within the Democratic Party DSA, don’t you? The pseudo-leftists who toed the Democratic Party line on Israel-Palestine until late 2023, don’t you? Democratic Party sheepdoggers overall still, even after that.
Near the end, he talks about presidential administrations being "indifferent to hostile" to unions. We know the score on things like National Labor Relations Board staffing — Democrats indifferent, Republicans hostile. This goes back on the Dem side to Clinton for sure and arguably halfway, at least, under Carter.
Later, when he discusses how media covers politics, he’s right as far as it goes. But, it doesn’t go far enough, and again, I’m speaking from a non-duopoly lens. Third parties are covered only as spoilers in a duopoly horse race.
He also ignores how the Teamsters have a long history of playing footsie with Republicans. This includes, after this book’s publication, how current head Sean O’Brien has doubled down on that, going to the 2024 RNC, and also soft-pedaling opposition to right to work laws. (Nolan has called this out on his Substack.)
Good look at how South Carolina is the poster child not just for anti-unionism, but everything associated with it: right to work (right to get fired) laws, economic incentives strewn all over the place (by economic development corporations that as entities could have stood more mention) and such.
Unionizing child care in California good. That said, could have mentioned that state reimbursement being set at just 85 percent of costs was done by all-Democrat state government. As for Nolan being disappointed Jerry Brown vetoed bills to allow these workers to unionize (bill was necessary as they are quasi-state employees)? Please. Gov. Moonbeam was also Gov. Neoliberal his FIRST stint in office.
I don’t recall reading about AFL-CIO HQ in DC being set on fire during Black Lives Matter protests. Yet, given both its racist past and its racist fellow traveler present of refusing to boot police unions, it was poetic justice.
That said, missing from the book, I am reminded, as Nolan’s next chapter talks about Vegas and the Culinary Union? Organized labor’s fraught relationship with environmentalism. It’s a two-way street at times on what’s gone wrong, but at least 50 percent of the blame is on organized labor’s side.
Finally, getting back to that quote?
It’s true, but expecting the present union structure to do it, and to learn to extricate it more from the left hand of the duopoly (setting aside those like the Teamsters and Builders playing footsie with the right hand of the duopoly) is a pipe dream. After all, the lack of class consciousness mentioned by one union local leader? The AFL-CIO, and certainly most AFL half individual unions, contributed to that lack of class consciousness. That included the reunified AFL-CIO jumping into bed with the CIA internationally. And, the Democratic Party did the same.
A good example of unions, and the pre-reunion AFL (and perhaps CIO) going against class consciousness, or at a minimum, saying "we got ours"? And, also not mentioned in this book?
National health care in the US was proposed for the first time by Harry Truman when he was president. A three-legged stool opposed it. One leg was the various organizations and lobbying groups representing big business in America, who called it "socialist." A second was the American Medical Association, with the same stance, especially if Truman wanted a British-style NHS. The third leg? Unions who said "we got ours" and that if more Americans wanted health care, they should unionize. (Per Nolan's plaint, did the national AFL help with organizational efforts after that?)
ALSO relevant to that? Contra Nolan, you can't blame the decline in union membership primarily on Reagan and Reaganism. Per a chart my link text, on this page, the RATE of decline was almost as rapid from the 1954 peak in membership to the start of Reagan's presidency in 1981 as it has been from 1981 to today.
A sentence in the epilogue chapter says it all:
“The unfortunate of the labor movement is that it doesn’t really exist.”
After that, Hamilton Nolan notes the heavy lifting, in dollars and other things, that will be involved with changing that. He also notes that a new enthusiasm for unions will go away again if existing unions, and the para-union AFL-CIO, don’t start that work.
The book is fairly good overall, but I can’t go four full stars. From my POV, there's one definite problem that pops up more than once.
I’d read Nolan before at The Splinter and elsewhere, so I knew his bona fides. I didn’t know how far left his parents had been.
The book is well organized, threading the story of American Flight Attendants union president Sara Nelson through parts of every second or third chapter, as she struggles with the airline industry’s struggles during COVID, and also with personal health crises that attack the possibility of her running to head the AFL-CIO.
Page 26 has a good description of the willful bureaucratic ineptitude and other problems the AFL-CIO has. But Nolan spoils it on page 27 by talking about how it for the union movement is like the Democratic Party for progressives: “It’s the army we have.”
Not for this non-duopoly voter, Nolan.
Nolan later talks about the “leftists” of the Democratic Socialists of America. You mean “the pressure group within the Democratic Party DSA, don’t you? The pseudo-leftists who toed the Democratic Party line on Israel-Palestine until late 2023, don’t you? Democratic Party sheepdoggers overall still, even after that.
Near the end, he talks about presidential administrations being "indifferent to hostile" to unions. We know the score on things like National Labor Relations Board staffing — Democrats indifferent, Republicans hostile. This goes back on the Dem side to Clinton for sure and arguably halfway, at least, under Carter.
Later, when he discusses how media covers politics, he’s right as far as it goes. But, it doesn’t go far enough, and again, I’m speaking from a non-duopoly lens. Third parties are covered only as spoilers in a duopoly horse race.
He also ignores how the Teamsters have a long history of playing footsie with Republicans. This includes, after this book’s publication, how current head Sean O’Brien has doubled down on that, going to the 2024 RNC, and also soft-pedaling opposition to right to work laws. (Nolan has called this out on his Substack.)
Good look at how South Carolina is the poster child not just for anti-unionism, but everything associated with it: right to work (right to get fired) laws, economic incentives strewn all over the place (by economic development corporations that as entities could have stood more mention) and such.
Unionizing child care in California good. That said, could have mentioned that state reimbursement being set at just 85 percent of costs was done by all-Democrat state government. As for Nolan being disappointed Jerry Brown vetoed bills to allow these workers to unionize (bill was necessary as they are quasi-state employees)? Please. Gov. Moonbeam was also Gov. Neoliberal his FIRST stint in office.
I don’t recall reading about AFL-CIO HQ in DC being set on fire during Black Lives Matter protests. Yet, given both its racist past and its racist fellow traveler present of refusing to boot police unions, it was poetic justice.
That said, missing from the book, I am reminded, as Nolan’s next chapter talks about Vegas and the Culinary Union? Organized labor’s fraught relationship with environmentalism. It’s a two-way street at times on what’s gone wrong, but at least 50 percent of the blame is on organized labor’s side.
Finally, getting back to that quote?
It’s true, but expecting the present union structure to do it, and to learn to extricate it more from the left hand of the duopoly (setting aside those like the Teamsters and Builders playing footsie with the right hand of the duopoly) is a pipe dream. After all, the lack of class consciousness mentioned by one union local leader? The AFL-CIO, and certainly most AFL half individual unions, contributed to that lack of class consciousness. That included the reunified AFL-CIO jumping into bed with the CIA internationally. And, the Democratic Party did the same.
A good example of unions, and the pre-reunion AFL (and perhaps CIO) going against class consciousness, or at a minimum, saying "we got ours"? And, also not mentioned in this book?
National health care in the US was proposed for the first time by Harry Truman when he was president. A three-legged stool opposed it. One leg was the various organizations and lobbying groups representing big business in America, who called it "socialist." A second was the American Medical Association, with the same stance, especially if Truman wanted a British-style NHS. The third leg? Unions who said "we got ours" and that if more Americans wanted health care, they should unionize. (Per Nolan's plaint, did the national AFL help with organizational efforts after that?)
ALSO relevant to that? Contra Nolan, you can't blame the decline in union membership primarily on Reagan and Reaganism. Per a chart my link text, on this page, the RATE of decline was almost as rapid from the 1954 peak in membership to the start of Reagan's presidency in 1981 as it has been from 1981 to today.
April 18, 2025
I have not read much about modern labor unions, other than think pieces lamenting their decline. This book provided specific, inspiring examples of the grinding daily efforts of working people to improve their job conditions through union organizing. If you are relatively unfamiliar with this topic like myself, this book will be a revealing look at today’s labor unions.
I enjoyed learning about the unionization of childcare workers in California, which somehow I never heard about despite reading the news daily (?!). I was also fascinated to learn about the Culinary Union in Las Vegas, and the Warrior Met coal strike a few years ago in the Alabama county where we live.
The story of an attempt to unionize Tudor’s Biscuit World, a fast food chain in impoverished but traditionally pro-union West Virginia, was perhaps my favorite in the whole book. There’s something to be said for the courage that can come from not understanding just how audacious and exceptional your goals are, and I admire the woman who pioneered the union drive, though it was ultimately unsuccessful.
That’s another point Nolan stresses- labor organizing is difficult partly because it takes a long time, many attempts, and a willingness to accept that you’re more likely to fail than succeed. But I agree with him that collective bargaining can provide a positive energy and purpose in workers’ lives, as well as a way of participating in politics that is not based on elections.
Interesting ideas found here:
COVID was a (lost?) opportunity for a revitalized labor movement. I can’t believe those Starbucks and Amazon strikes were in 2021. Four years is long enough- or rather, people’s memories are short enough (mine included!) that I think much of the momentum has been lost. On the other hand, while searching for Amazon and Starbucks labor news, I see that the Teamsters attempted a strike at Christmas 2024 and Starbucks workers are striking at 300 stores at the moment I write this. The Teamsters strike was a flop, and Starbucks has over 10,000 locations. But they’re persisting. That’s worth something.
An umbrella institution like the AFL-CIO- although probably not that particular group given their insularity and timidness- is necessary as a central hub for labor organizing. The author suggests having field offices in every state and dispatching assistants to even the smallest union drive. It is indeed strange, though it never occurred to me before reading this book, that there’s no one specific I can reach out to about starting a union if I’m interested. I can try to find sympathetic people in other unions, but there’s no system.
Organizing and acting like a union before official recognition, by creating the structure and following a set of established procedures, makes it easier to transition to being a legitimate labor union.
Touristy cities, where the workforce of locals provides services to out of towners, are ripe for union organizing because it’s easy to stop the flow of tourists with a work stoppage.
Questions I have after reading:
This question is beyond the scope of Nolan’s book, because his book is written for those who already accept his basic premise that labor unions are vital institutions. Which I do. But how do you counter the claim that unionization will spur global companies to pack up and leave to a place without unions, leaving workers with no jobs and no wages at all? We’ve all seen the merciless offshoring of American jobs for forty years now, and it’s been immensely profitable for the wealthy class - why wouldn’t they continue?
I live in Tuscaloosa Alabama, and Mercedes Benz International came here specifically because unionization is rare in this state. Locals with no higher education can’t find a better job than Mercedes, whose $23 an hour wages look great in comparison to $12 at Popeyes or Circle K. They tried to unionize last year, with our governor Kay Ivey painting the effort as a contingent of socialist Yankees trying to impose their ways on us, and the vote failed. But say they’d won. What stops Mercedes from turning around and moving to South Carolina?
But surely this fatalistic shrug of “if you try to get anything better, they’ll screw you even harder” can’t be all we have in response? I have no idea what can be done about this issue, other than achieving a critical mass where a good majority of workers are union members again, so there are no backwaters to flee to. I guess it’s time to read another book.
4 / 5 stars. Thought provoking, and full of interesting examples of modern union organizing that have received far less attention in news media than they deserve.
I enjoyed learning about the unionization of childcare workers in California, which somehow I never heard about despite reading the news daily (?!). I was also fascinated to learn about the Culinary Union in Las Vegas, and the Warrior Met coal strike a few years ago in the Alabama county where we live.
The story of an attempt to unionize Tudor’s Biscuit World, a fast food chain in impoverished but traditionally pro-union West Virginia, was perhaps my favorite in the whole book. There’s something to be said for the courage that can come from not understanding just how audacious and exceptional your goals are, and I admire the woman who pioneered the union drive, though it was ultimately unsuccessful.
That’s another point Nolan stresses- labor organizing is difficult partly because it takes a long time, many attempts, and a willingness to accept that you’re more likely to fail than succeed. But I agree with him that collective bargaining can provide a positive energy and purpose in workers’ lives, as well as a way of participating in politics that is not based on elections.
Interesting ideas found here:
COVID was a (lost?) opportunity for a revitalized labor movement. I can’t believe those Starbucks and Amazon strikes were in 2021. Four years is long enough- or rather, people’s memories are short enough (mine included!) that I think much of the momentum has been lost. On the other hand, while searching for Amazon and Starbucks labor news, I see that the Teamsters attempted a strike at Christmas 2024 and Starbucks workers are striking at 300 stores at the moment I write this. The Teamsters strike was a flop, and Starbucks has over 10,000 locations. But they’re persisting. That’s worth something.
An umbrella institution like the AFL-CIO- although probably not that particular group given their insularity and timidness- is necessary as a central hub for labor organizing. The author suggests having field offices in every state and dispatching assistants to even the smallest union drive. It is indeed strange, though it never occurred to me before reading this book, that there’s no one specific I can reach out to about starting a union if I’m interested. I can try to find sympathetic people in other unions, but there’s no system.
Organizing and acting like a union before official recognition, by creating the structure and following a set of established procedures, makes it easier to transition to being a legitimate labor union.
Touristy cities, where the workforce of locals provides services to out of towners, are ripe for union organizing because it’s easy to stop the flow of tourists with a work stoppage.
Questions I have after reading:
This question is beyond the scope of Nolan’s book, because his book is written for those who already accept his basic premise that labor unions are vital institutions. Which I do. But how do you counter the claim that unionization will spur global companies to pack up and leave to a place without unions, leaving workers with no jobs and no wages at all? We’ve all seen the merciless offshoring of American jobs for forty years now, and it’s been immensely profitable for the wealthy class - why wouldn’t they continue?
I live in Tuscaloosa Alabama, and Mercedes Benz International came here specifically because unionization is rare in this state. Locals with no higher education can’t find a better job than Mercedes, whose $23 an hour wages look great in comparison to $12 at Popeyes or Circle K. They tried to unionize last year, with our governor Kay Ivey painting the effort as a contingent of socialist Yankees trying to impose their ways on us, and the vote failed. But say they’d won. What stops Mercedes from turning around and moving to South Carolina?
But surely this fatalistic shrug of “if you try to get anything better, they’ll screw you even harder” can’t be all we have in response? I have no idea what can be done about this issue, other than achieving a critical mass where a good majority of workers are union members again, so there are no backwaters to flee to. I guess it’s time to read another book.
4 / 5 stars. Thought provoking, and full of interesting examples of modern union organizing that have received far less attention in news media than they deserve.
February 3, 2025
I wish I could buy a million copies and hand them out to workers across the US. The book tells stories of wins and loses in the labor movement across the US in recent times, and their impacts on inequality. It shows why unionizing is the most important tool workers have to protect themselves against abuse, and get the benefits they deserve (like higher wages, healthcare, good schedules, etc).
But first we need to agree that inequality is a real problem - and this is something that the book doesn't really cover. It's sort of implied. I think most leftists understand the impact of inequality, but conservatives have a more complicated view. Reagan told them to blame the poor for their problems, but to also blame the elite. It makes for a chaotic worldview that thinks a single mother on WIC is leeching off other's hard work but also that billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates are bleeding us and stealing our hard earned dollars, destroying the middle class. It doesn't make sense. One group has billions of dollars collectively, the other group doesn't have shit. How are we still arguing this? And yes, I get the gov spends money on the poor, but not really dude. We spend it elsewhere - who got bailed out after Wall Street tanked the housing market in 2008? Not the people who's life savings got wiped out, but the rich assholes who tanked the market themselves. And gov spends on military - thank Reagan and Bush and Clinton - we privatized and deregulated and gutted programs for decades, programs for the poor are laughable.
Inequality kills the middle class and lets a handful of people get so rich that they can control government, make monopolies, treat workers like shit, pay them like shit, and then take take take. It's no surprise that mom and pop, brick and mortar stores are generally fucked. Inequality driven by privatization and deregulation has led not to a market with healthy competition, but a market with monopolies that kill competition, drive up prices, and lower product quality, all to squeeze out as much profit as possible. We see it across the board: we have like 3 health insurance companies that kill all outside competition (they all have agreements with each other..) and drive up health costs, same with our airline industry, our internet providers.. and then we sit here and complain, conservatives and leftists alike, that Amazon and Wallmart killed our local stores, that Comcast bleeds us dry, that our healthcare sucks, that traveling sucks..
and it's no surprise that in many states people in their 30s and 40s can't afford to buy homes, but big companies will buy them up and happily rent them out for more money. And our parents don't understand - they tell us to just work harder, all while not realizing that we produce more than their generation while being paid less! Wages have not increased in parallel to inflation. We're working harder for less, all while a few get extremely rich off of our labor. Inequality breeds monopolies that destroy our culture and our middle class.
Workers have one tool to fight this take over: unions. We're not powerful as individuals, we're powerful collectively. If we strike, nothing gets done, and we ALL suffer for it. We have the power to kill the economy unless our demands are met.
The stories about child care workers is my favorite part of the book and emphasizes this point. During the pandemic we found out who the true essential workers are; the doctors, nurses, grocery store staff, sanitation workers, etc, but we missed the point that the foundation of all our work comes from child care workers. Without them, the other essential workers would not be able to work - we need people to care for our children. Without them, the whole economy will fall flat.
And yet we treat them and their work like it's an easy job that deserves little pay. The work is insanely difficult - they're not babysitters, they're nurturers, analysts, psychologists, educators, business professionals, and so much more. The job does not end. And the government barely subsidizes it.
There are amazing stories about these workers successfully unionizing to get the benefits they deserve and that allow them to actually, fully do their work. It is a win-win for society.
Please read it. Democrat or republican, that shit doesn't matter. We need to realize who our real enemy is and recognize that we have power in unionizing.
But first we need to agree that inequality is a real problem - and this is something that the book doesn't really cover. It's sort of implied. I think most leftists understand the impact of inequality, but conservatives have a more complicated view. Reagan told them to blame the poor for their problems, but to also blame the elite. It makes for a chaotic worldview that thinks a single mother on WIC is leeching off other's hard work but also that billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates are bleeding us and stealing our hard earned dollars, destroying the middle class. It doesn't make sense. One group has billions of dollars collectively, the other group doesn't have shit. How are we still arguing this? And yes, I get the gov spends money on the poor, but not really dude. We spend it elsewhere - who got bailed out after Wall Street tanked the housing market in 2008? Not the people who's life savings got wiped out, but the rich assholes who tanked the market themselves. And gov spends on military - thank Reagan and Bush and Clinton - we privatized and deregulated and gutted programs for decades, programs for the poor are laughable.
Inequality kills the middle class and lets a handful of people get so rich that they can control government, make monopolies, treat workers like shit, pay them like shit, and then take take take. It's no surprise that mom and pop, brick and mortar stores are generally fucked. Inequality driven by privatization and deregulation has led not to a market with healthy competition, but a market with monopolies that kill competition, drive up prices, and lower product quality, all to squeeze out as much profit as possible. We see it across the board: we have like 3 health insurance companies that kill all outside competition (they all have agreements with each other..) and drive up health costs, same with our airline industry, our internet providers.. and then we sit here and complain, conservatives and leftists alike, that Amazon and Wallmart killed our local stores, that Comcast bleeds us dry, that our healthcare sucks, that traveling sucks..
and it's no surprise that in many states people in their 30s and 40s can't afford to buy homes, but big companies will buy them up and happily rent them out for more money. And our parents don't understand - they tell us to just work harder, all while not realizing that we produce more than their generation while being paid less! Wages have not increased in parallel to inflation. We're working harder for less, all while a few get extremely rich off of our labor. Inequality breeds monopolies that destroy our culture and our middle class.
Workers have one tool to fight this take over: unions. We're not powerful as individuals, we're powerful collectively. If we strike, nothing gets done, and we ALL suffer for it. We have the power to kill the economy unless our demands are met.
The stories about child care workers is my favorite part of the book and emphasizes this point. During the pandemic we found out who the true essential workers are; the doctors, nurses, grocery store staff, sanitation workers, etc, but we missed the point that the foundation of all our work comes from child care workers. Without them, the other essential workers would not be able to work - we need people to care for our children. Without them, the whole economy will fall flat.
And yet we treat them and their work like it's an easy job that deserves little pay. The work is insanely difficult - they're not babysitters, they're nurturers, analysts, psychologists, educators, business professionals, and so much more. The job does not end. And the government barely subsidizes it.
There are amazing stories about these workers successfully unionizing to get the benefits they deserve and that allow them to actually, fully do their work. It is a win-win for society.
Please read it. Democrat or republican, that shit doesn't matter. We need to realize who our real enemy is and recognize that we have power in unionizing.
March 1, 2025
As I started into The Hammer, which was published in 2024, it felt already dated. In February of 2025, the idea that union growth was anything but DOA seemed naive in a way that I would otherwise never associate with Hamilton Nolan. By the time I finished it later in the week, The Hammer felt like the most important and most useful book I’ve read in some time.
Nolan’s argues that labor needs a new organizing principle, one that focuses on reinvesting its wins and growth into more organizing, with growth itself being the goal. When unions work at scale, he believes, they can become something of a spiritual pursuit for their members. He writes as if he’s pitching a faith.
We get examples of this that are massively successful like the culinary union in Las Vegas, and those that had the spirit but not the support, specifically in fast food and retail sectors. The book isn’t pessimistic, but you would never mistake it for optimistic, either. This organizing work is hard and never-ending, he writes, and without proper support and organization — without a _movement. — is unlikely to succeed.
He also argues traditional center of labor — most notably the AFL-CIO — has calcified into an humdrum lobbying organization, content to oversee a steadily dwindling membership base, acting only as a house player in the Washington interest group scene. Nolan sees the commitment to electoral politics as a sideshow. Important, sure, but a game that would be much more easily won with many, many more unionized workers. This seems of a piece with fair criticisms of the democratic elite, who hold onto power at all costs and against doctor’s orders. Future-thinking is a nice-to-have and there isn’t space for nice-to-haves in American politics right now.
Also, it’s nice to see someone call out supposed union supporter Joe Biden for shutting down the railroad strike.
—
“[Joe Biden] talked about how much he loved unions. And that is true: he does, at least in an aesthetic sense, love unions, more than any president since FDR has. Like a broke husband, though, love sometimes felt like all he had to give.”
“There is no better way to make people understand class war than to have them participate in it.”
“In 2019, at a rally in front of the Queensbridge housing projects in New York, Bernie Sanders articulated the basic philosophy underlying social democracy when he said, ‘Look around you. Find some that you don’t know. Are you willing to fight for that person as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself?’ It is a beautiful sentiment presented with great moral clarity. Throughout American history, the systemic answer to his question has always been ‘no.’ If progressives want to push tens of millions of voters to give up on the cowboy ethic and embrace this view, we must provide them with some way station on the path: a place where people can see collective democracy in action at a manageable scale. That place is a union.”
“This sort of impeccable determination that unions will not be allowed to exist or function has become the norm in corporate America. Any gains for organized labor must now be extracted with a hammer.”
“Any overly optimistic approach to labor organizing that relies on building goodwill with business will, in the long run, fail. Capitalism and labor are cats and dogs. Each will revert to its nature in time.”
“Power. That is all that works. The hammer, not the handshake. The labor movement has always won things by fighting. It has taken what it has because it got strong enough to do so, and it has lost much of what it once had because it got too weak to keep it.”
“Human nature is to be conservative once you have something.” - D. Taylor, international president of Unite Here
Nolan’s argues that labor needs a new organizing principle, one that focuses on reinvesting its wins and growth into more organizing, with growth itself being the goal. When unions work at scale, he believes, they can become something of a spiritual pursuit for their members. He writes as if he’s pitching a faith.
We get examples of this that are massively successful like the culinary union in Las Vegas, and those that had the spirit but not the support, specifically in fast food and retail sectors. The book isn’t pessimistic, but you would never mistake it for optimistic, either. This organizing work is hard and never-ending, he writes, and without proper support and organization — without a _movement. — is unlikely to succeed.
He also argues traditional center of labor — most notably the AFL-CIO — has calcified into an humdrum lobbying organization, content to oversee a steadily dwindling membership base, acting only as a house player in the Washington interest group scene. Nolan sees the commitment to electoral politics as a sideshow. Important, sure, but a game that would be much more easily won with many, many more unionized workers. This seems of a piece with fair criticisms of the democratic elite, who hold onto power at all costs and against doctor’s orders. Future-thinking is a nice-to-have and there isn’t space for nice-to-haves in American politics right now.
Also, it’s nice to see someone call out supposed union supporter Joe Biden for shutting down the railroad strike.
—
“[Joe Biden] talked about how much he loved unions. And that is true: he does, at least in an aesthetic sense, love unions, more than any president since FDR has. Like a broke husband, though, love sometimes felt like all he had to give.”
“There is no better way to make people understand class war than to have them participate in it.”
“In 2019, at a rally in front of the Queensbridge housing projects in New York, Bernie Sanders articulated the basic philosophy underlying social democracy when he said, ‘Look around you. Find some that you don’t know. Are you willing to fight for that person as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself?’ It is a beautiful sentiment presented with great moral clarity. Throughout American history, the systemic answer to his question has always been ‘no.’ If progressives want to push tens of millions of voters to give up on the cowboy ethic and embrace this view, we must provide them with some way station on the path: a place where people can see collective democracy in action at a manageable scale. That place is a union.”
“This sort of impeccable determination that unions will not be allowed to exist or function has become the norm in corporate America. Any gains for organized labor must now be extracted with a hammer.”
“Any overly optimistic approach to labor organizing that relies on building goodwill with business will, in the long run, fail. Capitalism and labor are cats and dogs. Each will revert to its nature in time.”
“Power. That is all that works. The hammer, not the handshake. The labor movement has always won things by fighting. It has taken what it has because it got strong enough to do so, and it has lost much of what it once had because it got too weak to keep it.”
“Human nature is to be conservative once you have something.” - D. Taylor, international president of Unite Here
December 23, 2024
Wowee I devoured this one. Few quotes from this that stuck with me:
"When does the typical American ever experience democracy? As a child, they are told what to do. At school, they are told what to do. When they grow up, they get a job, and are told what to do. If they go to church, they are told what to do
And everyone with any common sense can see that voting, the one activity explicitly branded as participating in democracy, seems to change nothing, as power is concentrated and decisions are made by unknown people in places remote from the everyday experience of a normal person. From this base of nothing, we expect Americans to treasure democracy as their greatest value. That is a hard ask, when it is something they have never seen in the wild.
Unless—unless—they happen to be in a union. In a decent union, their opinion will matter. They can directly participate in discussions that lead to a set of demands. They can decide, collectively, to take direct actions to win their demands. They will be able to see how power is formed from a group of individuals coming together. Being in a union, for millions of Americans, is the one and only experience they have of democracy at work. It is not democracy as a slogan, but democracy as a lived experience. That changes people."
"Look around you. Find someone that you don’t know. Are you willing to fight for that person as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself?"
"The placidity that exists in the absence of a union is not evidence of happy peace; it is evidence of dictatorship. The absolute power of the company and the boss to determine everything about a job’s conditions is so common in America that most people never even think about it. It is widely seen as a state of nature. “If you don’t like the job, quit,” we are told, a sneering rebuke that leaves unspoken the fact that you will then become homeless."
"You don’t have to know what someone will build when you give them a hammer to know that if you don’t give them one, they won’t be able to build anything."
"When does the typical American ever experience democracy? As a child, they are told what to do. At school, they are told what to do. When they grow up, they get a job, and are told what to do. If they go to church, they are told what to do
And everyone with any common sense can see that voting, the one activity explicitly branded as participating in democracy, seems to change nothing, as power is concentrated and decisions are made by unknown people in places remote from the everyday experience of a normal person. From this base of nothing, we expect Americans to treasure democracy as their greatest value. That is a hard ask, when it is something they have never seen in the wild.
Unless—unless—they happen to be in a union. In a decent union, their opinion will matter. They can directly participate in discussions that lead to a set of demands. They can decide, collectively, to take direct actions to win their demands. They will be able to see how power is formed from a group of individuals coming together. Being in a union, for millions of Americans, is the one and only experience they have of democracy at work. It is not democracy as a slogan, but democracy as a lived experience. That changes people."
"Look around you. Find someone that you don’t know. Are you willing to fight for that person as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself?"
"The placidity that exists in the absence of a union is not evidence of happy peace; it is evidence of dictatorship. The absolute power of the company and the boss to determine everything about a job’s conditions is so common in America that most people never even think about it. It is widely seen as a state of nature. “If you don’t like the job, quit,” we are told, a sneering rebuke that leaves unspoken the fact that you will then become homeless."
"You don’t have to know what someone will build when you give them a hammer to know that if you don’t give them one, they won’t be able to build anything."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 28, 2024
“…the future of the Democratic Party is tied to the future of the labor movement, but not for the reason that the Democratic Party or most union leaders think. The Democratic establishment and the union establishment both more or less buy into the view that unions are politically valuable because they give money and volunteer personnel to Democratic candidates. This is a blinkered view, that of a child who grudgingly agrees to go to the dentist because they know they will get a piece of candy afterward. The real potential, which the labor movement should be focused on and the political party should be aiding, is to purge the poison of inequality out of our society by organizing millions of working people into new unions and watching America’s flirtation with fascism become less appetizing. Change rising from the bottom up is inherently more stable than trying to push change from the top down. That’s why you do squats if you want to be strong, and that’s why the key to organized labor’s politics must be to give power to many more regular people, not to try to use laws to save us from the already immense power of capital.”
Going to start trying to write actual reviews, starting with this because it is an absolute must read. I could’ve quoted the entire last chapter of this book. A great moral case for labor organizing both to protect us from our shitty bosses and to break this country out of its slide back into a Dickensian hellscape. Nolan also does a thorough examination of the institutional inertia and hostility from business standing in the way of this happening, but on balance if anyone wants a dose of optimism in the face of politics that feels increasingly unaccountable to public opinion and who (like me) has slowly come to the realization that we were trying to one weird trick our way out of our structural crises by electing a left/progressive president, this is your book.
Going to start trying to write actual reviews, starting with this because it is an absolute must read. I could’ve quoted the entire last chapter of this book. A great moral case for labor organizing both to protect us from our shitty bosses and to break this country out of its slide back into a Dickensian hellscape. Nolan also does a thorough examination of the institutional inertia and hostility from business standing in the way of this happening, but on balance if anyone wants a dose of optimism in the face of politics that feels increasingly unaccountable to public opinion and who (like me) has slowly come to the realization that we were trying to one weird trick our way out of our structural crises by electing a left/progressive president, this is your book.
February 20, 2024
The Hammer was a great read about the state of organized labor in America. It begins with a chapter about Sara Nelson, her backstory, and why she would make a perfect leader for the AFL-CIO to expand union membership in America. The following chapters dive into specific organizing examples from longshoreman in South Carolina, child care workers in California, culinary workers in Nevada, bakers in West Virginia and Oregon, and more. The final chapters are some of the best writing, and dive into some of the factors that have led to union membership in America declining from 20% at the start of the Reagan administration to barely 10% today, and provide a compelling narrative about the importance of grass roots organizing.
This book was at its best when critiquing the modern labor movement, national media, and American culture in ways that I instantly identified with but couldn't have articulated nearly as clearly. Mr. Nolan highlights idiosyncrasies of American media coverage and popular culture that limit discussion of the merits of policy and reduce everything to factional team sports, and explores attitudes towards unionization through the stories of individual union drives.
Sara Nelson and Bernie Sanders are clear heroes of this book, as are the individuals who led unionization drives. Ultimately, however, they mostly represent "almosts" and alternate worlds where things could be a bit different. The book is sobering largely because fundamentally the power of organized labor has been declining for 40 years. I hope that this book is read widely and starts more conversations about policy and grass roots organizing activity to turn the tide.
This book was at its best when critiquing the modern labor movement, national media, and American culture in ways that I instantly identified with but couldn't have articulated nearly as clearly. Mr. Nolan highlights idiosyncrasies of American media coverage and popular culture that limit discussion of the merits of policy and reduce everything to factional team sports, and explores attitudes towards unionization through the stories of individual union drives.
Sara Nelson and Bernie Sanders are clear heroes of this book, as are the individuals who led unionization drives. Ultimately, however, they mostly represent "almosts" and alternate worlds where things could be a bit different. The book is sobering largely because fundamentally the power of organized labor has been declining for 40 years. I hope that this book is read widely and starts more conversations about policy and grass roots organizing activity to turn the tide.
March 13, 2024
The Hammer is a telling, but hopeful reflection of the current labor movement in the United States. Nolan discusses where the labor movement is today compared to what it used to be, the effects of the pandemic on how people think about labor, and how unions could be doing a lot more to ensure that more working people have the ability to unionize successfully. A lot of the book focuses on Sarah Nelson, one of the most active union activists right now. Nolan also shares various stories across the U.S. including unions that already exist and the people who are working towards unionizing their workplaces.
I really enjoyed The Hammer. Not only is this book packed with so much important information about unions and unionization, but Nolan also adeptly critiques the current organized labor movement and explains how we could all be working towards creating democratic workplaces for all. I found this incredibly easy to read. Nolan’s writing is laidback, but well written. I laughed quite a few times.
This is a great book for people who want to start learning about unions and unionization. It is also great for people who are already knowledgeable about the subject as Nolan does take time to ask why unions are slowly disappearing and what it would take to rebuild the organized labor movement.
e-ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I really enjoyed The Hammer. Not only is this book packed with so much important information about unions and unionization, but Nolan also adeptly critiques the current organized labor movement and explains how we could all be working towards creating democratic workplaces for all. I found this incredibly easy to read. Nolan’s writing is laidback, but well written. I laughed quite a few times.
This is a great book for people who want to start learning about unions and unionization. It is also great for people who are already knowledgeable about the subject as Nolan does take time to ask why unions are slowly disappearing and what it would take to rebuild the organized labor movement.
e-ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
May 26, 2024
3.5 stars (with the 1/2 star added on for the stellar final chapter alone)
this has a lot of good info in it but the way it's delivered is so repetitive in its structure that it made reading this quite a slog. the author is a former gawker writer and his internet journalism voice really shows as each chapter felt like i was reading an extended article. the way each interviewee is introduced (name with one or two physical details described (nearly always one being about their hair color or length) and maybe a location added in) especially began to grate three chapters in. sometimes there'd be 10+ people introduced per chapter so it really adds up! there's also only a handful of points to make, so these get repeated ad nauseam as well. i also didn't really like how COVID was discussed in this book, as i felt it was downplayed in the amount of deaths it caused which would add to certain numbers tossed around (especially the decrease in people in labor unions).
im still glad i read this to get a grasp on the current state of labor in the USA. there's also a lot of inspiration to be drawn from the people interviewed in this book and it can be quite empowering (despite the depressing state of major labor organizers) so i think it's worth a read if you can handle the writing style.
this has a lot of good info in it but the way it's delivered is so repetitive in its structure that it made reading this quite a slog. the author is a former gawker writer and his internet journalism voice really shows as each chapter felt like i was reading an extended article. the way each interviewee is introduced (name with one or two physical details described (nearly always one being about their hair color or length) and maybe a location added in) especially began to grate three chapters in. sometimes there'd be 10+ people introduced per chapter so it really adds up! there's also only a handful of points to make, so these get repeated ad nauseam as well. i also didn't really like how COVID was discussed in this book, as i felt it was downplayed in the amount of deaths it caused which would add to certain numbers tossed around (especially the decrease in people in labor unions).
im still glad i read this to get a grasp on the current state of labor in the USA. there's also a lot of inspiration to be drawn from the people interviewed in this book and it can be quite empowering (despite the depressing state of major labor organizers) so i think it's worth a read if you can handle the writing style.
April 9, 2024
Nolan is a super advocate for unions and he makes a strong case that the Labor Movement is not a movement and Organized Labor is not organized. That the Labor Movement has failed since union density has kept declining and he details the many reasons why, including that union members tend to focus on their own welfare rather than that of the unorganized. But strengthening the labor movement and the working class requires thinking broader and investing in the future. He lauds Sara Nelson as a visionary and trashes the AFL-CIO as stodgy and sclerotic. He's got a point. Now is certainly the time to strike when unions are more popular than at any time in the past 50 years. He does not however mention the Powell Memo from the late 70s when business plotted their blueprint for ascendancy. Of course they have much more money, but labor could and should devote much more towards a national organizing strategy. He also neglects to discuss the building trade unions which over the past 40 years have not had one merger and not grown, despite various attempts at coordinated organizing. It's a sad situation and one that should heed Nolan's wake-up call.
June 12, 2024
The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor is a book by labor journalist Hamilton Nolan. It explores the decline of unions in the United States and argues that they are the best way to combat economic inequality. Nolan follows Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, as she tries to revive the labor movement. This is one of the best books on how the American Labor Movement can revitalize itself, especially through union leaders like Sara Nelson.
The book is both a history of the American labor movement and a call to action. Nolan argues that unions have been essential to the progress of working people in the United States, but that they have made mistakes in recent decades that have led to their decline. He calls on unions to become more aggressive and to focus on organizing new members.
The Hammer is a timely and important book. Inequality is a major problem in the United States, and unions are one of the few institutions that can help to address it. Nolan's book is a valuable resource for anyone who is interested in learning more about the labor movement and its role in American society.
The book is both a history of the American labor movement and a call to action. Nolan argues that unions have been essential to the progress of working people in the United States, but that they have made mistakes in recent decades that have led to their decline. He calls on unions to become more aggressive and to focus on organizing new members.
The Hammer is a timely and important book. Inequality is a major problem in the United States, and unions are one of the few institutions that can help to address it. Nolan's book is a valuable resource for anyone who is interested in learning more about the labor movement and its role in American society.
April 2, 2024
An informative and compelling argument for unions. Nolan lays out a strong case that unions have improved America, they have declined to America's detriment, and that we will see America improve when unions regain their strength and membership. Furthermore, he provides interesting and modern case studies in what can be done to accomplish that, and what stands in the way. I found the chapter on childcare workers especially illuminating.
"When does the typical American ever experience democracy? As a child, they are told what to do. At school, they are told what to do. When they grow up, they get a job, and are told what to do... From this base of nothing we expect Americans to treasure democracy as their greatest value. That is a hard ask, when it is something they have never seen in the wild." (p. 203)
"Much of the cynicism that the public feels about our political process, and the accompanying disillusionment with democracy itself, arises as a rational response to the fact that the average person does not have any influence at all in politics." (p. 237)
I think as Americans we are restricted from the politics of our wider world, and left to extract meaning and involvement from the politics of our (relative to a nation) minor interpersonal relationships. A lack of control over the broader politics of your life and work can lead to cynicism and unhappiness. I think Nolan would argue that unions allow the common man a way to transcend this gap, and provide the worker a way to control the political nature of their life and work, and immerse themselves in the politics of their world and community. This seems desirable, to me.
"When does the typical American ever experience democracy? As a child, they are told what to do. At school, they are told what to do. When they grow up, they get a job, and are told what to do... From this base of nothing we expect Americans to treasure democracy as their greatest value. That is a hard ask, when it is something they have never seen in the wild." (p. 203)
"Much of the cynicism that the public feels about our political process, and the accompanying disillusionment with democracy itself, arises as a rational response to the fact that the average person does not have any influence at all in politics." (p. 237)
I think as Americans we are restricted from the politics of our wider world, and left to extract meaning and involvement from the politics of our (relative to a nation) minor interpersonal relationships. A lack of control over the broader politics of your life and work can lead to cynicism and unhappiness. I think Nolan would argue that unions allow the common man a way to transcend this gap, and provide the worker a way to control the political nature of their life and work, and immerse themselves in the politics of their world and community. This seems desirable, to me.
May 8, 2024
The Hammer is basically an overview of the current state of the US labor movement. I liked the stories of workers in the movement struggling in very different situations toward a common good. For example a union dock worker in Nikki Haley’s anti-union South Carolina, a casino worker in Las Vegas’ powerful culinary union, and someone trying to organize what would be the first union at a Home Depot all face very different challenges. We also get a generous dose Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, which is also great!
My takeaway is that an upsurge of creative energy and high profile wins has given labor a much needed shot in the arm. That’s extremely promising and inspiring, but has done little to increase union density, which remains at a historic low. To capitalize on that upsurge, we need to push the big institutional unions to commit their massive resources to organizing millions of unorganized workers. We need to build a hammer to smash capitalism. That’s the metaphor
My takeaway is that an upsurge of creative energy and high profile wins has given labor a much needed shot in the arm. That’s extremely promising and inspiring, but has done little to increase union density, which remains at a historic low. To capitalize on that upsurge, we need to push the big institutional unions to commit their massive resources to organizing millions of unorganized workers. We need to build a hammer to smash capitalism. That’s the metaphor
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