Unions in Transition: Entering the Second Century

by Seymour Martin Lipset

506 pages, Paperback

First published May 5, 1955

About the author

Seymour Martin Lipset was an American political sociologist, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Hazel Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University. His major work was in the fields of political sociology, trade union organization, social stratification, public opinion, and the sociology of intellectual life. He also wrote extensively about the conditions for democracy in comparative perspective.

Reviews

[Shaun Richman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only useful for historical perspective. A bunch of useless men - in labor AND management - completely fail to grapple with facts and analysis. Instead they engage in airing old grievances and a huge amount of victim-blaming and Cold War bullshit, and would you believe that most authors go to lengths to deny that the labor movement has been under a sustained corporate and right-wing assault for at least a decade and a half by the time this book was published?!?

The book gives me a tremendous amount of sympathy for what Kate Bronfenbrenner was trying to shoot her way into in the mid-1980's. Only Herman Benson acquits himself with a reasonable contribution on - what else? - union democracy. I think I need to retroactively deduct a few stars from Lipset's "It Didn't Happen Here" because he reveals himself to be a massive dumbass who expects you to believe his beliefs are facts while he mostly avoids the heavy intellectual work of listening to anyone who doesn't agree with him.

Garbage.