Social Labor

From the dark arts of the dirt units to the role of billionaire Clive Palmer, this is the untold story of an election debacle. The Labor Party was the unbeatable favourite to win the 2019 election right up until the polls closed and voters delivered the surprise verdict. If the results staggered pundits, they also shocked Bill Shorten and his frontbench, who had spent the final weeks of the campaign carefully planning for their first days in office. Party Animals uncovers the secret history of a Labor fiasco, the untold story behind Scott Morrison's miracle.

"The Fall of USAID: How America's Foreign Aid Giant Became a Deep State Liability" is an explosive, meticulously researched account of the rise and catastrophic decline of one of Washington's most influential bureaucracies. Spanning six decades, this book uncovers how a once-noble agency, designed to promote global development and serve American interests, devolved into a sprawling, inefficient empire marked by mission creep, rampant corruption, ideological capture, and a pervasive resistance to reform.

In this book, Christian Wright explores the complex history of the UMWA and coal mining in the West over a 50-year period of the 20th century, concentrating on the coal miners of Carbon and Emery counties in Utah. Wright emphasizes their experience during the 1970s, which saw the rise and passing of American workers’ most successful postwar effort to internally reform a major labor organization: the Miners for Democracy movement.

We in the West appear to be at a year zero, with the seeming end of the relative peace and prosperity we took for granted. The pandemic, Putin's invasion of Ukraine, growing tension with China, a rolling back of globalisation, Brexit, the return of inflation and painful interest rates - all these have shattered the illusions of the world as we knew it. For years our politicians have said they were going for growth and would ensure that those with least would benefit disproportionately from the proceeds of that growth. They've failed.

The government constantly attacks unions, CEOs devote endless time and resources to undermining them, and many unions themselves are stuck in the past. Despite this, inspiring work is happening all the time, from fast food strikes and climate change campaigning to the modernization of unions for the digital age. Speaking to academics, experts and grassroots organizers from TUC, UNISON, ACORN, IWGB and more, Eve Livingston explores how young workers are organizing to demand fair workplaces, and reimagines what an inclusive union movement that represents us all might look like.

Growing numbers of Americans are doing work that they care about and enjoy. But they're frustrated by stagnant wages, shrinking health coverage, shaky pension plans, and company polices that make it more difficult for them to do their jobs well. Corporate executives may be becoming less loyal to their employees, but those same employees still want to be loyal to their company.

Robber Barons and Wretched Refuse explores the connection between the so-called robber barons who led American big businesses during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and the immigrants who composed many of their workforces.

As labor unions and movements began to form and coalesce in the 19th century, the tensions between workers and companies led to demonstrations, encounters, and even conflicts that descended into violence. Among those, few were as notorious as the fight that took place on April 20, 1914 at Ludlow in the Southern Colorado coalfields between the Colorado National Guard and striking miners at a United Mine Workers camp. In the previous several decades, there had been a number of violent incidents during strikes, but in 1914, the Ludlow tragedy deeply shocked the nation.

In the 21st century the Labour Party has undergone the most extraordinary transformation in its history. After more than a decade of political dominance, the party lost two consecutive general elections and found its leadership usurped by the obscure far-left MP Jeremy Corbyn. As Britain voted to leave the EU, Labour seemed destined for long-term irrelevance. But then it all changed. Far from being the death of the party, as many had predicted, at one fell stroke the general election of 2017 heralded its strange and unexpected rebirth.

Die erste umfassende kritische Darstellung von Bill Gates und seiner Stiftung. Der Imagewechsel vom skrupellosen Kapitalisten und rücksichtslosen Microsoft-Chef zum wohltätigen Gutmenschen ist Bill Gates mit Bravour gelungen. Eine fundierte kritische Berichterstattung über den vermeintlich größten Philanthropen unserer Zeit und seine Stiftung, die »Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation«, gibt es jedoch nicht. In seinem Enthüllungsbuch räumt der Journalist Tim Schwab mit dem Bild von Bill Gates als Wohltäter auf.

David Ranney’s vivid memoir describes his work experiences between 1976 and 1982 in the factories of Southeast Chicago and Northwest Indiana. The audiobook opens with a detailed description of what it was like to live and work in one of the heaviest industrial concentrations in the world. The author takes the listener on a walk through the heart of the South Side, Chicago, observing the noise, heavy traffic, the 24-hour restaurants and bars, the rich diversity of people on the streets at all hours of the day and night, and the smell of the highly polluted air.

In an era when people live longer and want (or need) to work past the traditional retirement age, the Vita Needle Company of Needham, Massachusetts, provides inspiration and important lessons about the value of older workers. Vita Needle is a family-owned factory that was founded in 1932 and makes needles, stainless steel tubing and pipes, and custom fabricated parts. As part of its unusual business model, the company seeks out older workers; the median age of the employees is seventy-four.

Since the Great Recession, recent college grads have confronted an alarming reality: the economic engine that propelled earlier generations into the middle class has begun to stall out. Millions of workers with degrees faced crushing debt while settling for jobs below their qualifications. The anger of this college-educated working class finally boiled over during the Covid pandemic, when workers at companies like Apple and Starbucks shocked corporate America by voting to unionize.

When health care workers call a Code White, it’s an emergency response for a violent incident: a call for help. But it’s one that goes unanswered in hospitals, clinics, and long-term care homes across the country. Code White exposes a shocking epidemic of violence that’s hidden in plain sight, one in which workers are battered, assaulted, and demeaned, but carry on in silence, with little recourse. Researchers Margaret M. Keith and James T. Brophy lay bare the stories of over one hundred nurses and personal support workers, aides and porters, clerical workers and cleaners.

In this urgently important book, Zelnick looks past the good intentions to how affirmative action really works in such areas as voting rights, employment, minority set-asides, mortgage and insurance regulation, and education. Zelnick traces how affirmative action was first sold as a short-term program designed to expand employer awareness of qualified minority job applicants, but instead has become a coercive network of race-conscious laws, regulations, quotas, preferences, and entitlement programs - in short, an assault on the very value of equality of opportunity it was supposed to promote.

As a care-leaver who has experienced homelessness, award-winning investigative journalist Daniel Lavelle has spent his life navigating social services that are not fit for purpose and leave many vulnerable people slipping through the cracks. For though the right to adequate housing is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the reality is another, much grimmer, story.

Historically, the red wall formed the backbone of Labour’s vote in the Midlands and the North of England but, during the 2019 general election, it dramatically turned Conservative for the first time in living memory, redrawing the electoral map in the process. Originally from the North East himself, Payne sets out to uncover the real story behind the red wall and what turned these seats blue.

*Wage-Labour and Capital* by Karl Marx is a foundational text in Marxist economic theory that explores the exploitative dynamics of capitalist societies. Originally delivered as a series of lectures, the work delves into the relationship between wage laborers and capitalists, emphasizing how workers sell their labor power for wages that merely sustain their existence, while the capitalists appropriate the surplus value created by the workers.

In Britons Through Negro Spectacles Merriman-Labor takes us on a joyous, intoxicating tour of London at the turn of the 20th century. Slyly subverting the colonial gaze usually placed on Africa, he introduces us to the citizens, culture and customs of Britain with a mischievous glint in his eye. This incredible work of social commentary feels a century ahead of its time and provides unique insights into the intersection between empire, race and community at this important moment in history.

El acompañamiento terapéutico es un recurso que nace en el ámbito de la salud mental hace ya más de 60 años en Argentina. Actualmente, se inmiscuye cada vez más en espacios cotidianos para favorecer también la inclusión de personas con discapacidad. Hoy el acompañamiento terapéutico es una herramienta que, por sus características de flexibilidad y dinamismo, permite a los profesionales de la salud y educación, así como a las familias, contar con un apoyo externo que potencia las posibilidades de inclusión de personas con discapacidad en la escuela y en la sociedad.