Description

Dana L. Cloud engages union reformers at Boeing to reveal how ordinary workers attempted to take command of their futures by chipping away at the partnership between union leadership and corporate management. _x000B_Focusing on the 1995 strike at Boeing, Cloud renders an account of the battles between the company and the union and within the union led by Unionists for Democratic Change and two other dissident groups. She voices the company's claims of the hardships of competitiveness the entrenched union leaders' calls for concessions in the name of job security, alongside the democratic union reformers' fight for a rank-and-file upsurge against both the company and the union leaders._x000B_Incorporating theory and methods from the fields of organizational communication as well as labor studies, Cloud methodically uncovers and analyzes the goals, strategies, and dilemmas of the dissidents who took up the gauntlet to make it more responsive to workers and less conciliatory toward management.