The most recommended books about labor unions

Who picked these books? Meet our 19 experts.

19 authors created a book list connected to labor unions, and here are their favorite labor union books.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

What type of labor union book?

Loading...
Loading...

Book cover of The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups

Anthony J. Nownes Author Of Interest Groups in American Politics: Pressure and Power

From my list on lobbying and advocacy in the United States.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was attracted to the study of interest groups for two main reasons. First, not too many scholars study interest groups and lobbying. This means I might have something to contribute. Second, interest groups are fascinating. Almost every interest you can think of has an interest group trying to affect (or retard) change. Every year, for example, I get to regale my students with stories about little-known interest groups such as the American Frozen Food Institute, the Pink Pistols (a pro-gun LGBTQ group), the California Prune Board, and Declassify UAP (an anti-UFO secrecy group). Talking and learning about interest groups is fun. 

Anthony's book list on lobbying and advocacy in the United States

Anthony J. Nownes Why did Anthony love this book?

Mancur Olson was one of the most influential social scientists of the 20th century. This slender (though at times dense) volume presents Olson’s thoughts on why shared interests are seldom enough to motivate people to join together in interest groups.

Beginning with the “rational economic man” assumption common in microeconomics, Olson demonstrates that people have powerful incentives not to support organizations that work to obtain collective goods they value.

Olson got a few things wrong, but his argument explains a lot of the political inaction and nonparticipation we see. If you have ever wondered, “Why don’t people join organizations that are working to help them?” or “Why do oppressed people not rise up against their oppressors?” this book is a good place to start.

Every time I start to get frustrated with what I view as political apathy, I go back to this book. I do this because the…

By Mancur Olson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Logic of Collective Action as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book develops an original theory of group and organizational behavior that cuts across disciplinary lines and illustrates the theory with empirical and historical studies of particular organizations. Applying economic analysis to the subjects of the political scientist, sociologist, and economist, Mancur Olson examines the extent to which the individuals that share a common interest find it in their individual interest to bear the costs of the organizational effort.

The theory shows that most organizations produce what the economist calls "public goods"-goods or services that are available to every member, whether or not he has borne any of the costs…


Book cover of Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America

Dorothy Sue Cobble Author Of For the Many: American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality

From my list on how working women changed the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in a blue-collar union family in the 1950s South I learned about the depth of racial and class injustice and the power of collective organizing. The many jobs I held in my twenties before fleeing to graduate school at Stanford University left me acutely aware of workplace sexism and disrespect. I became fascinated by how work shapes our sense of self and especially curious about the distinctive feminisms, labor movements, and politics of working-class women. These questions animate all my writing and teaching. Thirty years and seven books later, I believe reimagining work and labor movements is more necessary – and possible – than ever before.

Dorothy's book list on how working women changed the world

Dorothy Sue Cobble Why did Dorothy love this book?

You think academics don’t have guts? You haven’t met Dana Frank.

She left her perfect little Santa Cruz campus behind to travel into the violent world of labor organizing in Central America. The fearless women she follows never give up as they take on American global corporations, corrupt politicians, ruthless landowners and bosses, and male chauvinism at home, on the job, and in the union.

Against great odds, the banana women forge a region-wide union of men and women committed to gender justice, economic fairness, and political democracy. Thank you Dana Frank for knowing this story had to be told – and for telling it with such flair and wisdom.

By Dana Frank,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bananeras as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Women banana workers in Latin America have organised themselves and gained increasing control over their unions, their workplaces and their lives. Highly accessible and narrative in style, Bananeras recounts the history and growth of this vital movement and shows how Latin American women workers are shaping and broadly reimagining the possibilities of international labour solidarity.


Book cover of Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants

Michael Blake Author Of Justice, Migration, and Mercy

From my list on understanding what’s happening at the border.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a political philosopher who lives in Seattle. I teach and write about political ethics, and the ways in which moral concepts change when they get applied to the relationships between states—and to the complicated borders that define where states end. I tend to write about what puzzles me, and many of these puzzles come from my personal life; I’m a migrant myself, and the experience of migrating to the United States led me to write about what sorts of values a country can rightly pursue through migration policyand what sorts of things, more generally, it can and can’t do to migrants themselves.  

Michael's book list on understanding what’s happening at the border

Michael Blake Why did Michael love this book?

This book helped me to understand the reasons people choose to migrateand, in particular, how big structural changes in the policies and law of the United States can lead to changes elsewhere that makes it hard to avoid migrating. It’s easy to focus either on the particular stories of individual people, or on the big picture of global economics; it’s a rare thing to see these two done together, and done in such a skillful way.

By David Bacon,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Illegal People as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For two decades veteran photojournalist David Bacon has documented the connections between labor, migration, and the global economy. In Illegal People Bacon explores the human side of globalization, exposing the many ways it uproots people in Latin America and Asia, driving them to migrate. At the same time, U.S. immigration policy makes the labor of those displaced people a crime in the United States. Illegal People explains why our national policy produces even more displacement, more migration, more immigration raids, and a more divided, polarized society.

Through interviews and on-the-spot reporting from both impoverished communities abroad and American immigrant workplaces…


Book cover of From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement

Allyson Brantley Author Of Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism

From my list on boycotts & consumer activism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a Colorado-raised and California-based historian, professor, and writer. I recently published my first book, Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism, which explores the history of one of the longest-running consumer boycotts in American history – the boycott of Coors beer. In telling this particular history, I became fascinated with the boycott as a tool of protest and activism. The boycott is an iconic and regular feature of American politics and history, but it is often dismissed as ineffective or passive. The books on this list (as well as many others) have helped to convince me that the boycott and consumer activism can be powerful forms of solidarity-building and protest.

Allyson's book list on boycotts & consumer activism

Allyson Brantley Why did Allyson love this book?

The literature on Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Workers, and their boycott campaigns is quite extensive. Matt Garcia’s is one of the best accounts of the Farm Workers’ strategy of boycotting grapes, lettuce, and other items to build power and win a union. What I especially appreciate about Garcia’s account is, first, his focus on the innovations in consumer activism brought about by the UFW. Organizers and workers made their boycott succeed by going into cities, living together in boycott houses, and appealing to urban consumers. Garcia’s accounts of boycott houses and organizers’ efforts from Los Angeles to Toronto and London are excellent. Second, Garcia doesn’t stray from critiquing the boycott tactic and noting places where it fell short – making this a cautionary tale for activists today.

By Matt Garcia,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked From the Jaws of Victory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the Jaws of Victory:The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement is the most comprehensive history ever written on the meteoric rise and precipitous decline of the United Farm Workers, the most successful farm labor union in United States history. Based on little-known sources and one-of-a-kind oral histories with many veterans of the farm worker movement, this book revises much of what we know about the UFW. Matt Garcia's gripping account of the expansion of the union's grape boycott reveals how the boycott, which UFW leader Cesar Chavez initially resisted, became the defining feature of…


Book cover of Knocking on Labor's Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide

Ellen Cassedy Author Of Working 9 to 5: A Women's Movement, a Labor Union, and the Iconic Movie

From Ellen's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Women’s rights activist Memoirist Translator from yiddish Reader

Ellen's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Ellen Cassedy Why did Ellen love this book?

I lived through some of the events that Lane Windham describes in her super-readable and super-informative account of how new types of workers challenged both their employers and the American labor movement to listen to them and improve their work lives.

Shipyard workers, department store workers, office workers – these groups figured out new ways to raise their voices and “knock on the door” to make themselves heard. The result was big changes in their own lives, in the workplace, and in America’s unions.

Today, we’re seeing a surge of labor organizing just as groundbreaking as the initiatives Lane Windham describes. This made the book especially relevant for me. 

By Lane Windham,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Knocking on Labor's Door as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The power of unions in workers' lives and in the American political system has declined dramatically since the 1970s. In recent years, many have argued that the crisis took root when unions stopped reaching out to workers and workers turned away from unions. But here Lane Windham tells a different story. Highlighting the integral, often-overlooked contributions of women, people of color, young workers, and southerners, Windham reveals how in the 1970s workers combined old working-class tools--like unions and labor law--with legislative gains from the civil and women's rights movements to help shore up their prospects. Through close-up studies of workers'…


Book cover of Three Strikes: Labor's Heartland Losses and What They Mean for Working Americans

Kari Lydersen Author Of Revolt on Goose Island: The Chicago Factory Takeover and What It Says About the Economic Crisis

From my list on labour and workers fighting against all odds.

Why am I passionate about this?

Fresh out of journalism school I stumbled on a strike at a machine shop in Pilsen, a neighborhood once home to Chicago’s most famous labor struggles, by then becoming a hip gentrified enclave. Drinking steaming atole with Polish, Mexican, and Puerto Rican workers in a frigid Chicago winter, I was captivated by the solidarity and determination to fight for their jobs and rights, in what appeared to be a losing battle. After covering labor struggles by Puerto Rican teachers, Mexican miners, Colombian bottlers, Chicago warehouse workers, and many others, my enthusiasm for such stories is constantly reignited -- by the workers fighting against all odds and the writers telling their stories, including those featured here.

Kari's book list on labour and workers fighting against all odds

Kari Lydersen Why did Kari love this book?

In the early 1990s, Decatur, Illinois was a “time-battered” town, in the words of indefatigable labor journalist Steve Franklin, where factories hunkered amid grungy bars, a forlorn old motel, and prison. Unions had largely capitulated to global capital, as wages and jobs were slashed across the industrial heartland and families suffered in silence. In Decatur workers made a last stand at three eponymous employers – Firestone, Staley, and Caterpillar. Franklin – at the Chicago Tribune, one of the last labor journalists nationwide -- brings us evocatively to the front lines of these three strikes, weaving accessible socioeconomic analysis through the landscape of a bittersweet Bruce Springsteen song.

By Stephen Franklin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Three Strikes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This eloquently written book chronicles the massive, protracted strikes waged against three large corporations in Decatur, Illinois, in the 1990s. Veteran journalist Stephen Franklin shows how labor disputes at Bridgestone/ Firestone, Caterpillar, and A. E. Staley left lasting scars on this town and its citizens--and marked a turning point in American labor history. When workers went on strike to retain such basic rights as job security and the 8-hour day, the corporations hit back with unprecedented hard-line tactics. Through the moving stories of individual workers and union activists, Franklin illuminates the hardships and disillusionment left in the wake of the…


Book cover of Sex Workers Unite: A History of the Movement from Stonewall to SlutWalk

Kay Stephens Author Of The Porn Star's Daughter

From my list on sex-positive reads you may have missed.

Why am I passionate about this?

I spent nearly two decades as a highly successful corporate attorney. Or, perhaps I should say, a successful attorney with a crude mouth and a love for all things spandex. And my unabashed personality was a differentiator in my career—it allowed me to cut through the corporate nonsense and personally connect with my opposition. But my career imploded when I became the subject of overt sexual harassment in my workplace and my employer worked harder at a coverup than resolution. Rather than sell back my story through litigation, I decided to write openly about sexual empowerment in the face of systemic slut-shaming.

Kay's book list on sex-positive reads you may have missed

Kay Stephens Why did Kay love this book?

I agree, a non-fiction recommendation is a bit of a curve ball from a romance author! But Sex Workers Unite is well worth the mention because it has been such an overwhelming inspiration for my own writing.

This book is a gut-wrenching description of both the dehumanization of sex workers and the social ills we all suffer as a result. It is not just a call for social justice—it is a warning message for those willing to turn a blind eye to the marginalization of a disenfranchised group.

By Melinda Chateauvert,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sex Workers Unite as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A provocative history that reveals how sex workers have been at the vanguard of social justice movements for the past fifty years while building a movement of their own that challenges our ideas about labor, sexuality, feminism, and freedom
 
Documenting five decades of sex-worker activism, Sex Workers Unite is a fresh history that places prostitutes, hustlers, escorts, call girls, strippers, and porn stars in the center of America’s major civil rights struggles. Although their presence has largely been ignored and obscured, in this provocative history Melinda Chateauvert recasts sex workers as savvy political organizers—not as helpless victims in need of…


Book cover of Long Live the Post Horn!

Julia Argy Author Of The One

From my list on women grinding their way through late capitalism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a novelist with my debut, The One, out in April 2023. I’m interested in stories about the role of gender, technology, and privacy in our contemporary culture. We spend so many hours at work, yet often the literature we read spends so little time discussing what that experience is actually like. As I wrote my own novel with a narrator flailing so aimlessly through her early post-grad years that she ends up on a reality dating show, I craved other books that tackled what it was like to have to earn a living at the forefront of the text, rather than a nebulous character detail in the background. 

Julia's book list on women grinding their way through late capitalism

Julia Argy Why did Julia love this book?

To close off the list, I picked a novel where the main character ends up becoming energized by her work.

At an otherwise soul-sucking job at a PR firm, Ellinor becomes involved with, and motivated by, a political movement about supporting postal workers in Norway.

For a novel that could have been bogged down by the inner workings of the EU and the Norwegian Postal Service, Hjorth’s writing style is crisp and perfect. She could choose any subject matter and it would be interesting. 

By Vigdis Hjorth,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Long Live the Post Horn! as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Ellinor, a 35-year-old media consultant, has not been feeling herself; she's not been feeling much at all lately. Far beyond jaded, she picks through an old diary and fails to recognise the woman in its pages, seemingly as far away from the world around her as she's ever been. But when her coworker vanishes overnight, an unusual new task is dropped on her desk. Off she goes to meet the Norwegian Postal Workers Union, setting the ball rolling on a strange and transformative six months.

This is an existential scream of a novel about loneliness (and the postal service!), written…


Book cover of Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement

Jennifer L. Pierce Author Of Racing for Innocence: Whiteness, Gender, and the Backlash Against Affirmative Action

From my list on women’s rights in the American workplace.

Why am I passionate about this?

Women’s rights in the workplace have been my passion for thirty years. As a sociologist who does fieldwork and oral histories, I am interested in understanding work through workers’ perspectives. The most important thing I’ve learned is that employers can be notoriously reluctant to enact change and that the most effective route to workplace justice is through collective action. I keep writing because I want more of us to imagine workplaces that value workers by compensating everyone fairly and giving workers greater control over their office’s rhythm and structure. 

Jennifer's book list on women’s rights in the American workplace

Jennifer L. Pierce Why did Jennifer love this book?

Did you know that until 1974, the job category ‘domestic worker’ was excluded from labor rights that were established in FDR’s New Deal legislation such as the minimum wage and workers’ compensation? Did you know that 1960s union leaders ignored the exploitative labor conditions of domestic work because they considered these workers “unorganizable”?

Historian Premilla Nadasan’s wonderful book tells the story of Black domestic workers’ exclusion from legal rights to which other workers were entitled and their fight to gain those rights beginning in the 1950s and extending through the establishment of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1974.

Telling this history through the life stories of domestic workers who were leaders in this movement makes this book a particularly compelling and worthwhile read.  

By Premilla Nadasen,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Household Workers Unite as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Telling the stories of African American domestic workers, this book resurrects a little-known history of domestic worker activism in the 1960s and 1970s, offering new perspectives on race, labor, feminism, and organizing.
 
In this groundbreaking history of African American domestic-worker organizing, scholar and activist Premilla Nadasen shatters countless myths and misconceptions about an historically misunderstood workforce. Resurrecting a little-known history of domestic-worker activism from the 1950s to the 1970s, Nadasen shows how these women were a far cry from the stereotyped passive and powerless victims; they were innovative labor organizers who tirelessly organized on buses and streets across the United…


Book cover of Domestic Workers of the World Unite!: A Global Movement for Dignity and Human Rights

Dorothy Sue Cobble Author Of For the Many: American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality

From my list on how working women changed the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in a blue-collar union family in the 1950s South I learned about the depth of racial and class injustice and the power of collective organizing. The many jobs I held in my twenties before fleeing to graduate school at Stanford University left me acutely aware of workplace sexism and disrespect. I became fascinated by how work shapes our sense of self and especially curious about the distinctive feminisms, labor movements, and politics of working-class women. These questions animate all my writing and teaching. Thirty years and seven books later, I believe reimagining work and labor movements is more necessary – and possible – than ever before.

Dorothy's book list on how working women changed the world

Dorothy Sue Cobble Why did Dorothy love this book?

Domestic workers, among the most exploited of the world’s working classes, knew they deserved more and believed the work they did – caring for the children, the disabled, the elderly – should be honored.

They organized first in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Soon the movement spread across the world. Jennifer Fish travels with the movement, from Cape Town to Geneva, Montevideo, and beyond. Like the women she befriends, Fish believes in the power of community and of what can be achieved when workers imagine the world they want and start moving together toward it.

There’s no better book about international worker solidarity and the power of thinking and acting both local and global.

By Jennifer N. Fish,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Domestic Workers of the World Unite! as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From grassroots to global activism, the untold story of the world's first domestic workers' movement.

Domestic workers exist on the margins of the world labor market. Maids, nannies, housekeepers, au pairs, and other care workers are most often 'off the books,' working for long hours and low pay. They are not afforded legal protections or benefits such as union membership, health care, vacation days, and retirement plans. Many women who perform these jobs are migrants, and are oftentimes dependent upon their employers for room and board as well as their immigration status, creating an extremely vulnerable category of workers in…