Introduction: Twelve Years of Freedom (Almost)

1. Workers Can Still Win Big

2. Who Killed the Unions?

3. Everything You Thought You Knew About Unions Is (Mostly) Wrong

4. Are Unions Still Relevant?

5. How Do Workers Get a Union?

6. How to Rebuild a Union: L.A.’s Teachers

7. As Go Unions, So Goes the Republic

1. Introduction

2. The Power to Win is in the Community, Not the Boardroom

3. Nursing Home Unions: Class Snuggle vs. Class Struggle

4. Chicago Teachers: Building a Resilient Union

5. Smithfield Foods: A Huge Success You’ve Hardly Heard About

6. Make the Road New York

7. Conclusion: Pretend Power vs. Actual Power

Prologue: Florida, November 2000

Introduction: Organizing Is About Raising Expectations

1. Whole-Worker Organizing in Connecticut

2. The Yo-yo: Into and Out of the National SEIU

3. Bumpy Landing in Las Vegas

4. Round One: Reorganizing Desert Springs and Valley Hospitals, and Why Labor Should Care More about Primaries than about General Elections

5. Laying the Foundation: At Catholic Healthcare West, an Enlightened CEO; at SEIU, an Unenlightened President

6. Government Workers Get Militant: Big, Representative Bargaining Versus Bad Laws and Bullies

7. Launching the 2006 Las Vegas Labor Offensive

8. The Gloves Come Off: Union Busters, the NLRB, and a Purple RV

9. The Gold Standard: What a Good Contract Looks Like, and How It Relates to Patient Care

10. The CEO, the Union Buster, and the Gunrunner

11. Full Court Press

12. Strike! Victory at Universal Health Services, Victory in the Public Sector

13. Things Fall Apart: How National and Local Labor Leaders Undermined the Workers of Nevada

Afterword: San Francisco, February 2014

Everything Old Is New Again

by Jane F. McAlevey

how to organise unions: they need to find leaders from within the workforce as opposed to bringing in outsiders