The Left is Dead

In this episode Jim speaks with labor historian Harvey Schwartz, author of Labor under Siege: Big Bob McEllrath and the ILWU's Fight for Organized Labor in an Anti-Union Era. Labor Under Siege is is an oral history prepared with Ronald Magden that chronicles how a mature American workers’ organization, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), survived serious challenges in recent decades from employers, government agencies, and even other unions. It won an Independent Publisher Book Awards (aka IPPY) gold medal, a Nautilus Book Awards silver prize, a National Indie Excellence Awards winner designation, and was an Independent Publishers of New England Book Awards finalist. A prior volume, Building the Golden Gate Bridge: A Workers’ Oral History (University of Washington Press), was a Nautilus Book Awards silver winner in 2016. It recounts how ironworkers and other construction craftspeople overcame dangerous job conditions and the hardships of the Great Depression to build one of America’s most iconic bridges. In this interview Jim and Harvey discuss the post-Harry Bridges era of the ILWU, their victories in the anti-union neoliberal era and what lessons the new wave of labor organizers can learn from the historically radical union.