Labor Divided, Labor Defeated

These two books deal, respectively, with the division of the American labor movement in 2005 and the dramatic strike of graduate teaching assistants at New York University in the same year. They are also representative of a larger class of writing on "union revitalization" that deals with the condition of the labor movement and its prospects for renewal. In this review article, the author uses the two books to reflect on the dominant themes of this broader literature. These include an emphasis on the deep hostility of neoliberalism to organized labor, the failure of the existing labor movement, and the need for a neosyndicalist strategy to achieve revitalization.