Press Release for Troublemaker's Handbook 2: Please Circulate

Labor Notes Introduces New Troublemaker's Handbook

Contact: Sheila McClear, 313-842-6262, email Sheila or Jane Slaughter, 313-842-6262, email Jane

DETROIT. -In the midst of an exhaustive soul-searching throughout organized labor, a 372-page handbook emphasizing workplace organizing as the key to union strength has just been released by Labor Notes (LaborNotes.org).

Targeted at workplace activists, with object lessons on how they can fight back against unfair or abusive employers, A Troublemaker's Handbook 2 includes 25 chapters that describe winning tactics and successful campaigns, as well as the lessons to be drawn from past failures. It updates the first Troublemaker's Handbook, published in 1991, and is a collaboration of 72 authors and hundreds of activists under the direction of editor Jane Slaughter.

Examining workplaces that range from factory floors to white-collar offices, both public and private and on both sides of the U.S.- Canadian border, A Troublemaker's Handbook 2 takes a close look at the celebrated UPS strike of 1997, the community alliance that took on Yale University, the organizing drive at Powell's Books, the farmworker-led boycott of Taco Bell, and many other campaigns. Its subject matter spans the full spectrum of challenges confronting labor activists, including discrimination against minority, women, and immigrant workers.

Throughout the entire volume, the emphasis is on organizing-on reaching out to those already in a union and those who are still unorganized, and on involving allies and the media in broadcasting
labor's message.

Kate Bronfenbrenner, author of Blueprint for Change: A National Assessment of Winning Union Organizing Strategies, calls the book "a wealth of information," noting that it includes "everything from researching multinational companies, to mapping workplace hazards, running a local, developing leaders, building community-labor coalitions, bringing immigrants into the union, and running comprehensive organizing and bargaining campaigns."

Ken Riley, a South Carolina dockworkers' local union president, said, "It's because of strategies like the ones in this book that our local won our fight to defend the Charleston Five. International solidarity, getting in touch with other locals, dealing with the media, bringing the community into the union hall-. It's all in this book."

Authors who contributed to the book and the activists whose stories it tells are available for interviews by calling Labor Notes. Interviews also may be arranged with Jane Slaughter, a longtime Labor Notes writer whose previous books include Concessions and How To Beat Them
and Working Smart.

The book can be ordered at TroubleMakersHandbook.org or 7435 Michigan Ave., Detroit, MI 48209, by phone at 313-842-6262, or by fax at 313-842-0227. The price is $24 plus $4 shipping.

Labor Notes is a monthly magazine for union activists, now in its 27th year. Its slogan is, "Let's put the movement back in the labor movement."


Contents

Foreword by Baldemar Velasquez

1. Power on the Job by Jane Slaughter

2. Basics of Organizing by Ellen David Friedman

3. Shop Floor Tactics by Dan La Botz

4. Creative Tactics by Julie McCall

5. Fighting Discrimination/Building Unity by N. Renuka Uthappa

6. Saving Good Jobs: Fighting Lean Production and Outsourcing by Jane
Slaughter

7. Organizing for Health and Safety by Marsha Niemeijer and Roni Neff

8. Contract Campaigns by Chris Kutalik

9. Strikes by Dan La Botz

10. Inside Strategies by Aaron Brenner

11. Corporate Campaigns by Steven Ashby

12. Allying with the Community-Single-Issue Campaigns by Sonya Huber

13. Allying with the Community-Multi-Issue Coalitions by Steve Hinds

14. Union Solidarity by Aaron Brenner

15. Organizing New Members by Aaron Brenner

16. Bringing Immigrants into the Movement by Teofilo Reyes

17. Workers Centers by Dan La Botz

18. Reform Caucuses and Running for Office by Aaron Brenner

19. Running Your Local/Strategic Planning by Robert Hickey

20. Troublemaking on the Home Page by Matt Noyes and David Yao

21. Developing New Leaders by Tony Perlstein

22. Dealing with the Media by Andy Zipser

23. International Solidarity by William Johnson

24. Troublemaking for the Long Haul by Jane Slaughter and Dan La Botz

25. Resources by Peter Asen

Appendix. How To Research Employers by Stephanie Luce and Tom Juravich