The first Labor Day parade took place in New York City on September 5th, 1882 as a demonstration for workers’ rights. Twelve years later, it was signed into a law as a national holiday to celebrate and honor the working class, and to give workers a day off.
Now more than ever, it is time to reflect on past success and on what can be achieved when workers realize their collective power and unite. These fourteen books on labor and organizing offer historical lessons and strategic insight.
Learn more about each title below, then head over to our Organizing IS Power mini site for special discounts and to claim a free ebook.
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Organizing America: Stories of Americans Who Fought for Justice
By Erik Loomis
In this sweeping account of the impact of organizers, Loomis uncovers a rich and revealing history of social change activism with immediate relevance to our present. With an introduction that explains what organizing is and how collective action works—and how we should think about the power of organizing in 2025 and beyond—Loomis sets a tone that is both practical and historical. Read an op-ed by the author about the lessons we can learn from our organizing past to make change today.
Labor’s Partisans: Essential Writings on the Union Movement from the 1950s to Today
Edited by Nelson Lichtenstein and Samir Sonti
This anthology highlights a rich tradition of thought that has long been championed by Dissent magazine. Founded in 1954—at the peak of union membership in the U.S.—Dissent has been a vital platform for critical analysis, spirited debate, and unwavering support for the labor movement. The pieces in Labor’s Partisans reflect this legacy, blending stunning writing, political passion, and deep historical insight. Read an excerpt here.
One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America
By Saru Jayaraman
In One Fair Wage, Jayaraman shines a light on how subminimum wage and the tipping system exploit workers, who are often society’s most marginalized, “while also outlining the straightforward, concrete solutions necessary to overcome this crisis. Saru Jayaraman is a vital leader fighting for economic justice across our country, and her voice and vision are a road map for all of us” (Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal). Read an excerpt from One Fair Wage in Eater.
Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do
By Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel’s classic oral history of Americans’ working lives celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in 2024 and remains as relevant today as it did in 1974. Consisting of a collection of over one hundred interviews with working class Americans, from gravediggers to studio heads. Read an excerpt from Working and other landmark Terkel books here.
In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers
By Bernice Yeung
Here, Pulitzer Prize finalist Bernice Yeung exposes the epidemic of sexual violence levied against low-wage workers, revealing the hidden economies that take advantage of immigrant women. In a Day’s Work is a “bleak but much-needed addition to the literature on sexual harassment in the US. . . . Building a cross-class movement, as Yeung shows, will mean learning to stop unseeing the working women around us” (New York Review of Books). Read an excerpt in the Guardian.
Power Lines: Building a Labor–Climate Justice Movement
Edited by Jeff Ordower and Lindsay Zafir
An essential anthology that brings together leading organizers to share insights on the most effective ways to organize a labor movement for environmental justice. “Power Lines helps deepen the debate about how to unite and fight for a ‘Green New Deal’—or any better deal than the status quo” (Jacobin). Read an excerpt from the book in Fast Company.
A History of America in Ten Strikes
By Erik Loomis
A History of America in Ten Strikes is a “brilliantly recounted American history through the prism of major labor struggles, with critically important lessons for those who seek a better future for working people and the world” (Noam Chomsky). Readers will find that knowledge of the victories and defeats of the past can inform the strike campaigns of the current moment.
Who’s Got the Power?: The Resurgence of American Unions
By Dave Kamper
Longtime organizer and labor historian Dave Kamper details how labor reemerged with newfound strength, as workers began to question the status quo and demand more from their employers. Interviewing workers and labor leaders across the country, Kamper captures the stories of those on the front lines, from Frito-Lay workers in Kansas and Chicago teachers, to Amazon warehouse employees in New York and Detroit autoworkers, offering a compelling account of how, in industry after industry, strikes, protests, and bold negotiations signaled the rise of a more coordinated effort to reclaim control over working conditions.
Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World
By Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce
How do underdogs, facing far stronger opponents, sometimes win? In the tradition of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce’s Practical Radicals offers winning strategies, history, and theory for a new generation of activists. Based on interviews with leading organizers, the book incorporates stories of organizations and movements that have won, including Make the Road NY, the St. Paul Federation of Educators, New Georgia Project, the Fight for 15, Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and more. Read an excerpt in The Forge and listen to the companion podcast.
Pay the People!: Why Fair Pay is Good for Business and Great for America
By John Driscoll, Morris Pearl, and The Patriotic Millionaires
This “prescient and compelling call-to-action” (Library Journal) rebukes current wage practices and congressional paralysis and outlines a clear path to stable, inclusive growth. In an issue that is too often covered as a zero-sum game where there’s a winner and a loser, Driscoll and Pearl offer resounding evidence to the contrary.
From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: An Illustrated History of Labor in the United States
By Priscilla Murolo and A.B. Chitty
A work of “impressive even-handedness and analytic acuity” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend tackles American history from the lens of working people, ranging from indentured servants and slaves in seventeenth-century Chesapeake to high-tech workers in contemporary Silicon Valley. With material on sex workers, disability issues, labor’s relation to the global justice movement, and more, authors Priscilla Murolo and A.B. Chitty analyze labor’s role in American life.
Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class
By Jefferson Cowie
This epic account recasts the 1970s as the key turning point in modern U.S. history. Cowie, with “an ear for the power and poetry of vernacular speech” (Cleveland Plain Dealer), reveals America’s fascinating path from rising incomes and optimism of the New Deal to the widening economic inequalities and dampened expectations of the present.
Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st-Century Social Movements
Edited by Shanelle Matthews, Marzena Zukowska, and RadComms
From an international cast of leading activist communicators, a timely and instructive handbook for telling stories that change the world. Liberation Stories features in-depth case studies of both contemporary and historical movements like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, the Fight for $15, health care for all, and more. Read an excerpt in Nonprofit Quarterly.
The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives
By Bryant Simon
For decades, the small, quiet town of Hamlet, North Carolina, thrived thanks to the railroad. But by the 1970s, it had become a postindustrial backwater, a magnet for businesses searching for cheap labor with little or almost no official oversight. In this “captivating and brilliantly conceived” (Washington Post) book, historian Bryant Simon uses a long forgotten factory fire in small-town North Carolina to show how cut-rate food and labor have become the new American norm.
