Vote Now on the Next Selection for Our Labor Reading Group

The Maine AFL-CIO Reading Group gathers regularly (via Zoom) for an hour each month to discuss a book (or articles) chosen by the members themselves. We’re a lively, welcoming, low-pressure bunch. Anybody who’s spent time on the job, has thought about it, and wants to think more is a prime candidate for membership. Come as you are—whether you’ve finished the reading or not. Your life experience and thoughts on what you have read will enrich our discussion.

Voting is open now for our next selection. There are three nominees:

• Helen Russell: The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country, 2016. 354 pages. Londoner Russell spent a year living in rural Jutland to discover why Denmark-- a land of long, cold, gloomy winters-- is often described as "the happiest place on earth." Is it nature, nurture, a social-democratic form of government? What she discovered may have lessons for Maine, another place with long, cold, gloomy winters.
• Daisy Pitkin: On the Line: A Story of Class Solidarity, and Two Women's Epic Fight to Build a Union, 2022. 288 pages. What role can immigrant women play in advancing today's labor movement? Mostly immigrant workers in Phoenix AZ's industrial laundries routinely risk contamination from biohazardous waste, industrial accident, or on-the-job injury. Labor law is seldom enforced. Pitkin's account of a five-year battle to organize these workers offers a "riveting and intimate" look at why unions are essential and how hard it is to organize them. She is currently the lead organizer for the Starbucks Workers United union campaign.
• Alex Gourevitch: From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century, 2015. 220 pages. The old song asks: "Shall we be slaves and work for wages? Why that's outrageous-- has been for ages!" But where does the concept of wage-slavery come from? Some radical nineteenth-century thinkers, trying to come to grips with life in an industrializing, oligarchic economic environment, made some surprising intellectual breakthroughs. Gourevitch shows that US history is not always as simplistically straightforward as we like to think it is. If this is so, what about our views of the present?

If you’re not yet a member and would like to join us, please email Cynthia Phinney: cynthia at maineaflcio dot org

You can indicate your preferences at: https://forms.gle/32XRL7HNSVe3Zm819 before midnight on Monday, November 7. We’ll announce the winner on Nov. 8. Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, we won’t meet to begin our discussion until Thursday, December 1, 5:30-6:30 pm.