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Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class (American Encounters/Global Interactions) ReviewNECLAS 2009 Annual Meeting, Union College, Schenectady, NY, October 3.
Best Book Prize 2009, awarded to Aviva Chomsky, Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class. Durham and London: Duke University Press (2008).
That labor is typically devalued and that workers tend to not organize, when their choices are low-wages or no job, are not revelations. Why these continue to be persistent features in Latin America, the United States, and the rest of world do demand our scholarly and critical attention, especially in these times of out-of-control CEO salaries and bonuses and diminishing wages and benefits for workers. This year's NECLAS 2009 Best Book Prize winning entry, Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class by Aviva Chomsky is an historical study that eloquently and forcefully explains why, as she puts it, "a race to the bottom" (12, 294) for workers' wages and rights is taking place.
This book--about globalization's impact on labor and a critique of globalization from perspective of labor history--is unreservedly deserving of the NECLAS Best Book prize. The volume is clearly written and very well narrated--Chomsky knows how to tell a story. Besides being fully researched, Chomsky's interdisciplinary approach brings into its purview an analysis of Colombian and U.S. histories that helps us learn, "What are the circumstances that have allowed workers to improve their conditions, and how can we as a society work to increase those spaces, and the chances, for workers to have a meaningful voice in their workplaces and communities" (301). This humanistic and social justice perspective only makes the book more urgent and compelling.
Linked Labor Histories is an impressive, path-breaking study of labor history that demonstrates how globalization has been a long-standing process throughout the 20th century and inextricably linked to the beginnings of industrialization. She interweaves history with parallel contemporary cases while retaining a wonderfully comparative outlook replete with incisive analysis. By focusing on the New England textile industry, immigrant labor, and the role of multinational corporations in Colombia such as UFCO (bananas), Drummond and Exxon (coal), the AFL-CIO, and the IMF, Chomsky meticulously shows how labor costs are kept low and workers' efforts to successfully organize are often thwarted. But even such failures, she argues, are the very seeds of success and improvements to workers' lives.
The individual testimonies that she places at the end of each chapter add a beautifully humane touch to the march of impersonal historical forces. Moreover, the book has urgency; its issues are very much with us today. And it is the farthest thing possible from a purely academic or scholastic piece of work. This is truly excellent, historiography at its best, and in the venerable traditions of general-interest history writing.
Walter E. Little
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
University at Albany, SUNY
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