Unionizing the Ivory Tower - by Al Davidoff

About the Book

"Al Davidoff's memoir of the low-wage service workers organizing a union at Cornell University. It describes the stages of creating a healthy, progressive union, including organizing, bargaining, forming campus and community coalitions, and engaging in creative strikes"--

Book Synopsis

Unionizing the Ivory Tower chronicles how a thousand low-paid custodians, cooks, and gardeners succeeded in organizing a union at Cornell University. Al Davidoff, the Cornell student leader who became a custodian and the union's first president, tells the extraordinary story of these ordinary workers with passion, sensitivity, and wit.

His memoir reveals how they took on the dominant power in the community, built a strong organization, and waged multiple strikes and campaigns for livable wages and their dignity. Their strategies and tactics were creative and feisty, founded on worker participation and ownership.

The union's commitment to fairness, equity, and economic justice also engaged these workers--mostly rural, white, and conservative--at the intersections of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Davidoff's story demonstrates how a fighting union can activate today's working class to oppose antidemocratic and white supremacist forces.

About the Author

Al Davidoff is co-founder of the National Labor Leadership Initiative and the Director of Organizational and Leadership Development for US labor's global arm at the Solidarity Center.