Upheaval in the US workplace

Mr Greenhouse probably knows more about what is happening in the American workplace than anybody else in the country, having covered labour as a journalist for two decades

There’s an enormous upheaval in the American workplace right now, and those who tell you they know how the next decade will pan out — for good or ill — don’t know their history. That’s one of the main lessons of Beaten Down, Worked Up, the engrossing, character-driven, panoramic new book on the past and present of worker organizing by the former New York Times labour reporter Steven Greenhouse.

At the beginning of this decade, less than seven per cent of private-sector workers belonged to a union, and support for organised labour unions was at an all-time low. Corporations were using