Working Class Majority

Michael Zweig is a professor of economics and director of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he has received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is active in his union, United University Professions (AFT Local 2190), representing 35,000 faculty and professional staff throughout SUNY and has been elected to two terms on its state executive board. His earlier books include What's Class Got to Do with It?: American Society in the Twenty-first Century, Religion and Economic Justice, and The Idea of a World University.

Zweig's investigation of politics goes beyond the electoral, focusing instead on how a broad working-class social movement (often in alliance with segments of the professional middle class) could reshape workplace and community power relations as well as national politics.(The Nation) Those who take (rather than give) orders at work are the working class; at 62 percent of the labor force, they are a majority distracted and diverted from its best interests for several generations. Zweig suggests the implications of this analysis for a number of key political issues, including the 'underclass,' 'family values,' globalization, and what workers get (and should get) from government. Putting class back on the table produces a thoughtful, provocative analysis of where the nation is going and what working people could do about it.(Booklist) In this pungent critique of class and economics in the United States —part economic theory, part political lecture, and part reportage of working-class life—Zweig offers an insightful, radical analysis that will make many readers rethink commonly held but unexamined beliefs. Zweig supports his arguments with statistics, facts and personal stories and argues with a forcefulness and conviction backed by a deeply moral sense of the dignity that is due to each person in their work and workplace.(Publishers Weekly) Michael Zweig provides us with a much needed discussion of class in contemporary American society. While students can benefit from the exposure to a perspective that is currently missing from the public landscape, union organizers and activists can also profit from his discussions of worker power and the rebirth of a democratic social movement among working people.(Contemporary Sociology)

• Preface to the Second EditionAcknowledgments Introduction1. The Class Structure of the United States2. What We Think about When We Think about Class3. Why Is Class Important?4. Looking at the "Underclass"5. Looking at Values—Family and Otherwise6. The Working Class and Power7. Power and Globalization8. Power and the Government9. Into the MillenniumNotesIndex