Vendor
	Fletcher Agency Melissa Chinchillo
Original language
English

ON THE LINE

Daisy Pitkin

A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women's Epic Fight to Build a Union

In this urgent, galvanizing, and deeply personal look at the state of the labor movement today and its troubled past, Daisy Pitkin blends memoir, history, and current affairs into a heart-wrenching story about how we honor those who fight the hardest for justice.

Raised during the final days of the auto and steelwork industries in rural Ohio, Daisy became increasingly aware of how the rigged economic system that failed workers in her own community was part of a global phenomenon affecting workers around the world. She began organizing, devoting herself to fighting for the rights of people who worked under hazardous and unfair conditions. As the youngest organizing director in the history of UNITE, one of the largest international workers’ unions, she led the drive to reform the industrial laundry industry, where heavy machinery and cheap, grueling labor are used to clean huge volumes of hospital, hotel, and restaurant linens and where injury and even death on the job are shockingly common.

Daisy found a fierce ally in Argelia Gomez Ramirez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico working at a hospital laundry in Arizona. Argelia led her coworkers in a fight for basic rights: machines with intact safety guards; gloves and goggles to protect them from the syringes or scalpels that often tumbled out with hospital linens. But under Argelia’s fearless leadership, “union” meant something more than just conditions at work. She believed in the power of community: she organized meal trains for sick or injured colleagues; she set up a phone tree in case of domestic violence – and showed up with a baseball bat when she got the call. The solidarity that grew out of this campaign was tangible, a bond that rhetoric alone could not achieve, and the two women grew fiercely close over the course of the brutal campaign to force the management company to recognize their union.

The work of labor organizing is deeply reliant on the power of storytelling, spinning tales of moral outrage, fierce courage, and victory from labor history in order to activate workers’ anger and demonstrate how unions can create real change. Daisy turns a critical eye on this tidy use of the past, and especially the role of immigrant women in shaping it, through the story of her and Argelia’s campaign.

INTO FLAMES comes at a moment of long-overdue confrontation with powerful forces of injustice. A century ago, facing the same economic conditions, workers launched militant strikes that founded the unions that remain the largest resources for labor organizing today. In a moment of unprecedented momentum for the labor movement, Pitkin offers a critical look at how we can learn from the past and what it will take to win for the workers fighting for justice today.

Available products
Book Published 2022-03-29 by Algonquin

Comments

"This audiobook provides insight into the epic battles often necessary for unions to organize and to protect and improve the lives of workers. Written and narrated by veteran union organizer Daisy Pitkin, the audiobook succeeds because of the author’s ability to weave personal stories and extensive historical background into each chapter. Pitkin’s performance is surprisingly good, given that she’s not a professional narrator. She is able to modulate well and to speak at a pace that keeps the listener focused. In addition, you can hear the agony in her voice when her organizing is unsuccessful. Perhaps the most emotionally wrenching part of the book is Pitkin’s detailed description of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich Village in 1911 and the epic criminal trial that followed."
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"I started reading and couldn’t stop. In an age of unchecked corporate power, On the Line is a timely and lyrical story of resistance, a behind-the-scenes portrait of labor organizing with all its hope and heartache. Candid, clear-eyed and utterly engrossing, Pitkin’s writing couldn’t come at a better – or more necessary – time." — Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

“In this stirring debut, Daisy Pitkin deftly renders the intimate work of union organizing, demystifying the process as she takes care to ensure the focus remains on the workers themselves. On the Line is a ringing endorsement for the power of a union, and an essential read for anyone who's ever been inspired to fight for a better world."-- Kim Kelly, labor journalist and author of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor

"It is hard to imagine a more humanizing portrait of the American labor movement. Rendered with lyric, incandescent prose, On the Line is both deeply personal and profoundly political, with an acute sense for the ebb and flow of history. With this remarkable debut, Pitkin has given us a riveting and intimate meditation on power, class consciousness, and the true meaning of solidarity." -- Francisco Cantú, New York Times-bestselling author of The Line Becomes a River

“Daisy Pitkin has written a luminous history of women in the labor movement. On the Line tells a captivating personal story, as well as an essential cultural one, unveiling the cruelty and injustice of industrial laundries, the erosion of the right to organize, and the hard-won persistence of women who have fought for nearly a hundred years for safety and justice in the workplace. Rich in narrative detail from the author’s work as an organizer, thoughtful in reflection about what drives people to rise up for change, this book is a stunning debut.” --Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of A Woven World

"A riveting, elegant, and intimate masterpiece. On the Line passed the great book test for me when I set it down for the last time and marveled and grieved in its beauty and sorrow, while understanding that my view of the world had changed." -- Todd Miller, author of Storming the Wall

“On the Line is full of fascinating history, wrenching memoir, and brilliant, evocative writing. I found myself transported from dingy hotel rooms to raucous union halls to nineteenth century silk magnanaries. Daisy's journey through the trenches of the American class war at the turn of the millennium is at once personal and universal, devastating and hopeful, raw and elegant. I am grateful that she chose to share it with us. I am awed that she wrote it so beautifully.” -- David Hill, Vice President, National Writers Union, and author of The Vapors

"Pitkin’s book captures the drama and transformative power of labor organizing better than any book published in the United States in years. With so many powerful narratives generated by similar union campaigns in American history—so many Richards chased down airport terminals, so many Almas metamorphosing into fearless fighters—we should have many more books like hers."

"...Pitkin not only demystifies the process of union organizing but stakes out a position as to what an organizer should do and what a union should be. Action without feeling? Moving without being moved? In On the Line, such dichotomies are rejected as neither workable nor fruitful for the end goal of building a union with staying power."
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A Pittsburgh union organizer's memoir about working in Arizona explores race, class, and more
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“Pitkin’s story … will hit you in the heart as it provides an intimate view of the nitty-gritty work of organizing while emphasizing its more human side… [A] valuable insight into what it takes to change the world — or the workplace — when the odds are stacked against you.
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Community and union organizer Pitkin weaves a poetic narrative with a century of intertwining histories of union organization in the United States and its often-unsung leaders. The bulk of the story rests on her experiences navigating the fight of laundry workers in Phoenix in the early 2000s, with the help of her coworker, co-organizer, and friend, Alma. The choice to tell the story as conversations pointed toward and with Alma, successfully folds readers into the collective experience of the tumultuous journey of their struggle. Alongside the fraught emotional minutiae of organizing (a complicated process that will expand many readers’ conceptions of unions themselves), this book explores the history of women’s involvement in unions throughout the labor history of the 19th and 20th centuries. The substantial parallels Pikin draws among her experiences, famous labor events, and the seemingly odd focus on the history and science of moths, create an elegant chronicle out of the often-brutal realities of workers. Pitkin’s literary innovation lends itself to a powerful message dissecting solidarity and the power of the collective.
VERDICT A necessary addition to academic collections, and also a great choice to round out any biography collection.
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On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women’s Epic Fight to Build a Union
Daisy Pitkin. Algonquin, $26.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-64375-071-2
Labor organizer Pitkin debuts with an intimate and moving account of the campaign to unionize industrial laundries in Arizona and her friendship with Alma, a laundry worker who became a fellow organizer. In 2003, Pitkin led efforts to unionize a Sodexho (now Sodexo) laundry in Phoenix where workers labored under unsafe conditions and with insufficient protections. The facility contracted with several hospitals, and workers who sorted gowns, blankets, and other soiled linens often encountered infectious bodily fluids and medical waste. (In other countries, Pitkin notes, hospital linens are sanitized by machine before workers handle them.) Presenting an up-close view of the organizing process, Pitkin describes the “underwater” phase of strategizing with a few employees before launching a union card–signing “blitz,” details Alma’s firing after a work stoppage, and documents the legal wrangling that eventually resulted in a labor contract. Throughout, Pitkin draws an extended analogy linking the biological process of metamorphosis to how union organizing transforms communities and individuals (she and Alma call each other las polillas, or the moths) and highlights the role of women workers in the American labor movement. Enriched by Pitkin’s sharp character sketches and sincere grappling with issues of class, race, and privilege, this is a bracing look at the challenges facing American workers. (Mar.)
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Moving between the present and the history of the labor movement during the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly with regard to contributions from women, Pitkin deftly demonstrates the parallels of now and then; how in order for American industries to save money and produce faster, some workers have paid with their lives. Pitkin’s narration makes the choice to write as though in conversation with Alma a great one. She gives depth, soul, and a human face to what it takes to organize.
VERDICT At once incredibly impactful and insightful, this is a lesson in history and humanity. Highly recommended.