Forced Choices: Class, Community, and Worker Ownership (SUNY Series in the Sociology of Work and Organizations) - Softcover

Varano, Charles S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791441822 ISBN 13: 9780791441824

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1999

Synopsis

What happens to employees when their company decides to close? Thousands of workers across America have faced this prospect in the past twenty years, but relatively few have chosen to buy the company and operate it as a worker-owned concern. Forced Choices examines the celebrated case of Weirton, West Virginia where steelworkers and area residents fought to save a steelmill, community, and way of life.

About this title

Review:

"...an ambitious and important study ... Forced Choices is a vivid reminder of the way that corporate managements often attempt to contain employee ownership and involvement and to manipulate ownership and involvement plans to increase profits rather than empower workers." -- American Journal of Sociology

"This book is clearly going to be a sourcebook for those interested in the conditions that affect employer-worker relations, employee ownership, and the current trends in American industry. It captures the flavor of the struggles of workers and is likely to be a classic in the same sense that Alvin Gouldner's Wildcat Strike has been for well over forty years." -- A. Gary Dworkin, University of Houston

"Forced Choices is a great read; a clearly written, engaging story! For those interested in worker ownership, local economic development, the history of company towns, the steel industry, unions or industrial democracy, this is fascinating material." -- Robert N. Stern, Industrial and Labor Relations-Cornell University

"This book makes a very important contribution to understanding the dynamics behind the rhetoric of employee ownership." -- Teresa Ankney, Hood College

Synopsis:

Examines the case of Weirton, West Virginia, where, in the 1980s, steelworkers and area residents fought to save a steelmill, their community, and their way of life. In 1982, they chose to buy the mill and make steel as a worker-owned company, becoming the largest worker-owned industrial firm in the country. By the mid-1980s, company policies and u

About this edition

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0791441822
• ISBN 13: 9780791441824
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 422