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Unionizing the Ivory Tower
Cornell Workers' Fifteen-Year Fight for Justice and a Living Wage
Al Davidoff (Author)
9781501769801
Hardback, published 15 August 2023
258 pages, 20 b&w halftones - 20 Halftones, black and white
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.907 kg
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.
Introduction
1. Mophead
2. Yes, Yes, No
3. Custodians—That's All You'll Ever Be
4. We Meet the Enemy and It Is Us
5. Frankie McCoy
6. Blackness on the Cornell Plantation
7. Noah's Amalgamated Ark
8. Figuring It Out
9. "Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee"
10. Sustaining Struggle: Building the Union during the Off-Season
11. From Grassroots Up to Grassroots Out
12. In the Shadow of the Tower
Epilogue