THIS is not another sad tale about the demise of radical labor in America. It is not the story of how America's premiere militant union was defeated by bureaucrats, corporate liberals, collective bargains, or postindustrial technology. Quite the contrary. It tells a story of workers who currently and regularly fight with their employers over control of the workplace even though their union contract has officially settled the issue.

This is also not the story of an exceptional or “deviant” union, which, because of charismatic leadership and communist influence, was able to do what no other American union has done. The people in this book do not think of themselves as radical or politically “conscious.” Left-wing organizers are not the leading players in this story. The major characters are typical American workers.

Finally, this book is not about extraordinary moments in history, those unanticipated explosions that reveal transcripts of resistance that would otherwise remain hidden. Rather, the story is located in routine settings, accepted union practices, and class conflict in institutional settings.

The story this book tells obviously does not follow what has become a traditional labor history narrative. Instead of beginning with might have been and asking why it did not, this book starts with what was and asks, what actually happened? Rather than looking for the operating rules of class relations in the contract, it locates them in the tensions generated between informally negotiated work practices and formally agreed-upon contractual provisions.