Professor Joseph McCartin, one of the nation’s leading scholars on the decline of the strike, has written the definitive account of the PATCO strike. In Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers and the Strike that Changed America, McCartin details two decades of struggle by this group of often militant Federal employees culminating in the failed 1981 strike. Collision Course is a well written, meticulously researched, and detailed account of the PATCO strike.

Labor commentator, and former union staffer, Steve Early draws on years of trade union activism to shed light on labor’s troubled path over the last decade. His recent book, The Civil War’s in US Labor, examines the internal conflicts which have wracked the labor movement over the last decade: the 2005 split of several international unions from the AFL-CIO to form the Change to Win coalition, the subsequent fracturing of Change to Win, and the internal conflict within the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Joe Burns’ incredibly important new book seems to me much larger than the labor movement. I hope he will share with us today some insights into his view of U.S. labor history and the potential for a U.S. labor future, but also his perspective on how this impacts our society as a whole. Are we right to look to the labor movement as a possible ally in the struggle for justice and maybe even peace?