Jane McAlevey's 'Raising Expections' gives a union organizer's view from the front lines

http://www.cleveland.com/books/index.ssf/2013/01/jane_mcaleveys_raising_expecti.html

Published: Tuesday, January 01, 2013, 6:00 AM Updated: Tuesday, January 01, 2013, 6:06 AM

By Scott Stephens

Jane McAlevey introduces her bare-knuckled bluntness early in "Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell)," a sometimes rambling, often sharply drawn memoir of her life as a very successful union organizer.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you any manners?" she was asked, more than once. "The simple answer is no. My mother died of breast cancer when I was very young."



McAlevey gets no points for subtlety, but she wins some for timing. Organized labor is cursed to live in interesting times, and the union tumult this fall makes "Raising Expectations" an instructive, important book.

We've just witnessed state lawmakers in Michigan, the birthplace of modern unionism, adopt union-crippling right-to-work legislation. On the other hand, nonunionized workers at Walmart staged national Black Friday protests, and fast-food workers in New York City walked off their jobs over wages and working conditions.

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