A clear analysis of tactics and politics, this thorough account examines the dispute between the United Healthcare Workers (UHW) union in California and its "parent" organization the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)--one of the most important labor conflicts in the United States today. It explores how the UHW rank and file took umbrage with the SEIU's rejection of traditional labor values of union democracy and class struggle and their tactics of wheeling and dealing with top management and politicians. The resulting rift and retaliation from SEIU leadership culminated in the UHW membership being forced to break out and form a brand new union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers. Timed to coincide with elections in California, this detailed history calls for a reexamination of the ideological and structural underpinnings of today's labor movement and illustrates how a seemingly local conflict speaks to the rights of laborers everywhere to control their own fates.

Cal Winslow, PhD., is an historian, trained at Warwick University under the direction of the late E.P. Thompson. He is a co-author, along with Thompson and others of Albion’s Fatal Tree. He is a fellow in Environmental Politics at UC Berkeley and Director of the Mendocino Institute. He is co-editor of Rebel Rank and File, Labor Militancy in the Long Seventies (Verso). He lives with his family on the Mendocino Coast. His daughter, Samantha Winslow, worked as an organizer for UHW from 2004 through 2009; as a staff member she was a founder of NUHW.