Adam ReichRessenyes

What the authors could have deemed a failure—their original attempt to use student activists to organize Walmart associates—was instead the basis of a profoundly readable and insightful book about community, dignity, solidarity, and work.

I particularly enjoyed how the authors unpack the factors that make labor organizing difficult in the retail setting, beyond the typical explanations of right to work laws and distrust of unions. They point to unstable scheduling (reducing collaboration and trust among individuals), pervasive surveillance (from Walmart and from customers), distributed work (preventing workers from 'stopping the line' in the traditional sense), and the threat of 'hundreds of applicants who will take your job tomorrow' that have enabled Walmart to scale poverty-wage jobs without reasonable threat of unionization.

The book is packed with human stories, of the students and of the workers, pointing to a universal desire to be treated with respect at work. In addition, the role of systemic poverty and unsatisfying or violent home-lives in making jobs at Walmart a relative gain. I would recommend this book highly to any studying work or labor activism.