Only One Thing Can Save Us ― Why Our Country Needs to Snap Out of It and Have a New Kind of Labor Movement

Is labor’s day over or is this the big moment? Are unions the logical next step beyond Occupy Wall Street or are they just an anachronism from a bygone era?

In Only One Thing Can Save Us, acclaimed author Thomas Geoghegan asserts that only a new kind of labor movement can help the country switch course toward a future that is fair and prosperous for all Americans. We need a revived labor movement, he explains, not only to stop the drop in wages, health insurance, and pensions over the past thirty years, but also to make the American economy more competitive by placing real limits on returns to our bloated financial sector; pushing for government support for health care and pensions; and promoting a new model of corporate governance. Geoghegan shows how a revitalized labor movement can help get the country out of debt—private debt, government debt, and most of all trade debt.

Geoghegan argues that labor must transform itself, too; no longer essentially adversarial, it should embody the possibility of collective action that represents the best of American individualism. Only One Thing Can Save Us is a sorely needed call to arms with substantive policy prescriptions, written in Geoghegan’s inimitable, winning, and witty style.

Thomas Geoghegan is a practicing labor lawyer and the author of several books, including See You in Court; In America’s Court; the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Which Side Are You On?; and, most recently, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? (all available from The New Press). He has written for The Nation, the New York Times, and Harper’s Magazine. He lives in Chicago.