Continental Crucible ― Big Business, Workers and Unions in the Transformation of North America

The crucible of North American neoliberal transformation is heating up, but its outcome is far from clear.Continental Crucible examines the clash between the corporate offensive and the forces of resistance from both a pancontinental and a class struggle perspective. This book also illustrates the ways in which the capitalist classes in Canada, Mexico, and the United States used free-trade agreements to consolidate their agendas and organize themselves continentally. The failure of traditional labor responses to stop the continental offensive being waged by big business has led workers and unions to explore new strategies of struggle and organization, pointing to the beginnings of a continental labor movement across North America. The battle for the future of North America has begun.

Richard Roman is associate professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Toronto and a fellow of the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean at York University. He lives in Toronto.Edur Velasco Arregui is a professor of law and labor economics at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City.Mel Watkins is professor emeritus of economics and political science at the University of Toronto, and adjunct research professor at the Institute of Political Economy at Carleton University. He lives in Toronto.Leo Panitch teaches political economy at York University and is a coauthor of In and Out of Crisisand The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire. He lives in Toronto.Steve Early has been an organizer, strike strategist, labor educator, and lawyer. He recently retired from his job as national staff member of the Communications Workers of America. He is the author ofThe Civil Wars in U.S. Labor and Embedded with Organized Labor and his writing on the labor movement has appeared in many publications, including theNation, the New York Times, the Progressive, and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in New York City.