University of Texas School of Law labor law professor Julius “Jack” Getman has written a book focusing on how labor unions could return to power. “Getting their members active is the key,” Getman says. His book, “Restoring the Power of Unions: It Takes a Movement,” in part, tells the history of UNITE HERE. The group represents workers in the hospitality, gaming, food service, manufacturing, textile, laundry and airport industries, according to the union’s website. Getman says he was on the faculty at Yale University in the 1980s, when the labor union for hotel and restaurant employees, then called HERE, organized clerical workers there. “I thought something unusual was going on,” Getman says. Getman says Vincent Sirabella was a ninth grade dropout who was an organizer for HERE and in that capacity had organized Yale’s maintenance workers. Getman says he had an opportunity to interview Sirabella, to whom the book is dedicated, before writing it.Yale University Press will release the book June 7, says the publisher's spokesman Alden Ferro.
-- Mary Alice Robbins
NOTE: The above blog has been corrected to reflect that Sirabella was a ninth grade dropout who was an organizer for HERE.
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