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CONFESSIONS OF A UNION BUSTER

A tough-minded memoir of a clever, driven operator in a nasty profession. When the 17-year-old Levitt found Teamster goons knocking his uncle around in his father's Cleveland comic-book distributorship, he fetched his father's gun and held it on four of the hoodlums until the cops arrived. Later, as Cleveland mobsters became dominant union figures, Levitt became a resourceful opponent. Restless and with a knack for business, he began a successful executive recruitment business, but an ad placed by John Sheridan, acknowledged ``King of the Union Busters,'' drew him to higher stakes. Levitt worked not as muscle but as a computer-oriented organizer and propagandist who directed company efforts to frustrate union organizers. Working in industries from coal mines to airlines and restaurants, he refined his sense of how to remain technically within the law while demoralizing less sophisticated opponents. His picture of his cynical, hard-drinking world is hard to forget, and the despotic owners are well drawn—splenetic, insulting Ed Daly of World Airways, with his huge, exotic office (liquor bottles open on the desk) and terrifying rages, is particularly memorable. An effective huckster, Levitt distributed disinformation, blackmailed key employees with the consequences of noncooperation, and used a grimly comedic creative streak to distract workers from their vital interests (at one point, he persuaded an employee to streak an aircraft hanger stark-naked in return for ballots). Levitt tells of his personal life as well—of his climb to a six-figure income, and of his descent into alcoholism, defeated by guilt and inner turmoil about a way of life he couldn't bear to think about. An ugly mea culpa—but a useful corrective to the vast negative publicity routinely accorded unions. (Film rights sold to HBO)

Pub Date: Sept. 8, 1993

ISBN: 0-517-58330-5

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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REIMAGINING CAPITALISM IN A WORLD ON FIRE

A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.

A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.

Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.

A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.

Pub Date: May 1, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1

Page Count: 336

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020

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