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Summary
Summary
"Riveting and intimate. It is hard to imagine a more humanizing portrait of the American labor movement. A remarkable debut."
--Francisco Cantú, New York Times bestselling author of The Line Becomes a River
On the Line takes readers inside a bold five-year campaign to bring a union to the dangerous industrial laundry factories of Phoenix, Arizona. Workers here wash hospital, hotel, and restaurant linens and face harsh conditions: routine exposure to biohazardous waste, injuries from surgical tools left in hospital sheets, and burns from overheated machinery. Broken U.S. labor law makes it nearly impossible for them to fight back.
The drive to unionize is led by two women: author Daisy Pitkin, a young labor organizer, who addresses this exhilarating narrative to Alma Gomez García, a second-shift immigrant worker, who risks her livelihood to join the struggle and convinces her fellow workers to take a stand.
Forged in the flames of a grueling legal battle and the company's vicious anti-union crusade, including the retaliatory firing of Alma, the relationships that grow between Daisy, Alma, and the rest of the factory workers show how a union, at its best, can reach beyond the workplace and form a solidarity so powerful that it can transcend friendship and transform communities. But when political strife divides the union, and her friendship with Alma along with it, Daisy must reflect on her own position of privilege and the complicated nature of union hierarchies and top-down organizing.
Daisy Pitkin looks back to uncover the forgotten roles immigrant women have played in the U.S. labor movement and points the way forward. As we experience one of the largest labor upheavals in decades, On the Line shows how difficult it is to bring about social change, and why we can't afford to stop trying.
Author Notes
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Labor organizer Pitkin debuts with an intimate and moving account of the campaign to unionize industrial laundries in Arizona and her friendship with Alma, a laundry worker who became a fellow organizer. In 2003, Pitkin led efforts to unionize a Sodexho (now Sodexo) laundry in Phoenix where workers labored under unsafe conditions and with insufficient protections. The facility contracted with several hospitals, and workers who sorted gowns, blankets, and other soiled linens often encountered infectious bodily fluids and medical waste. (In other countries, Pitkin notes, hospital linens are sanitized by machine before workers handle them.) Presenting an up-close view of the organizing process, Pitkin describes the "underwater" phase of strategizing with a few employees before launching a union card--signing "blitz," details Alma's firing after a work stoppage, and documents the legal wrangling that eventually resulted in a labor contract. Throughout, Pitkin draws an extended analogy linking the biological process of metamorphosis to how union organizing transforms communities and individuals (she and Alma call each other las polillas, or the moths) and highlights the role of women workers in the American labor movement. Enriched by Pitkin's sharp character sketches and sincere grappling with issues of class, race, and privilege, this is a bracing look at the challenges facing American workers. (Mar.)
Kirkus Review
The memoir of a labor organizer's fight to unionize commercial laundry facilities in Arizona. In her intimate and touching debut, Pitkin shares the story of her role in bringing a voice to workers who were "tired of being treated like a machine, tired of working in such dangerous conditions, and doing it for a company that didn't care if you get sick or hurt." Focusing on her efforts related to the campaign at Sodexho, the author describes the friendship that emerged with Alma, an immigrant worker at the factory who became a fellow organizer. At Sodexho, which services the linens for many hospitals, the workers' primary concerns were health and safety. Pitkin vividly describes the "gruesome" working conditions, including encountering bodily fluids, IV bags, and needles left in sheets and gowns; being forced to reuse too-thin gloves that were susceptible to puncture; lack of shoe protection; and missing safety guards on machines. Narrating as if speaking to Alma, Pitkin recounts the time they spent together during the campaign, including the fear and uncertainty they faced during their groundwork, work stoppage, and beyond. She alternates her primary narrative with a discussion of the history of labor unions in the U.S. During this arduous process, she and Alma began referring to themselves as "Las Polillas," the moths, a takeoff on "Las Mariposas," who "worked clandestinely to oppose the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic and were nicknamed The Butterflies." Pitkin also interjects details about her personal life, including her recurring dreams about moths and the metamorphosis that this journey brought her as well as her view on the true meaning of solidarity. Declaring "a new wave of worker momentum," the author rightly contends that "labor law in this country is broken, and just as in the early 1900s, a strike is a worker's only recourse, the only way to force a company to the bargaining table." A much-needed spotlight on the daily struggles of a vulnerable population. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The recent pandemic has brought many previously under-appreciated yet absolutely essential jobs into the forefront of American consciousness. This involving account relates the story of commercial laundry workers and their struggles to unionize. Presented as a memoir, it concentrates on the developing relationship between author Pitkin, a young, white, and relatively inexperienced labor organizer, and Alma, an older Mexican woman who worked in a Phoenix-based hospital laundry facility and spoke no English when she and the author met in the early aughts. The text shifts back and forth from descriptions of current unfair labor practices to the historic labor movement prompted by the 1911 Triangle shirtwaist factory fire. Some passages address Alma directly, documenting her and the author's shared union activities and bringing immediacy to Alma's experiences: "You led the work stoppage"; "You were fired." There's also running commentary about Pitkin's fascination with moths. This sounds like a lot, but it all comes together in a sobering narrative that gives a human face to the plight of often overlooked essential labor in the U.S.
Library Journal Review
With We Should All Be Feminists, award-winning, multi-million-copy best-selling MacArthur author Adichie offers an illustrated journal that guides readers on their own feminist journeys. Arce, who worked hard to suppress her accent after immigrating to the United States from Mexico only to be told You Sound Like a White Girl, now rejects assimilation as an illusory and ultimately racist goal meant to keep her from belonging and instead argues for honoring one's culture; currently, she's collaborating with America Ferrera to develop Ferrera's My (Underground) American Dream for television (75,000-copy first printing). Following up 1999's No. 1 New York Times best-selling The Freedom Writers Diary, which inspired a film starring Hilary Swank and an Emmy award-winning documentary, Dear Freedom Writer is a compilation by contemporary Freedom Writers and teacher Gruwell of 50 more stories representing a new generation of high school students. As musician/activist Henry looks back on All the White Friends I Couldn't Keep--they thought he wasn't sufficiently polite when discussing racism or doubted it even existed--he argues that social justice will be achieved not through civil conversation or diversity hires but more direct ways of disrupting racial inequality and violence. With The Antiracist Deck, No. 1 New York Times best-selling antiracism champion Kendi presents not a book but a pack of 100 cards, each with a conversation starter--When did you first become aware of racism? When did you first become aware of your race? What does "resistance" mean to you? --meant to get people talking. In On the Line, Pitkin recalls working as a newly hired organizer for UNITE, an international garment workers union, to unionize Arizona's industrial laundry factories with the help of a second-shift immigrant factory worker pseudonymously named Alma Gomez-Garcia. A political reporter for the Daily Beast who has spent the last several years tracking QAnon, Sommer explains what it is, why it has gained traction, what dangers it poses, and how to shake adherents loose from its dogma in Trust the Plan (100,000-copy first printing). Chief economics correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Timiraos argues in Trillion Dollar Triage that the pandemic did not result in economic collapse owing to the efforts of Jerome H. Powell, chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (60,000-copy first printing). New York Times reporter Williamson's Sandy Hook reveals the ongoing tragedy of the killing of 26 people--including 20 children--at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, with the parents of young victims harassed online, stalked, and even shot at and the very truth of the massacre denied by a group of conspiracy theorists whom she sees as profit motivated.
