Why read We Can't Eat Prestige?

Book cover of We Can't Eat Prestige: The Women Who Organized Harvard

Book description

This story explodes the popular belief that women white-collar workers tend to reject unionization and accept a passive role in the workplace. On the contrary, the women workers of Harvard University created a powerful and unique union--one that emphasizes their own values and priorities as working women and rejects unwanted…

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Sexism

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Business

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Why read it?

1 author picked We Can't Eat Prestige as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Dorothy Sue Cobble

Author

John Hoerr captures the fun-loving, irreverent, and unorthodox union culture Harvard secretaries and “support” staff built in the 1970s and 1980s and reveals how they organized and won what no one thought possible.

After Harvard admitted defeat in 1988 and recognized the union, workers doubled their salary, gained job security and flexibility, and remade a workplace culture steeped in elitism and sexism. “We wanted dignity, democracy, and a dental plan,” the union’s lead organizer, Kris Rondeau, once quipped. And they got it.

Read this book to laugh, read this book to believe once again in how creative and transformative unions…

From Dorothy's list on how working women changed the world.