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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Why read it?

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

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…

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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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