"Demonstrates that good organizers can in fact succeed." -Frances Fox Piven

In 1995, in the first contested election in the history of the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney won the presidency of the nation's largest labor federation, promising renewal and resurgence. Today, less than 7 percent of American private-sector workers belong to a union, the lowest percentage since the beginning of the twentieth century, and public employee collective bargaining has been dealt devastating blows in Wisconsin and elsewhere. What happened?
Jane McAlevey is famous-and notorious-in the American labor movement as the hard-charging organizer who racked up a string of victories at a time when union leaders said winning wasn't possible. Then she was bounced from the movement, a victim of the high-level internecine warfare that has torn apart organized labor. In this engrossing and funny narrative-that reflects the personality of its charismatic, wisecracking author-McAlevey tells the story of a number of dramatic organizing and contract victories, and the unconventional strategies that helped achieve them.
Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) argues that labor can be revived, but only if the movement acknowledges its mistakes and fully commits to deep organizing, participatory education, militancy, and an approach to workers and their communities that more resembles the campaigns of the 1930s-in short, social movement unionism that involves raising workers' expectations (while raising hell).

"McAlevey's message-that unions alone give working people voice at the bargaining table and the ballot box-burns with conviction. She makes for bracing company in interesting times." - The Plain Dealer

"McAlevey burns with a passion for the cause" - Tribune

"McAlevey promotes the concept of 'whole worker' organizing, which seeks to go beyond the 'labor-community' paradigm in a manner that recognizes that workers are rooted in, and not separate from, communities and also recognizes the value of bringing community organizing techniques into the realm of labor and vice versa." - Book News