Author Philip Dine will be speaking at the Bunch of Grapes bookstore in Vineyard Haven at 7 p.m. on June 27.

He is a labor reporter in Washington and the author of a new book, "State of the Unions: How Labor Can Strengthen the Middle Class, Improve Our Economy, and Regain Political Influence" (McGraw-Hill). It argues that labor is as relevant as ever, given what's happening to working people and the middle class, and looks at ways labor can strengthen itself to meet the challenges. It's based on 20 years of covering labor on a local, regional and national basis.

Richard Gephardt wrote the foreword and Sen. Ted Kennedy called the book "inspiring." Bill Delahunt also wrote a blurb for the book. The Sacramento News & Review wrote, â€œRead this book before you vote...if you'd like to understand where the jobs have gone and why, and what can be done to stop the bleeding." Just a few days ago, AFSCME highly recommended the book for its "insightful analysis of American labor's triumphs and recent struggles."

In recent weeks and months, he has addressed a number of unions and other groups about labor, its increasing importance and the election, including IAFF and IFPTE legislative conferences in Washington, the San Diego Labor Council, New York State Union of Teachers convention, CWA convention in Dallas, Bricklayers International Executive Board in San Diego, International Labor Communications Association convention in New Orleans, National Labor College, California State Polytechnic University and Harvard Law's Labor and Worklife Program.

IHe has also discussed the book on National Public Radio, C-Span BookTV, MSNBC, been cited on The New York Times Political Blog, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, etc., and in various union publications. In her May 16 column, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift wrote of the book's relevance to the current presidential election in terms of union and blue-collar voters.

web site  http://www.philipdine.com/           e-mail   philipmdine@aol.com

 

Sketch of book, bio

State of the Unions: How Labor Can Strengthen the Middle Class, Improve Our Economy, and Regain Political Influence," examines what's happening to working and middle-class Americans buffeted by forces they can't counter as individuals, and how a rejuvenated labor movement could help turn things around.

The book contends it's no coincidence that job security, pensions or wages are under assault as labor has been weakened. For decades, unions have provided a voice to those who otherwise lack one, and were part of a robust industrial relations system -- with management and government -- that has promoted political and economic stability. Labor's decline skews the process, and we're witnessing the consequences in public policies and corporate practices.

So the question shifts from whether labor is relevant to how it can revive itself to meet the institutional challenges it faces and, more importantly, the daily challenges ordinary people face. "State of the Unions" discusses how unions can get there, by crafting targeted strategies in bargaining and organizing, redefining issues of economic fairness as values to the social right doesn't own that key terrain during elections, casting the rank-and-file as the face of the union, and addressing the dysfunctional media-labor relationship so labor's message gets out.

There's also a good bit of political material in the book relevant to the current election, ranging from practical looks at labor's campaign activities to analysis of blue-collar conservatives wrestling with economic interests vs. values.

A journalist for 25 years in New England, the Midwest and Washington, Philip Dine now is a national correspondent with the Washington Bureau of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, covering labor and national security. His labor reporting has been nominated twice for a Pulitzer Prize, and in 2007 his reports on the illicit narcotics trade in Afghanistan won the National Press Club's Edwin Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence and the Society of Professional Journalists Dateline Award for Investigative Reporting. His stories on the Pentagon's treatment of Iraq veterans has won two national awards this year.

Dine has designed and taught a college course on the media's coverage of labor, and for a decade he wrote perhaps the only weekly labor column at a daily newspaper. He did graduate studies in industrial relations at MIT, then spent two years doing research on labor unions and immigrant workers in France and Germany. His op-ed pieces have been published in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun and Newsday.