Theriault follows his well-received book about work (How to Tell When You're Tired) with a rumination on politics, economics and unions, specifically the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which was recently locked out of the West Coast ports until federal intervention. His major thesis is that American companies are exporting jobs at the expense of blue-collar workers. What is more, he argues, corporate America has been aided in this shortsighted commitment to unexamined growth by an equally misguided political establishment. The discussions of economic theory echo those of other antiglobalization advocates, many more trenchant than Theriault, and are less interesting than the descriptions of his own work history. Theriault is an evocative and tender eulogist for the vanished world of fruit-tramps, who packed cantaloupes, tomatoes and fruits from California to the Northwest until mechanization and Hispanic migrant workers made them obsolete, and for logging as it was practiced before helicopters and other new technologies revolutionized that industry. His fondness for these arduous lifestyles is refreshingly matter-of-fact and not overly nostalgic or romanticized. Theriault is best at discussing why and how the ILWU has prospered when other unions have not. He explains how the ILWU's willingness to accept new dockside technologies, even when they caused a reduction in jobs, resulted in higher pay and greater job security for union members, although job security in the face of more dockside automation is currently at issue. Theriault also offers a thought-provoking analysis of why an American labor party never materialized, a failure he views with regret. This warning to Americans to reexamine current economic and labor policies will resonate with the increasing number of people concerned with the negative effects of globalization. (Jan.)
