Bees, ladybugs, electric-spark houseflies and small leaves fledged. I was fine with the föhn winds (all that is solid melts in the air) and the unnecessary spring. Here I will be able to walk and reflect and write, I thought. It is lockdown and quarantine more or less all over the world. If I stay here, I thought, I will also make way for someone who needs to return to Canada more urgently than I do. We were allowed to continue and self-isolate in our studios-studios designed with solitude in mind. I was “fine.” Fortunately, the head of the residency made a generous exception for the last two remaining writers, me and a novelist from Germany. I recovered, certain I was not going to let it become as bad as it had after 9/11. The day I packed my bags was followed by a long night when I got my first anxiety attack (of 2020). It was near impossible to contact the airline. I packed my suitcase, not knowing what awaited me. This writer’s residency-in a small village in Switzerland on the gentle slopes of the Jura Mountains-was going to shut down indefinitely. Switzerland, one of the most affected countries, declared a nationwide emergency. Taking 1199's story into the present day, Fink and Greenberg assess the new service unionism's promise for revitalizing the labor movement and the challenges it faces in creating a better health care system for us all.More bad news started pouring in from Italy and France and Spain. "A timely, illuminating, and indispensable account of the politics of health care and how one union transformed the industry. A must for anyone concerned with the organization of the working poor."-Michael Harrington
Freeman, author of Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II A must read for those trying to understand labor today."-Joshua B.
"In updating their classic history of Local 1199, Fink and Greenberg show how one of the nation's most dynamic unions has navigated the shoals of a health care industry in constant turmoil and a labor movement trying to reinvent itself. “This study offers invaluable background for understanding future developments.
An excellent mix of narrative and analysis."- Labor History "A lively and clearly written account of an exceptional and, for many, exemplary union. A sympathetic, though hardly uncritical, account of the remarkable rise and contemporary difficulties of this unusual trade union."- Nation
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