Organizing for Better Lives

Abstract

Todd Jailer, Miriam Lara-Meloy, and Maggie Robbins, The Workers' Guide to Health and Safety (Berkely, CA: Hesperian, 2015), 576 pages, $34.95, paperback.The new Workers' Guide to Health and Safety—with drawings on every page—is a fun read, which is an unusual thing to say about a book with such a serious intent. Garrett Brown, an industrial hygienist with decades of experience as an inspector and activist in California, Mexico, and Bangladesh, claimed with some justification that of all the books on occupational health and safety, "almost none…are accessible to workers or their organizations." The Workers' Guide is the first major book aimed at organizing for healthier conditions in the labor-intensive export industries of countries like Bangladesh and China, Mexico's maquiladora frontier, in Central America and Southeast Asia, and even in the United States itself, where for many, working and living conditions are being beaten down.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.