Unionizing the Ivory Tower: Cornell Workers' Fifteen-Year Fight for Justice and a Living Wage

Unionizing the Ivory Tower chronicles how 1,000 low-paid custodians, cooks and gardeners succeeded in organizing a union at Cornell University. Al Davidoff, the Cornell student leader who became a custodian and the union's first president, tells the story with passion, sensitivity and wit.

This memoir is the extraordinary story of these ordinary workers and their union: how they took on the dominant power in the community, built a strong organization, and waged multiple strikes and community campaigns for livable wages and their dignity. The strategies and tactics used were creative and feisty, and founded on worker participation and ownership.

The union's commitment to fairness, equity and economic justice also engaged these workers-mostly rural, white, and conservative-at the intersection of the larger social ills of racism, sexism, classism and homophobia. Davidoff's story demonstrates how a fighting union can educate and activate the working class of today to oppose anti-democratic and white supremacist forces.