Living and Dying on the Factory Floor: From the Outside In and the Inside Out

by David Ranney

David Ranney’s vivid memoir describes his work experiences between 1976 and 1982 in the factories of southeast Chicago and northwest Indiana. The book opens with a detailed description of what it was like to live and work in one of the heaviest industrial concentrations in the world. The author takes the reader on a walk through the heart of the South Side of Chicago, observing the noise, heavy traffic, the 24-hour restaurants and bars, the rich diversity of people on the streets at all hours of the day and night, and the smell of the highly polluted air. Factory life includes stints at a machine shop, a shortening factory, a railroad car factory, a structural steel shop, a box factory, a chemical plant, and a paper cup factory. Along the way there is a wildcat strike, an immigration raid, shop-floor actions protesting supervisor abuses, serious injuries, a failed effort to unionize, and a murder. Ranney’s emphasis is on race and class relations, working conditions, environmental issues, and broader social issues in the 1970s that impacted the shop floor. Forty years later, the narrator returns to Chicago’s South Side to reveal what happened to the communities, buildings, and the companies that had inhabited them. Living and Dying on the Factory Floor concludes with discussions on the nature of work; racism, race, and class; the use of immigration policy for social control; and our ability to create a just society.

Genres: Labor, History, Nonfiction, Memoir, United States

192 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2019

Reviews

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

david ranney left a tenured professorship in urban planning in the mid 1970's and went 'down to the factories' to participate in what was expected to be a sequence of workplace struggles that would lead to the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a new society. he left seven years later, as automation and offshoring began to eat away at the industrial base surrounding chicago where he lived and worked, and he found it increasingly impossible to find a job. he was 'outside' in that his background and training contrasted with all of the rest of his co-workers, and 'inside' in that he was embedded in, if not an entirely organic part of, different fractions of the working class as they really existed at the time. hopefully, as members of this down-to-the factories generation retire and have time to go back over their journals, notes and memories, we get many more thoughtful books like these.

ranney wasn't a member of the cpml, the ru/rcp, the mlp, the swp, the cpusa, the cia, or the fbi during his time in industry. he was a part of the sojourner truth organization, a small and unique communist group that, for a while, focused on work at the point of production and on dogged opposition to white supremacy at the same time. his stories about what american (or amerikkkan) workplaces of the time actually looked like, how color-coded class society operated on the actual floor of a fabrication shop, reflect sto's dual focus. and they are very useful forty years later too, as some parts of the americ(kkk)an left try to 'unite the 99%' and ignore 'divisive identity politics' all over again. his experiences remind us that, as j sakai says, class without race is an abstraction and vice versa. they also reveal that people who argue that 'class' is at the 'center' both have no understanding of class that marx or any honest marxist would recognize, and have probably never seen the de facto segregation of american workplaces up close and personal.

the book is written in present tense. the longest and most involved story he recounts involves a strike at a shortening company in chicago, where the mob-connected union blatantly fakes the vote on a new contract, provoking a wildcat strike that eventually fails after prolonged litigation, pickets, violence and one of the leaders of the strike being stabbed to death by a scab. ranney's telling of the strike includes high points- when the picket convinces a locomotive conductor to refuse to move railcars filled with shortening out of the plant, for instance- and extremely bleak episodes of the type that make you wonder if anything beyond capitalism is really possible.

i felt a really close affinity with ranney the more i read this book. right down to the feeling he writes about of showing up to work with shiny tools and not having a fucking clue what you're doing. i would have appreciated more direct advice about how 'outsiders' like me should behave when 'inside' but that's probably an unfair thing to ask. great book nevertheless.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part of the reason this book is great is because, 40 years ago, Ranney knew his place as a leftist intellectual in the factory: an outsider looking in and an insider looking out. Running in various socialist circles and helping out with the Workers’ Rights Center, Ranney provided support to organizing efforts but rarely led them. He’s cognizant of the reality that some of the actions he took part in could get others fired, deported, or hurt, and that he was insulated as a white academic with deep knowledge of labor politics and organizing. You get to know Ranney in this book, and you get to know others as well — many of them workers who hadn’t imagined themselves going so far to fight for themselves or each other.

The debrief section at the end was good, but maybe lighter than I would’ve liked. We don’t learn much about what else the Workers’ Rights Center got up to, and we get only a brief discussion of the ideological, but not the substantive differences between the 4 communist groups that Ranney was a part of. It would’ve been nice to learn more about these groups and the broader labor organizing landscape across Chicago and the Midwest. Ranney has a good but short Jacobin interview if you’re interested in learning a bit more. Overall, an easy 5 stars.

[Wendy Liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy read. Accessible and riveting. Highly recommended to anyone interested in US labour history or who's curious about labour organising actually looks like.

[Kyle Suratte · Rating 5 out of 5]

" 'For us this is about how we are goin' to feed our babies, man. That's something worth fighting for. Movin' us out of here ain't goin' to be easy.'

This statement galvanized all of us, including the locomotive engineer who was standing on the other side of our picket line and refused to cross it, eventually telling our boss to; "Go fuck yourself." "

[Bill Baar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stumbled on Ranney's Book at the Sister Bay Library. I split my time between Lombard, Illinois and Sister Bay, Wisconsin and, like Ranney worked factory jobs while floating among Marxist groups in 1970's Chicago. Ranney would have written a better book had he told readers a little more of his personal life and the personalities of the Left groups he belonged too in those years. He offers some profiles of workers but very little about why he chose to spend seven years in Chicago's factories. New American Movement, Sojourner Truth Organization, News and Letters Committee, C.L.R. James, and Raya Duanyvskaya wait till page 130 of a 136 page book for mention. Ranney's time wasn't all on the factor floor and he certainly must have participated in long meetings. The Book's Ranney's story of him looking into the Factory's World but very little reflection back into Ranney's personal world of Family and Politics. He would have written a better book had he broken down those walls a bit. Curiously no mention of Obama. Ranney preceded Obama's time by just a few years but Obama's name doesn't appear at all. Four stars though but mostly because Ranney brought back some memories of my time bashing steel and drinking beer after lectures at Wobbly Hall.sd

[Smith Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A personal and carefully honest account of factory work. There are no rose-colored glasses here. Both management and union leadership can be pretty and greedy and focused on protecting what they have. So can workers.

I learned in business school that if you didn't have a unionized labor force and they voted in a union it was your own fault.

I took that to mean that if you weren't treating your workforce as well or better than they would be in a union then they would be rational and choose the union. Of course, it could also mean that you just lost the organizing fight because you didn't make use of all the advantages of power and status and corrupt institutions at your disposal. No doubt some folks learned the latter lesson.

Cities and industries and economies seen to me to be in a perpetual state of destruction and rebirth. There are always new jobs and new economies and new neighborhoods. And they always arise at the expense and to the detriment of someone.

Where are all the whalers? What about the ferriers and stable-keepers? There are no more jobs for the army of workers who packed the seams of wooden ships with tar and hemp fibers. It was awful for all those skilled laborers when their industries waned.

Whaling lasted for 300 years in the US. Oil pushed it out. Hydrogen or solar will push out oil. Workers need to be able to live and thrive even as the (inevitable) cycle of destruction and rebirth washes around them.

[Ernesto · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are no perros, cabrón!

''John Logan [...] said that if he had known what would happen when we started the action at Chicago Shortening he would still have done it because ''these are the proudest days of my life.'' Lawrence expressed a pathway to a new society when he joked, ''There ain't no justice ... just us.'' And the struggle brought out the best in Charles. He put aside alcohol and drugs and made common cause with everyone on the line - Mexicans, white boys, even a Nazi! And when we stood on the railroad tracks and he stepped forward he was able to articulate a class-based vision and determination in universal terms:

''For us this is about how we are goin' to feed our babies, man. That's something worth fighting for. Movin' us out of here ain't goin' to be easy.''

This statement galvanized all of us, including the locomotive engineer who was standing on the other side of our picket line and refused to cross it, eventually telling our boss to: ''Go fuck yourself.''

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty good book. Captures the feel of what it is like to be working in various factories throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. An interesting 2105 rambling reflection ends it-- with some insights and a couple other random points that probably could have been tossed out but were still interesting.

Perhaps most interesting is Ranney's retort against bringing manufacturing jobs back to "make America great again" by showing how backbreaking, relentless, and soul crushing such factory jobs were, particularly in the ways they fostered racism to ensure breaking worker solidarity.

An appreciated read.

[Zora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this read, it’s relatively quick and easy to access. Doesn’t really talk about any in depth labour history, but the first hand account of Union (and attempted Union) involvement around Chicago doesn’t really require much background.

The writing style is light, though the content can be dark.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

An encapsulating and shamefully underrated book. Ranney, a former member of the 'Sojourner Truth Organisation', recounts his experiences of working and trying to organise in numerous factories in industrial USA after quitting his job as an academic. This work is incredibly personal, and features stories of struggle, mourning and frustration amongst other things, and manages to propose an understanding of the intersections between class and race that remains relevant for us today. I cannot recommend this book enough.

[Tyler K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful, quick read. Vignettes of life on the shop floor written by an academic turned factory worker in Chicago’s industrial far south side in the late 70s, early 80s. Mostly narrative accounts of day-to-day work, organizing with/of/by coworkers, mafia-controlled unions, greedy bosses, and more. It ends with some contemporary political reflections circa 2019.

[Joseph Marciniak · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit short, I agree with the messaging but the author is a little saviory to the point where i’m like ok cmon

[Naty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily top 5 of my favorite books, and not 5! A candid and human look into workplace organizing in the late 70s in the south side of Chicago.

[Roger · Rating 5 out of 5]

DAvid Ranney tells a highly personal, vivid story about life in the factories of Southeast Chicago and the adjoining strip of Indiana, where 250,000 manufacturing jobs have been vaporized. Powerfully real and thoughtful.