The Broken Table: The Detroit Newspaper Strike and the State of American Labor by Chris Rhomberg Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 2012, 398 pp., $44.90

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12082
• Published date: 01 March 2015
• Author: Ian Greenwood
• Date: 01 March 2015

struggled’ (p. 83). Following a close examination of the quantitative data on union

membership, Silvia concludes that ‘milieu matters’, meaning that union membership

depends to a large extent on ‘social custom’, including views and pressures from

family, friends, colleagues and government, among others. The tide for such a milieu

turned in the 1980s but, though this is certainly true, Silvia seems to treat milieu as an

independent variable rather than as a dependent variable. After all, how exactly are

milieux created and sustained? On this, he is not entirely clear.

Turning to his qualitative analysis, Silvia argues that two trade union movements

have emerged in the postwar era: the first characterised by industrial unionism, and

the second by multisectoral unionism, exemplified since 2001 by the formation of

ver.di and the expansion of IG Metall (which together now account for 70 per cent of

the membership of unions affiliated to DGB, the German Trade Union

Confederation). Chapters four and five, which focus on historical developments

within unions and employers’ associations to the present day, form the heart of the

book, providing a valuable insight into the impact of politics and personalities on

contemporary trends, including the impact of reunification, the Schröder and Merkel

governments, and attempts at union revitalisation.

Silvia concludes that the loss of membership among unions and employers’ asso-

ciations results from structural changes such as the rise of individualism and intensi-

fied competition, but that ‘the commitment to holding the shop together is still very

much alive among the social partners and state officials’ (p. 230). This is undoubtedly

true, but my caveat—a weakness of the book—lies in the absence of any systematic

discussion of the range of forms that this individualism and intensified competition

actually takes. For example, while Silvia examines ‘opening clauses’ and the growth of

small, occupational trade unions, he barely mentions temporary workers or new

sectors in the economy (such as fast food, parcel delivery and information technol-

ogy), nor the challenges that outsourcing, agency working and ‘vertical disintegra-

tion’ within multinational companies present to unionisation. A full discussion of

these phenomena would have given greater substance to notions like the ‘rise of

individualism’. That said, this book undoubtedly remains an outstanding contribu-

tion to our understanding of contemporary German industrial relations and deserves

essential reading status for academics, students and practitioners alike.

Michael Gold

Royal Holloway University of London

The Broken Table: The Detroit Newspaper Strike and the State of American Labor

Chris Rhomberg

Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 2012, 398 pp., $44.90

Through an impressively researched and detailed analysis of the 1995–2000 Detroit

newspaper strike, Rhomberg’s ‘The Broken Table’ provides important insights into

the prevailing condition of industrial relations in the United States and the diminish-

ing ability of organised labour to bargain effectively with employers. The strike’s

170 Ian Greenwood

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd