John J. Sweeney and the new leadership of the AFL-CIO are committing millions of dollars and thousands of organizers to the mobilization of working people all over the country. America Needs a Raise is Sweeney's manifesto. It is a blunt yet compassionate account of the dilemmas facing American workers of all kinds: high tech and low, immigrant and native born, blue collar and white. Sweeney targets the growing disparity between rich and poor, the decline in the standard of living of middle- and working-class Americans, the overwork and unemployment, the racial polarization and ethnic animosity, and the gnawing sense of powerlessness and uncertainty that afflicts us all. He indicts corporate America too for its " lean and mean " abdication of social responsibility. He offers a way of dealing with the realities of the global economy that is more effective and humane than the downsizing of America and the sacrifice of working people on the altar of international competitiveness. Most of a Read Less