Written and profusely illustrated in the user-friendly, accessible style of the For Beginners series, this lays down a simple presentation of the colourful epic story of the struggle of working people to rise from lives dominated by toil and underpaid work to becoming full-fledged participants in the dream they helped to build. It presents the history of unions and the labour movement, the principles underlying union organising, the decline of unions in the shadow of the rising corporate state and the resurgence in the 21st century of union activism.