Fight Like Hell: The Untold Story of American Labor

Fight Like Hell, by Kim Kelly (New York, NY: Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2022)

The book begins with a compilation of stories of historic labor events such as the “Lowell Girls” textile strike in the 1800’s, the Haymarket Massacre and Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Kelly, a labor columnist for Teen Vogue whose writings about labor issues have appeared in many publications, discusses the struggle of workers to fight for their rights. However, the book’s most important contribution is its treatment of workers who were not considered part of the labor movement. 

In 1935, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act which provided that employees nationwide had the legal right to organize and join unions.  

However, two important groups, then comprising approximately 4 million agricultural workers and domestic employees, were deliberately and expressly omitted from that law. In exchange for Southern senators’ votes for the labor bill, those groups were excluded from the NLRA’s provisions.

Ninety years later, those two categories of workers remain excepted from the Act’s protection.

Kelly outlines the development of unions of domestic workers and agricultural employees. Certain states, including New York and California, have remedied that injustice by enacting laws protecting organizing rights for those groups, leading to the formation of the Domestic Workers Union and farmworkers’ unions, discussed in the book.

In a series of short biographies, the book examines other groups which have traditionally not been part of organized labor and who are among the most vulnerable. Emphasis is placed on the historic exclusion from the mainstream of the labor movement of women, people of color, Hispanics, Latinos, migrants and LGBTQ people. 

Disabled workers’ protests led to the passage of laws protecting their rights. Kelly also outlines the formation of unions for sex workers and prisoners’ unions such as the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee who engaged in hunger strikes and work stoppages to protest the “prison-industrial complex,” unfair wages and poor living conditions.

The book reminds us of the struggles and sacrifices workers faced, and still face, in maintaining solidarity and pursuing better wages and working conditions. It stresses the importance of workers joining together, regardless of their differences, to achieve greater quality of life. Despite efforts to separate workers and distinguish them based on race, gender and other extraneous reasons the goal always should be to recognize their similarity and shared experiences and objectives. 

Reviewed by Steven Davis, a member of the Executive Board of the New York Labor History Association and a retired Administrative Law Judge with the National Labor Relations Board.