This on-the-ground labor history chronicles the bitterly contested labor conflict in the mid 1990s at the A. E. Staley corn processing plant in Decatur, Illinois, where workers waged one of the most hard-fought struggles in recent labor history. When the company launched a full-scale assault on its workers, Allied Industrial Workers Local 837 responded by educating and mobilizing its members, organizing strong support from the religious and African American communities, building a nationwide solidarity movement, and engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the plant gates. Through scores of interviews and videotapes of every union meeting, the authors bring the workers' voices to the fore and reveal their innovative tactics that inform and strengthen today's labor movement.

Steven K. Ashby is an associate clinical professor in the Chicago Labor Education Program in the School of Labor and Employment Relations, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. C. J. Hawking is a United Methodist pastor and the executive director of the faith-based workers' rights group Arise Chicago. Both were Staley workers' solidarity organizers.

Preface   ix

Prologue: Jim Beals   1
1. The Company and the Union   7
2. Tate & Lyle Comes to Decatur   19
3. The Union Prepares to Resist   27
4. Work-to-Rule   45
5. The Temperature Rises   58
6. Locked Out   74
7. Road Warriors and Solidarity Committees   94
8. Debating the Corporate Campaign   112
9. Peacetime Soldiers and Wartime Soldiers   124
10. God as Outside Agitator   137
11. The African American Workers   151
12. Civil Disobedience   169
13. Strike City, USA   194
14. The Paperworkers   212
15. Mission to Bal Harbour   225
16. Still in the Fight   237
17. In the Fast Lane   247
18. Showdown   261
19. Aftermath   278
20. A Winnable Fight   290

Appendix: Sources   303
Notes   307
Glossary   343
Index   347

Photographs follow page 6.