This study of the pulp and paper workers' union helps explain the AFL's often limited response to worker militancy in the 1930s as well as the more institutionalized moderation that emerged from the labor upsurge. Zieger sympathetically explains the union's limited goals but steady achievements—i.e., raising wages, narrowing differentials, and organizing blacks, women, and ethnically diverse workers—without resorting to strikes.

Until his death in 2013, he was Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Florida. He was the author of twelve book on labor history.