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The fifty-year long neoliberal era has been marked by working-class reverses and moribund unions. Grounded in the author’s own experiences as a transit worker participating in a decades-long effort to fight management and austerity economics, Take Back the Power presents a new perspective on what activists can do to revitalize the labor movement. Marc Kagan uses his union’s story to illuminate key dilemmas their efforts face, among them: fight the boss or fight the union to fight the boss; the tension between leadership and participatory democracy; and the costs and benefits of risk aversion. This book encourages us to think introspectively about the choices we make as we attempt to build a better world.
Price: $38.00
Pages: 476
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Studies in Political Economy of Global Labor and Work
Publication Date:
December 17, 2026
ISBN: 9789004785205
Format: Paperback
"This book is essential for union reformers, especially the rising generation of rank-and-file troublemakers. Kagan highlights the real challenges in bringing democratic unionism to the labor movement against entrenched norms of top-down decision making. To bring back the labor movement, do we need more competent leftists in power? Or do we need to fundamentally change what it means to have power? Every elected union reformer should read this book."
- Meghan Peterson, president, AFSCME DC37 Local 3005
Union activist turned historian Marc Kagan provides an inside view of the long struggle by New York transit workers to revitalize their union, and of what happened when they succeeded in ousting the old regime. Few labor histories bring readers so intimately into the workplace and the union hall as this gripping story of triumph and limitation.
- Joshua Freeman, author of Working-Class New York (The New Press, 2001)
Drawing on extensive research as well as first-hand experience this engaging book offers rich and unique insights into the history of one of New York City’s most important labor unions. - Ruth Milkman, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
"Take Back the Power is a thorough, 452-page case study in class struggle and transformational union politics. Kagan chronicles the decades-long fight by New York transit workers and their union to win respect, economic justice, and power on the job[...]This book should be read and studied. It’s certainly a tale worth telling."
- Bill Breihan, in: Against the Current
- Meghan Peterson, president, AFSCME DC37 Local 3005
Union activist turned historian Marc Kagan provides an inside view of the long struggle by New York transit workers to revitalize their union, and of what happened when they succeeded in ousting the old regime. Few labor histories bring readers so intimately into the workplace and the union hall as this gripping story of triumph and limitation.
- Joshua Freeman, author of Working-Class New York (The New Press, 2001)
Drawing on extensive research as well as first-hand experience this engaging book offers rich and unique insights into the history of one of New York City’s most important labor unions. - Ruth Milkman, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
"Take Back the Power is a thorough, 452-page case study in class struggle and transformational union politics. Kagan chronicles the decades-long fight by New York transit workers and their union to win respect, economic justice, and power on the job[...]This book should be read and studied. It’s certainly a tale worth telling."
- Bill Breihan, in: Against the Current
Marc Kagan is a former transit worker, a life-long union and shopfloor activist, and sometime union officer. He has taught American, NYC, and Labor History, and is co-author of Gains and Losses: How Protestors Win and Lose (Oxford, 2022).