The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor Highlight

In 2004, working at a Pacific Foods manufacturing plant that made soups, Marks was shocked when she saw the raise she had gotten: thirteen cents an hour. Outraged, she began talking to a coworker, who dismissed her complaints. Thirteen cents sounded pretty good to him, he said. His raise had been a penny. That conversation was enough to finally kill the attitude that had been drilled deeply into Marks from her days grinding hard to be promoted to manager of a fast food outlet. “I still had what I call the slave mentality: if I work hard, they’ll see me working, and I’ll get the raise!” That myth was replaced by the realization that she and her coworkers were not going to get a damn thing if they didn’t take it. It prompted her to call her old union rep and launch an organizing campaign at the plant—