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My Life in Steel
by Harold J. Ruttenberg
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History's best teachers are those who know their subject matter inside and out, not just because they have studied it, but because they have lived it. Harold Ruttenberg spent a lifetime in the steel industry, first as a unionist and later as an industrialist who never lost site of his roots. In a career that began during the Roosevelt years and ended during the Clinton administration, he lived through the booming years of the American steel industry and also through the decline he had predicted.
And yet My Life in Steel is not simply a history of the steel industry or of the United Steelworkers of America. What Ruttenberg learned from his early years in the union, years spent "fighting for the folks at the bottom of the economy," shaped his success at the top of the corporate ladder. His observations about workplace dynamics led to his espousal of union-management cooperation as the key to success in business. It was his unwavering commitment to that concept - what we now call worker empowerment - that forced him ultimately to leave the union for management, where he could turn concept into reality.
Meticulously researched and documented, My Life in Steel has much to tell us about a critical chapter in our history. Ruttenberg offers fascinating personal glimpses of Philip Murray, John L. Lewis, and other key figures in the labor movement with whom he worked closely, and he distills from the story of the steel industry certain fundamental principles that remain relevant to the twenty-first century. Is it possible for labor and management to overcome their differences and work together for increased productivity? My Life in Steel is a lesson - a history lesson - in how it can happen, and why it must happen, in the world of business today.
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