"Trade Unions at the Crossroads presents a detailed study of trade union activity at workplace level. It assesses both the advances and successes achieved in a hostile climate and the challenges and difficulties encountered. Peter Fairbrother enunciates the pressing debates about the place and position of trade unions today.". "Case studies of workplaces in manufacturing, privatized utilities and public sectors in the West Midlands illuminate and support the arguments for union renewal presented here. The prospects for such renewal are rooted, the author argues, in the ways unions organize, their modes of representation and the objectives they pursue."--BOOK JACKET.