Kimball Baker:
"Reich's central thesis is that unions and workers will increase their workplace voice and power if they add a strong ideological and emotional component to their time-honored strategies of exerting economic and political leverage and of forging strong community alliances. This is a timely and compelling affirmation. It gives Reich’s work a pathfinding quality which makes the book an invaluable resource for workers, labor leaders and activists, labor students and scholars, and anyone attempting to improve labor-management relationships."
Dan Clawson, UMass Amherst, author of The Next Upsurge:
"With God on Our Side is an engaging read that will appeal to those interested in labor, religion, social justice, and health care. Adam D. Reich examines the tensions both within hospital management, pulled one way by Catholic religious teaching and another by trying to hold down labor costs, and within the union, facing internal divisions and struggles.."
Linda Kealey:
"This is an engaging book written by a former doctoral student and one-time volunteer organizer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).... With God on Our Side makes a significant contribution to labour history and labour studies by reminding us of the cultural dimensions of labour struggles."
Ruth Milkman, CUNY Graduate Center and the Murphy Labor Institute, coeditor of Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy:
"This richly textured case study of the expanding arena of health care organizing brilliantly exposes the emotional, cultural, and moral dimensions of struggles between workers and their employers—dimensions far too often ignored by union organizers and labor scholars alike. Adam D. Reich brings an insider's perspective to this vivid account—he worked for more than a year on the lengthy union campaign that his book chronicles— along with a nuanced and sophisticated sociological analysis. With God on Our Side is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of the U.S. labor movement."
"Reich uses his experience as a volunteer organizer with the Service Employees International Union to explain how a Catholic hospital administration at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital reacted to unionizers employing a Catholic strategy. The book suggests some of the new opportunities and challenges presented by unionizers confronting an employer with a strong moral and cultural identity."
Randy Shaw, author of Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century:
"Adam D. Reich's With God on Our Side is a powerful and inspiring account of the historic struggle of workers at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital to form a union. Anyone looking for a road map for how workers can achieve greater justice should read this book."
Marshall Ganz, Harvard Kennedy School, author of Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement:
"Adam D. Reich's deeply engaging book should be required reading for organizers and scholars alike. In this finely textured account of the twenty-first-century struggle of health care workers to unionize, he reminds us that workers and managers are moral creatures to whom values matter. They are not the simple-minded economic utility functions imagined by far too many social scientists and, alas, organizers, politicians, and policymakers. We learn from his portrayal of the people who drive the conflict and as well as his analysis of conditions that shape it. And... it's a great read!"
"Reich chronicles the successful drive for recognition of a healthcare workers union at a Catholic hospital in this articulate and conceptually interesting sociological account... a case study that holds implications for the wider context of unionization today. As private sector unionization enters its fifth decade of decline, the us-versus-them frame that guided pro-union efforts in the past must give way, the author argues, to greater attention to the meaning of vocation and worker solidarity, especially for employees in public services and those with vocational moral commitments like health care."
