News

Salem State history professor takes top New England book award

Salem State history professor Aviva Chomsky’s most recent book, Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class, was awarded the Best Book 2009 award from the New England Council of Latin American Studies (NECLAS) at its annual meeting in Schenectady, NY, on October 3.

In presenting the award, NECLAS noted that Chomsky’s work is “an historical study that eloquently and forcefully explains why, as she puts it, ‘a race to the bottom’ for workers' wages and rights is taking place.”

Linked Labor Histories, says Chomsky, “examines how employers have used regional inequalities to gain access to cheaper workers through immigration, plant relocation, and by using the threat of these two tactics to discipline their workers. [It focuses] on several interrelated case studies in New England and Colombia, including the textile industry, the banana industry and the coal industry, to argue that local labor histories are best understood in a global context.”

Professor Chomsky holds a professorship in Salem State’s history department, and serves additionally as coordinator of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies at the college.