Sam Gindin
- Affiliation: York University
Sam Gindin is a Canadian academic and intellectual who served as research director of the Canadian region of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and later as chief economist and Assistant to the President of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union after the latter became independent from its American parent organization.
Gindin is a graduate of the University of Manitoba. He worked as a research officer for the New Democratic Party of Manitoba and later taught at the University of Prince Edward Island. He obtained his MA in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but while working on his PhD dissertation in 1974, he took up the position of first director of research for what was then the Canadian section of the UAW. He rose within the union and served as an assistant to both Bob White and Buzz Hargrove, where he participated in major collective bargaining, the formation of union and social policy, and strategic discussions on the structure and direction of the union. He also wrote a book on the history of the CAW entitled The Canadian Auto Workers: The Birth and Transformation of a Union.
In 2000, Gindin retired from the CAW. He joined the faculty of York University in the Political Science department as Packer Visitor in Social Justice, where he continues to teach.
Books by Sam Gindin
In and Out of Crisis
The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives
Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, Leo Panitch
While many are wondering if another world is possible, few are mapping out avenues to a post-capitalist future. In this groundbreaking analysis of the meltdown, renowned political economists Albo, Gindin and Panitch locate the roots of the crisis in the inner logic of capitalism itself and illuminate how the era of neoliberal free markets has been undergirded by massive state intervention. The authors argue that it’s time to start thinking about transformative alternatives to capitalism &mdash… (more information)
Global Capitalism & American Empire
Sam Gindin, Leo Panitch
The American Empire has usually come in through the back door rather than the front door: its own empire of business was made plausible and attractive by the American state’s insistence that it was not imperialistic. The USA presented itself as the scourge of the old colonialism, spreading democracy and freedom of opportunity, rather than an old-style Empire of armed conquest. Its informal empire, uniquely combining, as Thomas Jefferson put it, ‘extensive empire with self-government… (more information)