One aspect of Bell's novel is that it is a fictional account of the history of union organizing (usually called "labor history") of the Pennsylvania steel industry.
A great deal of attention is paid to the attempts of the immigrant steelworkers in Braddock to improve their lives by organizing a union. During the 1930s the eyes of the labor movement as a whole in the United States were often focused on the struggles for unionization of the steelworkers.
The final section, Book 4, "Dobie", is largely taken up by Dobie's gaining work experience, coming to recognize the need to help organize a union despite the risk of losing his job, and of the Braddock steelworkers' several attempts to organize.
But the successful attempt by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, or S.W.O.C., is the culmination of almost 50 years of struggles to organize, in order to lesson the sharp exploitation of the workers by U.S. Steel.
When Dobie imagines
...not this or some other Government board, but a jury should have sat in judgment here, a jury of ghosts: Mike Dobrejcak and Mary and Paulilne, Joe Dubik and Kracha -- the maimed and the destroyed, the sickly who died young, the women worn out before their time with work and child-bearing, all the thousands of lives the mills had consumed as surely as they had consumed their tons of coke and ore. (p.394)
and when Dobie
...lifted his eyes to the dark sky. "We've come a long way, hey Pop?" (p. 404)
we have explicit evocations of the costs of being helpless against the company.
It's helpful to get an overview of the steelworkers' attempts to unionize from 1889, the first Homestead strike (mentioned by Andrej on p. 38) through the big Homestead Steel Strike of 1892, the Great Steel Strike of 1919 right after World War I, and the events of the 1930s.
This page (also here, in in PDF format) provides a chapter summary of the book which you should find helpful. Use it in conjunction with your text of the novel.
Review all the passages you can find that deal with labor organizing. Don't focus on the successful S.W.O.C. organizing of 1936 alone. Find at least one passage in Book One, "Kracha", and at least two in Book Two, "Mike Dobrejcak", and at least two in Book 4, "Dobie", in which labor organizing is discussed.
Reread Chapter 13 of the "Mike Dobrejcak" section, pp. 191-199, for Mike's "speech", his outcry against injustice and exploitation. Think about the final sentence of that chapter (p.199):
It never entered his mind that he himself was all the proof and hope he needed.
Discuss three or four of the passages that deal with the struggles to form a union. Make sure to discuss at least one from each of the books "Kracha", "Mike Dobrejcak", and "Dobie."
Length: 350 words or a bit more. Email to me and to your group.