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Economic Restructuring, Immigration and the New Labor Movement: Latina/O Janitors in Los Angeles

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Economic Restructuring, Immigration and the New Labor Movement: Latina/O Janitors in Los Angeles The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies CCIS University of California, San Diego Economic Restructuring, Immigration and the New Labor Movement: Latina/o Janitors in Los Angeles By Cynthia Cranford University of Southern California Working Paper 9 May 2000 1 Comments are welcome. Please do not cite without the consent of the author. Economic Restructuring, Immigration and the New Labor Movement: Latina/o Janitors in Los Angeles Cynthia Cranford Introduction The move toward a service-based economy has forced the American labor movement to change. The growing low-wage service sector is characterized by “flexible’ production resulting in contract, temporary, part-time or other casualized work. Labor law drafted in the pre-war era is ineffective protection for these new, casualized service-sector jobs; and labor protections were eroded in the Reagan decade. Restructuring has been achieved through processes of racialization as recently arrived immigrant women and men were recruited to the downgraded jobs. At the same time their work is made invisible through a gendered, anti-immigrant discourse that constructs them as economic burdens. In response to these structural changes, many unions have returned away from the bureaucratized, business unionism of the post-war era and have begun to organize the Latino and Asian immigrant women and men concentrated in these sectors. These unions have returned to a ‘community unionism,’ using direct-action organizing tactics successful in earlier periods of unionization. Like in previous historical moments when restructuring and immigration collided, immigrant women are active participants in this ‘new’ labor movement. In this paper I examine whether these processes affect relations of gender and race, with a case study of the Justice for Janitors (J4J) organizing campaign of the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) in Los Angeles. Los Angeles janitors are members of a new cohort of Latino workers, most of whom are recent arrivals. They are Salvadorans and Guatemalans who left home in the 1980s due to civil war and economic depression. The Mexicans are heavily made up of the ‘migrantes de la crises,’ described by Corneilus (1991), - new streams of migrants who left urban areas during the economic crises of the 1980s and early 1990s. Women are well represented in this new wave of Latino migrants. Many of these Latina migrants are single, most came to work and are significantly contributing to their household economies (Bretell and Simon 1986; Sassen and Fernandez-Kelly 1995). Women make up roughly 50% of Justice for Janitors members in Los Angeles. The prominent role played by women in Justice for Janitors, has recently been recognized during a three-week strike in L.A. Some politicians and journalists are calling the Justice for Janitors campaign a ‘new women’s movement” (Treviño 2000). However, Justice for Janitors is more than a movement for women. Justice for Janitors is mobilizing women alongside men within a frame of immigrant rights. An understanding of the implications of this movement requires a theory and methodology that can link individual lives to structural constraints in a given historical moment. After a brief review of the literature on women and unions, I discuss how a theory of practice and a cohort analysis allows us to 2 better understand social change. I then examine the structural constraints facing Justice for Janitors, focusing on the linkages between restructuring and immigration. Finally I examine the ‘frames’ and practices of organizing within this movement. I examine the extent to which women’s engagement in new practices alongside men disrupt gendered and racialized relations of power that shape the lives of both women and men. Literature, Theory, Methods Literature Studies of community and labor organizing describe a pattern of men in leadership positions and women at the grass roots level (Baron 1991; Massalo 1992; Naples ed. 1998; Neddleman and Tanner 1987; Pardo 1998; Sacks 1988). This gendered division is largely due to a lack of equitable recruitment into leadership. However, women’s under-representation in leadership positions is also a result of their internalization of sexism, which inhibits them from nominating themselves for elected positions, speaking up in public and confronting management (Cook 1968; Kanter 1977). For example, Gray (1993) finds that women are less likely to be on negotiating committees because negotiations require direct confrontation with the supervisor. The under-representation of women on negotiating committees is important because these committees are highly respected, the participants are visible among the membership and the position often leads to higher level of union leadership. Family responsibilities also affect women’s union activism. The small number of women on negotiating committees is also related to the fact that contract negotiations take up many full days of work and make it difficult for women with household responsibilities to participate. Similarly, studies of shop stewards find that women are more likely to participate in union activism if they can do so during work time, rather than their personal and family time (Roby and Uttal 1993; Roby 1995). In general, scholars find that women, compared to men, are more likely to be in leadership positions if they are appointed rather than elected (Gray 1993; Neddleman and Tanner 1987). The gendered division between grassroots and leadership work is not universal but varies by union, industry and historical moment. Through historical analysis, scholars have excavated both the structural changes that have led to women’s incorporation into unions, and the limits of their incorporation (Baron 1991; Cobble 1993; Milkman 1993; Ruiz 1987). The most through analysis is that done by Milkman (1993). Milkman examines 4 waves of organizing and the participation of women in each.1 The first wave of union organizing was craft unionism, which Milkman characterizes as ‘male- centered unionism in its most extreme form” and the ‘source of deeply patriarchal labor movement traditions that linger today” (229). Specifically, craft unions viewed women’s labor as unskilled and thus a threat to men’s wage levels that were tied to skills. The second wave, the ‘new unionism’ was in the 1910s and was heavily focused on organizing immigrant women garment workers. However, the leadership in the garment unions continued to be male-dominated, a legacy that remains today. In response to the de-unionization of the 1920s and early 1930s, a third wave of unionism arose in the late 1930s – the industrial organizing within the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The CIO organized entire workplaces regardless of race and gender. Milkman links this philosophy of organizing not only to the structural need for a new form of organizing, but also to the suffrage victory and the growth of women’s employment in the 1920s and 1930s. Nevertheless, this organizing focused on the male-dominated mass production sectors like auto, steel and rubber (1993:5). A fourth wave of unionization began in the 1960s and was housed in the feminized public sector (teachers, clerical), and in some private sector industries like health care. This wave finally saw women moving into leadership positions, albeit still at a rate below their membership and grassroots participation. 11 See Baron ed. (1991) for excellent case studies of the first three waves Milkman discusses here. 3 While in the first three waves women’s issues were subsumed under class issues, in the fourth wave Milkman (1993:245) describes a ‘new gender politics’ that ‘accepts difference as a strategic basis for making demands that will ultimately move toward equality.” For example, scholars have shown that the concentration of women in the service sector has pushed unions to engage with issues of importance to women such as comparable worth, parental leave, universal health and child care2, and including children and spouses in union activity (Cobble 1993; Cowell 1993; Miller 1993; York 1993; Milkman 1993). I would argue that we are now embarking on what we might call a fifth wave of organizing in the low wage private sector service industries, such as janitorial and hotel workers. This sector is largely made up of migrant women and men, and in order to understand it, we must theorize a racialized as well as a gendered labor market and union structure.3 Labor’s historical appeals to a masculinity based on breadwinning will no longer suffice to mobilize low-wage workers in the casualized sector. Yet neither will appeals to unitary ‘women’s issues.’ Studies have found that unions whose membership is made up of both women and men rarely speak explicitly of ‘women’s issues,’ for fear that it will mitigate solidarity between women and men (Cobble ed. 1993). For example, Cowell, Vice-President of the ILGWU, argues that unionists often frame issues like child care and pregnancy leave as “family issues” in order to avoid their stigmatization as special, women’s interests. Justice for Janitors organizes through use of a modified familialism that considers the immigrant experience within a broad frame of immigrant rights. This strategic move is not incompatible with the feminist project. For example, Kessler-Harris (1985:157) argues for a unionism that brings the “values of the home” to the workplace where they can transform work itself (Kessler-Harris 1985:157). Similarly, Cook (1993) calls for an assertion of the feminist principle of putting family life ahead of work life allowing men to take advantage of family policies as well. Indeed a generous reading of this strategy would be that it clears the pathway for men to become more involved in family life. The ‘frame’ of immigrant rights resonates with the ‘american dreams’ of both women and men members. Furthermore, because anti-immigrant sentiment in the 1990s has targeted women and children, this immigrant rights frame is a powerful rhetorical tool for women to contest their racialization.
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