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No One Size Fits All: Worker Organization, Policy, and Movement in a New Economic Age

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No One Size Fits All: Worker Organization, Policy, and Movement in a New Economic Age LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS ASSOCIATION SERIES No One Size Fits All: Worker Organization, Policy, and Movement in a New Economic Age Edited By Janice Fine Linda Burnham Kati Griffith Minsun Ji Victor Narro Steven Pitts No One Size Fits All: Worker Organization, Policy, and Movement in a New Economic Age. Copyright © 2018 by the Labor and Employment Relations Association. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of the book may be used without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First Edition ISBN 978-0-913447-16-1 Price: $34.95 LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS ASSOCIATION SERIES LERA Proceedings of the Annual Meeting (published online annually, in the fall) LERA Annual Research Volume (published annually, in the summer/fall) LERA Online Membership Directory (updated daily, member/subscriber access only) LERA Labor and Employment Law News (published online each quarter) LERA Perspectives on Work (published annually, in the fall) Information regarding membership, subscriptions, meetings, publications, and general affairs of the LERA can be found at the Association website at www.leraweb.org. Members can make changes to their member records, including contact information, affiliations, and preferences, by accessing the online directory at the website or by contacting the LERA national office. LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS ASSOCIATION University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Labor and Employment Relations 121 Labor and Employment Relations Building 504 East Armory Ave., MC-504 Champaign, IL 61820 Telephone: 217/333-0072 Fax: 217/265-5130 Website: www.leraweb.org E-mail: [email protected] Acknowledgments The editors wish to express their appreciation and gratitude for the extra- ordinary work of Sonia Szczesna, research assistant at Rutgers, whose smarts, commitment, organization, and tenacity were instrumental in bringing this project to fruition. We also thank Ari Avgar, Editor-in-Chief for the Labor and Employment Relations Association, for the confidence he always expressed in our ability to pull this off, his strong belief in the importance of this project, and his sage advice along the way. iii Contents Introduction .................................................................................. 1 Janice Fine, Kati L. Griffith, Victor Narro, and Steven C. Pitts Section One: Building Organization Chapter 1 Understanding Worker Center Trajectories ..................................... 7 Janice Fine, Victor Narro, and Jacob Barnes Chapter 2 Sizing Up Worker Center Income (2008–2014): A Study of Revenue Size, Stability, and Streams .............................................. 39 Leslie C. Gates, Kati L. Griffith, Jonathan L. Kim, Zane Mokhiber, Joseph C. Bazler, and Austin Case Chapter 3 Labor Unions/Worker Center Relationships, Joint Efforts, Experiences .................................................................................. 67 Victor Narro and Janice Fine Chapter 4 Union Organizing, Advocacy, and Services at the Nexus of Immigrant and Labor Rights ........................................................ 91 Xóchitl Bada, Shannon Gleeson, and Els de Graauw Chapter 5 The National Black Worker Center Project: Grappling with the Power-Building Imperative .................................................... 115 Steven C. Pitts Chapter 6 “Greedy” Institutions or Beloved Communities? Assessing the Job Satisfaction of Organizers ..................................................... 139 Janice Fine, Hahrie Han, Aaron C. Sparks, and Kyoung-Hee Yu v Chapter 7 Innovative Union Strategies and the Struggle to Reinvent Collective Bargaining .................................................................. 161 Joseph A. McCartin Chapter 8 The Strike as the Ultimate Structure Test: Rebuilding Working- Class Power Through Mass Participation Strikes ......................... 181 Jane McAlevey Section Two: Bargaining Chapter 9 Bargaining for the Common Good: An Emerging Tool for Rebuilding Worker Power ................................................................219 Marilyn Sneiderman and Joseph A. McCartin Chapter 10 A Primer on 21st-Century Bargaining ........................................ 235 Erica Smiley Section Three: State and Local Policy Chapter 11 “$15 and a Union”: Searching for Workers’ Power in the Fight for $15 Movement ..................................................................... 251 Chris Rhomberg Chapter 12 Governing the Market from Below: Setting Labor Standards at the State and Local Levels ....................................................... 271 Ken Jacobs Chapter 13 Expanding Domestic Worker Rights in the 21st Century: Statewide Campaigns for Domestic Worker Bills of Rights ......... 295 Linda Burnham and Andrea Cristina Mercado vi Section Four: Working Up the Chain Chapter 14 Worker-Driven Social Responsibility: A Replicable Model for the Protection of Human Rights in Global Supply Chains ......... 325 Greg Asbed, Cathy Albisa, and Sean Sellers Chapter 15 Taming Globalization: Raising Labor Standards Across Supply Chains ............................................................................ 341 Nik Theodore Chapter 16 Mobilizing High-Road Employers and Private Sector Strategies: National Domestic Workers Alliance ......................... 359 Ai-Jen Poo and Palak Shah Chapter 17 Union–Cooperative Alliances: Conditions for Realizing Their Transformational Potential ................................................ 369 Minsun Ji About the Contributors ............................................................. 397 LERA Executive Board Members 2018–2019 ........................... 408 vii Introduction Janice Fine School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University, and the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization Kati L. Griffith School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University Victor Narro UCLA Labor Center Steven C. Pitts UC Berkeley Labor Center Workers and their organizations are facing enormous obstacles today. Corporations wield immense power, not only in the marketplace but also in politics, which has, for many years, effectively blocked the updating of antiquated laws governing labor relations. Instead, unions have been sub- jected to a steady onslaught of attacks at the state level and growing hostil- ity from the US Supreme Court. They have all but lost basic protections that the legal system once provided—making organizing, bargaining, and striking increasingly difficult. Black workers continue to face a decades-long job crisis characterized by disproportionate unemployment (compared with White workers) and poor job quality. Immigrant workers of all statuses feel the threat of exclusionary immigration policies and heightened xenophobic rhetoric coming from the top echelons of the US government. Similar to worker organizing in the United States before the New Deal contract, organizations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries have been scrambling to find leverage within an increasingly hostile economic, po- litical, and legal environment. Despite formidable obstacles, this volume shows that vibrant, creative experimentation has never ceased. In lieu of new federal regulation, public and private sector national unions and local affiliates have been actively trying out new approaches that pair organizing with mechanisms that support bargaining. They have doubled down on electoral politics and creative policy fights to raise standards and facilitate organizing, with an unprecedented focus on low-wage workers. They have forged closer, more equal partnerships with community organizations than ever before. Still much more work needs to be done. New organizational models are also emergent. These experiments, which include worker centers and what some refer to as “alt labor” groups, diverge from traditional labor unions in a number of ways. They aim to represent workers and their workplace interests but do not typically work within the New Deal collective bargaining construct regulated by the government. 1 2 NO ONE SIZE FITS ALL Janice Fine’s groundbreaking 2006 book, Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream, revealed worker centers to be com- munity organizations that use a variety of strategies (including organizing, policy advocacy, and service provision) in their quest to improve the work- ing lives of low-wage workers. Since the publication of Fine’s book, organi- zations have continued to experiment with new ways to change working conditions, even when they cannot effectively influence private sector actors directly. These strategies, as we elaborate on below, include leveraging the government to improve labor standards enforcement, raising minimum wages, and organizing coalitions that can put economic and moral pressure on companies that are at the top of labor and product supply chains. Given the strength of the forces arrayed against improving working con- ditions and building worker power, worker organizations cannot simply follow the organizing and collective bargaining trajectories of the past. They must innovate, and they have been doing so, sometimes achieving signifi- cant, albeit limited, victories. This volume brings together a panoply of examples of efforts that are being made to improve working conditions across the country, while ac- knowledging the structural dynamics that challenge and condition them in 21st-century America. The title of this volume, No One Size Fits All, is intended both to capture
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