Working for Justice

Ruth Milkman and Joshua Bloom and Victor Narro (Editors)

Description

Working for Justice, which includes eleven case studies of recent low-wage worker organizing campaigns in Los Angeles, makes the case for a distinctive "L.A. Model" of union and worker center organizing. Networks linking advocates in worker centers and labor unions facilitate mutual learning and synergy and have generated a shared repertoire of economic justice strategies. The organized labor movement in Los Angeles has weathered the effects of deindustrialization and deregulation better than unions in other parts of the United States, and this has helped to anchor the city's wider low-wage worker movement. Los Angeles is also home to the nation's highest concentration of undocumented immigrants, making it especially fertile territory for low-wage worker organizing.The case studies in Working for Justice are all based on original field research on organizing campaigns among L.A. day laborers, garment workers, car wash workers, security officers, janitors, taxi drivers, hotel workers as well as the efforts of ethnically focused worker centers and immigrant rights organizations. The authors interviewed key organizers, gained access to primary documents, and conducted participant observation. Working for Justice is a valuable resource for sociologists and other scholars in the interdisciplinary field of labor studies, as well as for advocates and policymakers.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Movimiento sindical
• Local history
• US West
• Industrial relations
• Trade union
• History of the Americas
• California

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801459054
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Working for Justice

Working for Justice

THE L.A. MODEL OF ORGANIZING AND ADVOCACY

Edited by Ruth Milkman, Joshua Bloom, andVictor Narro

ILR PRESS an imprint of Cornell University Press, ITHACA AND L ONDON

Copyright © 2010 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2010 by Cornell University Press

First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2010 Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Working for justice : the L.A. model of organizing and advocacy / edited by Ruth Milkman, Joshua Bloom, and Victor Narro.  p. cm.  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 9780801448584 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 9780801475801 (pbk. : alk. paper)  1. Labor movement—California—Los Angeles. 2. Labor unions— Organizing—California—Los Angeles. 3. Working poor—California— Los Angeles. 4. Foreign workers—Labor unions—Organizing—California— Los Angeles. 5. Community centers—California—Los Angeles. 6. Community organization—California—Los Angeles. I. Milkman, Ruth, 1954– II. Bloom, Joshua. III. Narro, Victor, 1963– IV. Title.  HD6519.L75W67 2010  331.8809794'94—dc22 2009034828

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cloth printing

Paperback printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Foreword vii Joshua Bloom Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1 Ruth Milkman

PART IntraigroWrektneCers,EthnicCommnutiei,sadnImm Rights Advocacy  1The Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance: Spatializing Justice in an Ethnic “Enclave” 23 Jong Bum Kwon  2Organizing Workers along Ethnic Lines: The Pilipino Workers’ Center49 Nazgol Ghandnoosh  3AllianceBuilding and Organizing for Immigrant Rights: The Case of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles 71 Caitlin C. Patler

v

vi

CONTENTS

 4Building Power for “Noncitizen Citizenship”: A Case Study of the MultiEthnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Network 89 Chinyere Osuji

PART IIOccupational and Industry-Focused Organizing Campaigns  5The Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance 109 Jacqueline Leavitt and Gary Blasi  6From Legal Advocacy to Organizing: Progressive Lawyering and the Los Angeles Car Wash Campaign 125 Susan Garea and Sasha Alexandra Stern  7NDLON and the History of Day Labor Organizing in Los Angeles 141 Maria Dziembowska  8The Garment Worker Center and the “Forever 21” Campaign 154 Nicole A. Archer, Ana Luz Gonzalez, Kimi Lee, Simmi Gandhi, and Delia Herrera

PART IIIUnions and Low-Wage Worker Organizing  9Ally to Win: Black Community Leaders and SEIU’s L. A. Security Unionization Campaign 167 Joshua Bloom 10From the Shop to the Streets: UNITE HERE Organizing in Los Angeles Hotels 191 Forrest Stuart 11The Janitorial Industry and the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund 211 Karina Muñiz

Afterword 233 Victor Narro Notes 245 References 265 Contributors 283 Index 287

Foreword

Joshua Bloom

This book is the fruit of an intensive twoyear collaboration between the chapter authors and activists working to advance the interests of lowwage workers in Los Angeles. It documents some of the freshest and most effec tive campaigns of recent years. The initial idea for this volume grew out of the Public Sociologists Working Group in the UCLA Sociology Depart ment. As a group of budding sociologists, we sought to consciously take our political commitments as the source of research problems and turn the discipline’s scientific methods toward addressing them. In that context, I wanted to launch a collaborative project, bringing our collective expertise into dialogue with a group of local activists and advocates, what Michael Burawoy has called the “double conversation” of organic public sociology. I discussed the idea with Ruth Milkman, who at the time directed the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE), and was the work ing group’s faculty adviser. After brainstorming about potential directions, she recruited Victor Narro. Before he became a Project Director at the UCLA Labor Center (an IRLE unit), Victor was directly involved in many of the campaigns documented in the pages that follow. Starting in the fall of 2006, the three of us set about organizing this proj ect with the goal of coediting this book. Authors for six of the chapters are graduate students in or close to the Public Sociologists working group; Victor and Ruth recruited the rest of the contributors—graduate and profes sional school students, postdoctoral scholars, as well as faculty—from other UCLA departments.

vii

viii

FOREWORD

Going back at least to Max Weber, many theorists have argued that what makes social research scientific is its logic of inquiry; but that research questions themselves can never be neutral—they are always rooted in so cial commitments. But who decides what questions are important to re search? Rarely do the subjects of research have a direct role in determining which questions are worth pursuing. Instead, research agendas are usu ally set by researchers in terms of established academic debates. As An tonio Gramsci argued long ago, traditional social science reproduces and extends the dominant ideas of the society that produces it, and in so doing, helps reproduce dominant social relations. This volume takes a different approach. Although the authors are solely responsible for the final content of their chapters, community leaders were centrally involved in the process that generated this volume. Victor played a critical role here, drawing on his own deep personal networks to enlist the participation of activists, advo cates, and campaign leaders as community partners in the project. That gave the authors unparalleled access to the organizations and campaigns analyzed in the case studies that follow. We began work on each chapter by discussing potential research ques tions as a group, typically arranging a meeting between the author, the community, and the three of us. Once the collaborative relationship was established, each chapter author drafted a research proposal. Community partners read and commented on these proposals, helping to shape the question that authors would seek to analyze. They also worked closely with the authors, setting up interviews with campaign participants and allies (in some cases multiple reinterviews) and providing access to a range of primary documents. Chapter authors also relied on documents from pub lic sources as well as secondary literature for alternate perspectives and to check facts. But in most cases, the dearth of published information would have made the indepth analysis authors achieved impossible if not for the access provided by this collaborative process. The community partners re mained involved as the chapters developed, reviewing successive drafts and offering extensive feedback. In one case—that of the Garment Worker Center—community partners became so invested in the writing process that three staff members became coauthors of the chapter. The project had another collaborative dimension as well. The authors and editors met regularly as a group, starting in January 2007, to discuss the project as a whole as well as the individual case studies. Over the next year and a half the group met for several hours at least once every other week, and sometimes more frequently. In May 2007, we held a daylong meeting with all the authors and their community partners to discuss each case

FOREWORD

ix

in depth. Over the following summer, we collectively read and discussed relevantsecondaryworks,anddevelopedannotatedbibliographies. In the fall of 2007, the authors and editors met weekly to discuss first drafts of each chapter. Community partners attended some of these meetings as well. All the participants read the paper in advance and provided both writ ten and verbal comments. In this way we created a vibrant exchange of ideas across the cases. In early 2008, we created thematic subgroups, which met with the editors to read and discuss each project a few more times. This allowed authors to develop their ideas across cases within a smaller group, with more intensive and sustained critique. Then, in the spring of 2008, the full group of authors reconvened in a series of sessions where revised drafts were presented, with the editors acting as discussants. On June 20, 2008, we held a public miniconference at the UCLA Down town Labor Center to present our findings to the broader community of advocates and scholars. We invited three prominent labor experts to serve as commentators: Dan Clawson, from the University of Massachusetts, Am herst; Janice Fine, from Rutgers University; and Nik Theodore, from the University of Illinois at Chicago. In the months that followed, Ruth Milk man worked individually with the authors to further revise each chapter into publishable form. The project and the book have three goals. The first is simply to document these cuttingedge organizations and campaigns. Many of the cases have not been written about before, and none have previously been studied in such depth. Second, we aim to provide readers with a rigorous analysis of each case, revealing the complex organizational and political dynamics of Los Angeles’s rich labor movement and communitybased organizations, which have often succeeded in advancing the cause of lowwage workers even in an era when overall conditions were eroding. Finally, by providing an ana lytic perspective on these recent campaigns, we hope to offer a contribution to public sociology and to the ongoing national dialogue among scholars, advocates, and activists about the possibilities for lowwage worker orga nizing in the twentyfirst century.