community unionism - a strategy for organizing in the new economy

8/3/2019 Community Unionism - A Strategy for Organizing in the New Economy

1/9

COMMUNITY UNIONISM: A Strategy for Organizing in theNew EconomySimon J Black. New Labor Forum. New York: Fall 2005. Vol. 14, Iss. 3; pg. 24, 10 pgs

Copyright New Labor Forum Fall 2005

THE LABOR MOVEMENT HAS BEGUN TO THINK BIG. SINCE THE NEOLIBERAL TURNOF THE 1970s, organized labor has been losing power, influence, and members. Bigproblems have prompted debates over big solutions. Today, trade unionists talk of socialmovement, global justice, and transnational unionisms as strategies to rejuvenate labor's

power in the era of globalization. Within the AFL-CIO, recent debates have focused onproposals to consolidate labors power through mergers and bold organizing initiatives. Whilethe movement's current focus on "the global," and on large-scale efforts to reverse the declineare a welcome turn from the business-as-usual unionism of old, a number of uniqueorganizations and activists are already reshaping the labor movement from below. Communityunionism is a particularly 'local' response to the global processes that challenge workingpeople today. In these times of renewal, community unionism demands the labor movementsattention.1

Since the 1970s, urban labor markets in North America have undergone profoundrestructuring. Immigration, deindustrialization, and the expansion of service sector

employment have significantly altered the urban landscape. For working people, the urbanlabor market is now characterized by insecurity. The growth of contingent work and forms ofnonstandard employment combined with the decline of the welfare state has had adeleterious effect on the working poor and unemployed. Furthermore, neoliberal globalizationhas negatively affected the capacity of trade unions to organize the unorganized. The rise ofcontingent work, or precarious employment, challenges traditional forms of trade unionism,and has opened the way for new initiatives, including community unionism.

THE ORIGINS OF COMMUNITY UNIONISM

USE OF THE TERM "COMMUNITY UNIONISM" stretches back to the 1960s. In a 1964article in Studies on the Left, James O'Connor predicted that in the future, due to long-rununemployment and the deskilling of work, "the social base for working class organizations willlie more and more in the community ... community unions clearly will be the appropriate modeof working class organization and struggle."2 O'Connor argued that "since the poor lackedsteady jobs ... the community rather than the workplace was the logical place to organizethem."3 This analysis is relevant today as fewer workers find "steady" employment in whatneoliberals like to call the "flexible" labor market. O'Connor believed community unions would
http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/pqdlink?RQT=318&pmid=58598&TS=1235886071&clientId=3751&VInst=PROD&VName=PQD&VType=PQDhttp://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/pqdlink?RQT=572&VType=PQD&VName=PQD&VInst=PROD&pmid=58598&pcid=36333431&SrchMode=3http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/pqdlink?RQT=572&VType=PQD&VName=PQD&VInst=PROD&pmid=58598&pcid=36333431&SrchMode=3http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/pqdlink?RQT=572&VType=PQD&VName=PQD&VInst=PROD&pmid=58598&pcid=36333431&SrchMode=3http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/pqdlink?RQT=318&pmid=58598&TS=1235886071&clientId=3751&VInst=PROD&VName=PQD&VType=PQDhttp://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/pqdlink?RQT=318&pmid=58598&TS=1235886071&clientId=3751&VInst=PROD&VName=PQD&VType=PQD


2/9

focus their energies on improving housing, welfare, and public services, and predicted thatthese new forms of working-class organization would spring up in deindustrialized towns andurban slums.4

The idea of community unionism was also developed by a number of visionary UAW

organizers in the 1960s.5 In the UAWs Industrial Union Department organizers like Jack T.Conway spoke of a new form of unionism that was built on the example of Cesar Chavez andthe Farm Workers Union (FWU). Conway observed that the FWU was developing a neworganizational model because "the problems that face farm workers and their families go farbeyond the workplace and work relationship, and for an organization to be effective in dealingwith these problems it has to deal with the totality of the situation."6 Conway realized that the"structure of the labor movement" was not designed to "reach" the urban poor or othersections of the working class, such as migratory farm laborers.7 Like O'Connor, Conwaybelieved the labor movement must come to see the community as if it were a factory orworkplace.8 Community unions could use the techniques and tactics of traditional trade

unions to organize members of the community and defend their interests.9 For Conway, thesenew organizations would address grievances, carry out political education, and engagecommunity members in other practices that trade unions had effectively used to representworkers at their place of employment.10 If, for example, a member had a 'grievance against alandlord or the police, the community union would represent that person in an effort to havethe grievance resolved.

Yet, recent discussion of community unionism has given the term a new connotation. It isimportant to distinguish between community unionism as a process and community unionismas an organizational model that stands independent of traditional trade unionism. The firstdefinition entails the cooperation between a trade union and a community group in thestruggle for a common objective. Community-union alliances may be forged in the fight tokeep a factory open or to have a city council adopt a living wage ordinance. This type ofcommunity unionism varies depending on the structure of the alliance between the communitygroup and the union. A community group may play a supporting role in a union's organizingdrive, perhaps facilitating the dialogue between the union and a group of non-Englishspeaking workers. In other instances, unions may provide resources to aid the efforts of acommunity-based campaign.

The other model of community unionism, which is the focus of this article, is that of anautonomous community-based labor group" and is more faithful to the vision of community

unionism developed by Conway and O'Connor. These community unions can also differ in anumber of areas. They may vary by tactics (legalistic, direct-action such as civil disobedience,or lobbying); membership structure (dues collecting or not); sources of funding (union supportindividual donations, or foundations); and their organizing geography (focus on an ethnicgroup within a community, or on a community defined solely by geographical boundaries).Many of these community unions use workers centers as the hub of their organizationalactivity.


3/9

Unlike trade unions, most community unions seek to organize the employed, unemployed,and underemployed; they press for change in the workplace and beyond, organizing aroundissues such as welfare reform, health care, jobs, housing, and immigration. Membership isbased on community not workplace. In short, these community unions bridge the home-workplace divide'2: whereas trade unions' primary concerns are typically workplace-related,

these organizations take a holistic approach to the lives of working people. The members of acommunity union often face a nexus of low-wage insecure employment, a punitive welfarebureaucracy, and neighborhood issues ranging from landlord-tenant relations to exploitativepay-day loan companies. The community union's adversary may be an employer, but couldalso be the immigration department, a development agency, city council, the welfarebureaucracy, a landlord or the police.

The development of this model of community unionism is a response to two relatedsocioeconomic trends: first, to conditions created by neoliberal globalization, and second, tothe failure of the labor movement to adequately address these conditions. The deregulation or

"flexiblization" of the labor market is an important feature of the neoliberal project. Paired withthe decline of long-term employment and governments' abandonment of full-employmentpolicy, "flexibilization" has left many workers resigned to insecure, temporary, or contingentwork of which the rapid growth of temp agencies is a symptom. Unions have had littlesuccess confronting the challenge of these new work relations. Relatedly, the alarmingexpansion of the informal sector,13 especially in urban centers, has put many workers outsidethe legal framework of unionization and collective bargaining, as work in this sector is typicallynot recognized or protected by law, or regulated by public authorities. In addition, manyworkers in the informal sector are considered self-employed or "entrepreneurs," for whomcollective bargaining legislation is of little use.

Due to limited resources, many trade unions have ignored those workers they considerunorganizable, including undocumented workers, workers in the informal economy, orworkers in "flight" sectors such as the garment industry or call centers. Immigrants, women,and people of color have been disproportionately affected by the growth of exploitativeworking conditions and apart from some important initiatives undertaken by SEIU and UNITEHERE, the working poor have remained outside of the labor movements strategic focus.Many community union activists feel that trade unions have lost their organizing impetus andhave focused on "servicing" their members through collective bargaining, thereby isolating theunion bureaucracy from its members, and disempowering workers in the process. It is in thiscontext that community unionism has reemerged as an organizational model that seeks to

empower some of the most vulnerable workers in the neoliberal economy.

REDEFINING SOLIDARITY

COMMUNITY UNIONS POSE A VITAL QUESTION: What happens to the sense of solidarityfostered by union membership when a unionized worker loses his or her job? Upon losing aunion job workers can experience political isolation as they also lose their identification with acollective whose combined strength is superior to that of the individual worker. At times,


4/9

unions can continue their relationship with a recently unemployed member through retrainingprograms, or they may attempt to place the worker in other union shops. But beyond theseinitiatives, solidarity is lost. As community unions do not base membership on employment,they foster a sense of solidarity that goes beyond the workplace. In doing so, communityunions allow working people to organize around common class interests regardless of their

employment status. In terms of political empowerment, this is an important feature ofcommunity unionism. Community unions can cultivate political participation and engagement,moving their members to challenge power structures with a collective strength that is notreliant on an employment relationship.

U.S. labor history is all too full of examples of worker pitted against worker undermining thevery notion of "solidarity." Immigrants have been pitted against the native born, the welfarepoor against the working poor, and black workers against white workers. Community unionismis an effort to move beyond this self-destructive history. Community unions may count tradeunionists amongst their members along with home workers, students, welfare recipients, or

injured workers. Many contemporary community unions have argued for a more inclusivedefinition of work recognizing that the collective power of a union must be extended to thosewithout waged work. For example, community unions can acknowledge the emotional andphysical labor of a primary caregiver; the work of homeless persons who recycle the wasteand scrap created in large urban centers; or the labor of sex workers.

They may be "redefining solidarity," but community unions are not immune from the inherenttensions that can characterize traditional trade unionism. Like trade unions, community unionscan be territorial and may come into conflict with each other over attempts to organize thesame community. Community unions must also set agendas and organizational visions.Conflicts may arise as to which struggles a community union should devote what are oftenlimited resources. Internal disputes may arise over what the long-term goals of theorganization ought to be, ranging from the pragmatic (a living wage) to the ambitious(abolition of the wage system). And often there is conflict over the internal structure of acommunity union and its democratic practice.

COMMUNITY UNIONISM IN ACTION

TWO OF THE MOST EXCITING EXAMPLES OF community unionism today are the OntarioCoalition Against Poverty, in Toronto, and the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, inNew York City.14 Founded in 1990, OCAP combines direct-action advocacy and grassroots

mobilization in the struggle for decent work, housing, and social assistance. While OCAP mayappear to be a conventional community action group, the organization sees itself as part ofthe broader working-class movement. Its efforts to build a mass organization that empowersthe unemployed, precarious workers, and the working poor in a specific geographical areademand we rethink what a unions function and capacities should be in the neoliberaleconomy. Organizing in the downtown Toronto area, OCAP counts several hundred membersamongst its ranks, and is able to mobilize up to a thousand supporters for demonstrations.


5/9

OCAP's operating budget is derived from individual donations and the financial support of afew progressive union locals.

In Toronto, OCAP has led the fight against workfare, the city's lack of affordable housing, andthe criminalization of homelessness. What OCAP lacks in resources, it makes up for in

creativity and political daring. The organization's most recent campaign has put the provinceof Ontario's welfare bureaucracy on the defensive, and won thousands of dollars in paymentsfor people on social assistance. The province's welfare package has a virtually unknown $250supplement for recipients who have special dietary needs. These needs must be confirmedby a health practitioner for the recipient to be eligible for the extra monthly payment. Whenthis was brought to OCAPs attention, the organization met with progressive doctors acrossthe city to set up health clinics in which social assistance recipients could meet with healthpractitioners and have their eligibility for the food supplement verified. Health practitionershave been approving the supplement en masse on the accurate assumption that the currentmonthly welfare check is not enough money to sustain a healthy diet. The campaign has won

the broad support of the progressive community in Toronto, and become a crusade to raisewelfare rates for all recipients regardless of their dietary status.

Apart from sweeping campaigns such as this, OCAP engages in direct-action advocacy formembers of the community. OCAPs members are mobilized to intervene in tenant evictions,immigration deportations, and cases of employer misconduct. For example, if a communitymember is owed money from an employer, temp agency, or the welfare department, OCAPwill usually issue a letter to the relevant party demanding the payment be made immediately.If there is no response, OCAP will set up pickets at the place of business, or in the case ofsocial assistance, members may occupy the local welfare office. OCAP has won victories formany of its members and has enlarged its support base in the community as other residentsrealize the power of collective action.

There may be times when community unions "step on the toes" of organized labor. Forinstance, OCAP recently supported an independent workers committee established byunionized hotel workers who were not satisfied with the representation their union local hadgiven them. Struggling to ensure that their collective agreement was enforced, both by theirlocal and their employer, the workers committee took as its guiding vision the words of an oldScottish rank-and-filer who proclaimed, "We will support the [union] officials just so long asthey represent the workers but we will act independently if immediately they misrepresentthem."15 OCAP has mobilized members in support of the workers committee, setting up

pickets at the hotel, and accompanying the committee to confront the union local. OCAP hasthus come in for criticism by some sections of organized labor in Toronto. This example pointsto the tensions that can exist between independent community unions and the traditionallabor movement. Although dialogue can facilitate cooperation and understanding betweencommunity unions and organized labor, inevitably there will be points of contention.

COMMUNITY UNIONISM, NEW YORK STYLE


6/9

ESTABLISHED IN 1996, THE NATIONAL MOBIlization Against Sweatshops (NMASS)operates out of two workers centers in New York City. NMASS draws on the tradition of suchcommunity unions as the Chinese Staff and Workers Association, a pioneer of communityunionism. Whereas OCAP relies on individual donations and the financial support of a fewprogressive union locals, NMASS has a dues-paying structure. NMASS focuses on the

struggle to abolish the sweatshop system.

NMASS seeks to organize "injured workers, students, mothers and care-givers working in thehome, retirees, unemployed persons, and people from all communities and walks of life." Theorganization's primary demands are "the right to a 40-hour workweek at a living wage forall...and the right to a 40-hour workweek for those currently unemployed."16 In addition,NMASS demands "the recognition of care giving work done in the home as part of that paid40-hour workweek."17 These demands represent an expansion of the notion of solidarity, andNMASS stresses the inclusiveness of its organizing strategy. The group sees itself as part ofa new labor movement committed "to fighting for long-term changes that will enable workers

to have genuine economic, political and social power."18

Like OCAP, NMASS relies on a variety of tactics to press for change in a number of areas. In2000, NMASS successfully lobbied for the first minimum wage increase for New York Staterestaurant workers in over ten years. Through collective action, the group has won wageconcessions and back payments from garment manufacturers and helped launch a NAFTAlawsuit challenging New York's workers compensation system. Under NAFTAs labor sideagreement (called the North American Agreement for Labor Cooperation or NAALC) workersand their organizations can file a complaint alleging failure by any one of the threeparticipating governments to enforce its labor standards. Although relatively toothless, theNAALC's decisions can put the spotlight on a government's labor relations. NMASS'ssuccessful challenge led to a public shaming of the New York State government as Mexicanofficials in charge of investigating the complaint harshly criticized New York's workerscompensation system, and censured the government for failing to "protect workers fromdangerous work conditions and to ensure that workers hurt on the job receive timely andadequate compensation and medical treatment for their injuries and illnesses."19

One of NMASS's most recent campaigns challenges the city of New York to deal with thehealth issues that working people have faced in their neighborhoods since 9-11. Working withother community groups, NMASS has organized a medical clinic to document the healthailments many lower Manhattan residents have developed due to the toxic fallout generated

by the collapse of the Twin Towers. Poor air quality affected many working people in thepost-9-11 period, and NMASS has organized numerous marches and demonstrationsdemanding the government take action to address health conditions ranging from respiratoryproblems to rashes.20 In a related campaign, NMASS helped organize a coalition ofcommunity organizations, churches, and small businesses to challenge the plans of realestate developers and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, whose mandate torebuild lower Manhattan promises to gentrify the traditionally working-class community.


7/9

NMASS has also been at the forefront of the struggle for workers rights in New York City'sChinatown. Immigrant workers face exploitative conditions in restaurant and garment work.Through boycotts, picketing, and letter writing campaigns, NMASS has helped these workerscommand the attention of elected officials and the public at large. Using Sojourner Truth'sfamous proclamation, NMASSs "Ain't I a Woman?" campaign has framed the struggle of

working women in the New York garment industry, who are primarily women of color, as astruggle for race and gender justice. Such a campaign highlights how community unions canavoid pitting so-called "identity politics" against class politics, a debate that has consumed theLeft in recent years.

PUTTING THE MOVEMENT BACK INTO LABOR

COMMUNITY UNIONISM MAY HAVE ITS LIMits. Skeptics in the labor movement claim thatalthough community unions may provide political representation for a largely unrepresentedpopulation, they cannot make the type of economic gains for their members that a trade union

can through collective bargaining. This critique has some validity. Community unions wineconomic concessions through lobbying, direct action, and other tactics. In other words, theirpower is primarily political, not economic.21 Consequently, community unions must focustheir efforts on building strong coalitions with other community organizations and the labormovement in order to push for progressive legislation and broader social change. In addition,community unions have to win the hearts and minds of voters to add moral and politicallegitimacy to their campaigns, making it increasingly difficult for elected officials to ignore theirdemands.22

Yet there is no denying community unionism is an emerging form of working classorganization that challenges the conditions working people face in the neoliberal economy. In

many ways community unionism is putting the movement back into labor. The long-termrelationship of community unionism to the labor movement is yet to be determined. The labormovement must not see community unions as necessarily pre-union formations, that is,neither as threats, nor as spaces to be colonized by the labor movement "proper." Communityunions have developed their own organizational structure and culture, ways of fosteringleadership, and political agendas. Both community union activists and trade unionists wouldbenefit from engaging in a dialogue based on their capabilities, limitations, and sharedinterests. If trade unions are to regain their power and build strong organizations capable ofchallenging capitals agenda, they must learn from the tactics and organizing strategies ofcommunity unionism. Those workers community unions have been successful in organizing

and empowering (specifically women, immigrants, and people of color) are vital to therejuvenation of the labor movement. A movement that does not harness the power of allworking people is destined to be weak and ineffective in the struggle for a socially just society.

[Sidebar]Unlike trade unions, most community unions seek to organize the employed, unemployed, andunderemployed...


8/9

[Sidebar]The community unions adversary may be an employer, but could also be the immigration department,a development agency, city council, the welfare bureaucracy, a landlord or the police.

[Sidebar]Community unions pose a vital question: What happens to the sense of solidarity fostered by unionmembership when a unionized worker loses his or her job?

[Sidebar]

There may be times when community unions "step on the toes" of organized labor.

[Sidebar]

[The NMASS] campaign highlights how community unions can avoid pitting ... "identity politics"against class politics...

[Footnote]

Notes1. The article draws on the groundbreaking scholarship on community unionism by Janice Fine andCynthia Cranford.2. James O'Connor, "Towards a Theory of Community Unions, Part I," Studies on the Left, 2 (1964):164.

3. Jessica Tait, Poor Workers' Unions: Rebuilding Labor from Below, Cambridge Mass.: South EndPress, 2005.4. James O'Connor, "Towards a Theory of Community Unions, Part II," Studies on the Left, 3 (1964):240-257.5. Janice Fine, "Community Unions in Baltimore and Long Island: Beyond the Politics ofParticularism," PhD dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, February 2003.6. Ibid. 313.7. Ibid.8. Ibid.9. Ibid.10. Ibid.

11. Cynthia Cranford, Mary Gellatly, Deena Ladd, and Leah F. Vosko, "Workers' Centres andCommunity Unionism: Organizing for Fair Employment in Toronto," Paper Presented at theInternational Colloquium on Union Renewal, Montreal, November 18th-20th 12004.12. Janice Fine, "Community Unions and the Revival of the American Labor Movement," Politics &Society, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2005): 153-199.13. The informal sector is very heterogeneous and it is thus difficult to define its boundaries andcharacteristics. However, the International Labour Organization (ILO) considers workers to be in theinformal sector if they are "not recognized or protected under the legal and regulatory frameworks."


9/9

Plus, informal workers "are characterized by a high degree of vulnerability."The ILO states that the"situation of those in the informal economy" should be defined "in terms of decent work deficits"These deficits include "poor-quality, unproductive and unremunerative jobs that are not recognized orprotected by law, the absence of rights at work, inadequate social protection, and the lack ofrepresentation and voice are most pronounced in the informal economy, especially at the bottom end

among women and young workers." See page 3 of the ILO report Decent Work and the InformalEconomy at: www.ilo.org/public/english/ employment/infeco/download/reporto.pdf.14. Much of the information in this section is drawn from discussions I've had with activists in OCAP(including an interview I conducted with OCAP organizer John Clarke) and NMASS.15. See the Metropolitan hotel Workers' Committee website at httpy/www.metropolitanhotelsworkers.org/.16. National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, Introductory Pamphlet.17. Ibid.18. NMASS, "Workers, Centers and the New Labor Movement," NMASS Homepage, accessed at:http://www.nmass.org/nmass/articles/ workers%20centers.htm.19. NMASS, "Pataki blamed for failed state Workers' Comp system." NMASS Homepage, accessed

at: http://www.nmass.org/nmass/news/ 112404NAFTAPressConference.html20. For information on NMASS' Beyond Ground Zero Campaign, see http:// www.nmass.org/nmass/bgz/bgz.html.21. Fine 2003 and 2005.22. Ibid.

[Author Affiliation]Simon Black is a native of Toronto, Canada, and is in his first year of Ph.D. study at The New Schoolin New York City. He is a former shop steward in the Canadian Union of Public Employees. He hasparticipated in, and keenly observed, the community union movement in both Canada and the United

States. He can be reached at [email protected].
http://www.nmass.org/nmass/bgz/bgz.htmlmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.nmass.org/nmass/bgz/bgz.htmlhttp://www.nmass.org/nmass/bgz/bgz.htmlhttp://www.nmass.org/nmass/bgz/bgz.htmlhttp://www.nmass.org/nmass/bgz/bgz.htmlhttp://www.nmass.org/nmass/news/http://www.nmass.org/nmass/news/http://www.nmass.org/nmass/articles/http://www.nmass.org/nmass/articles/http://www.metropolitan/http://www.metropolitan/http://www.ilo.org/public/english/http://www.ilo.org/public/english/

community unionism - a strategy for organizing in the new economy

Documents