A Marriage Made in Heaven? Mismatches and Misunderstandings between Worker Centres and Unions
| Published date | 01 June 2007 |
| Date | 01 June 2007 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2007.00617.x |
| Author | Janice Fine |
A Marriage Made in Heaven?
Mismatches and Misunderstandings
between Worker Centres and Unions
Janice Fine
Abstract
Worker centres, community-based mediating institutions that provide support
to low-wage workers in the United States, have grown from five in 1992 to 160
in 2007. With unions increasingly targeting low-wage immigrant workers
employed in non-footloose industries for organizing drives, it would seem that
worker centres and unions are a match made in heaven. On the ground, however,
it has been more of a mismatch. This article examines the underlying sources of
the mismatch embodied in the structures, ideologies and cultures of worker
centres and unions.
1. Introduction
On May Day 2006, the international workers’ holiday seldom celebrated in
the United States beyond the stalwarts of the left, close to a million immi-
grants engaged in the largest political strike since the movement for the
eight-hour day at the close of the nineteenth century. Many of the nation’s
low-wage Latino restaurant, construction, factory and domestic workers
took a day away from their multiple jobs to march and rally for their rights
and thousands of small business owners shuttered their shops and joined
them.
One year ago, unions representing close to half of the membership of the
American House of Labor moved to a new address, forming a new labour
federation — Change to Win (2006). The new federation has staked its future
on organizing the tens of millions of workers in industries that cannot pull up
stakes and leave the country: service, healthcare, construction, hospitality,
food, logistics. The will to organize is strong, and these industries teem with
low-wage immigrant workers, but to succeed, organized labour needs new
organizational structures and strategies.
Janice Fine is at the School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University.
British Journal of Industrial Relations
45:2 June 2007 0007–1080 pp. 335–360
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2007. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
The American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations
(AFL–CIO) and Change to Win have both come out strongly in support of
sweeping immigration reform, albeit different versions. Labour’s historic
reversal of its opposition to immigration liberalization is critical, but beyond
support for policy reform, are American unions prepared to take advantage
of the biggest opportunity for growth they have encountered in decades? Are
they ideologically and culturally prepared and organizationally structured to
admit these workers en masse into union ranks?
The old order of industrial relations has disintegrated and scholars are
searching for signs of what will replace it for workers, firms and unions
(Clawson 2003; Cobble 1991; Fantasia and Voss 2004; Heckscher 1996;
Heckscher and Carré 2006; Hertzenberg et al. 1998; Johnston 1994; Kochan
et al. 1986; Osterman et al. 2001; Piore and Safford 2006). Many low-wage
immigrant workers in the United States today function within industries in
which there have been few or no unions through which they can speak and
act to effect improvements. Into this breach, new modes of organization have
emerged. The worker centre is one of the most promising of these emergent
institutions. These centres are community-based mediating institutions that
provide support to communities of low-wage workers and pursue their
mission through a combination of service delivery (including legal represen-
tation to recover unpaid wages), advocacy (including lobbying for new laws
and working with government agencies to improve enforcement) and orga-
nizing (building organizations of workers to take action on their own behalf
for economic and political change).
With unions increasingly targeting low-wage immigrant workers employed
in non-footloose industries for organizing drives, it would seem that worker
centres and unions are a match made in heaven. On the ground, however, it
has been more of a mismatch.
Only a small percentage of worker centres collaborate with unions on an
ongoing basis and an even smaller number of those have actually co-operated
together on organizing drives: only 14 per cent of worker centres in the 2003
survey I conducted had a direct connection to unions and union organizing
drives. Nine per cent of worker centres in the survey were founded explicitly
to fill the gap left by the decline of unionization in particular industries but
were not founded by unions (Fine 2006). In many instances, worker centres
have reached out to unions on behalf of workers interested in gaining repre-
sentation, but they have struggled to identify one that is willing to take the
workers on. In cases when unions and worker centres have worked together,
the relationship has often been difficult.
Recently, however, the national labour movement’s interest in worker
centres has increased. In August 2006, the National Day Laborer Organizing
Network (NDLON) and the AFL–CIO announced a national partnership
agreement in which the two organizations pledged to work together. In a
formal resolution passed by the AFL–CIO Executive Council, the federation
explicitly recognized the role of worker centres: ‘Many of these centres are
important to the immigrant community and play an essential role in helping
336 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2007.
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