Labor Builds Regional Power

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

LABOR BUILDS REGIONAL POWER

The American labor movement continues to debate its very future. Keyleaders have called for rethinking the number and structure of the nation’sunions and the role and organization of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). The future of the AFL-CIO’slocal organizations—the central labor council—is also up for debate. Can suchbodies provide a strong vehicle for revitalizing organized labor at the local level,or are these hopelessly obsolete structures of a bygone past?

First developed in 1996, the AFL-CIO’s Union Cities agenda aimed to makecentral labor councils a center point of labor resurgence. At its most far-reaching, Union Cities sought to place organized labor at the center of newregional movements for economic justice and democracy. Indeed, only as partof a broader progressive movement can unions hope to achieve the scale oforganizing necessary to sustain large-scale resurgent growth.

In a small, but growing number of communities, this potential has begunto be realized as revitalized central labor councils and key local unions havepulled together the ingredients necessary for building regional power. Thoseengaged in this pioneering work rarely have the time or opportunity to docu-ment their stories. Yet, as the labor movement debates its organizational future,examples and lessons of regional power building must be shared within the labormovement, with community allies, and the broader public so that today’s seedscan be replicated across the country.

This issue of WorkingUSA presents four case studies of labor’s quest forregional power. All come out of an ongoing collaboration between the CentralLabor Council Task Force of the United Association of Labor Educators andthe AFL-CIO’s Field Mobilization staff and Central Labor Council AdvisoryCommittee. The Building Regional Power Research Project was founded todocument instructive examples of regional power building and to publicize suchinnovations inside and outside the labor movement.

WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society · 1089-7011 · Volume 8 · December 2004 · pp. 123–129© 2004 Immanuel Ness and Blackwell Publishing Inc.

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ.

124 WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society

What Is Regional Power Building?

Through regional power building, organized labor revitalizes itself by fostering a broader progressive movement aimed at local regime change. Urban regimes are formal and informal networks of regional “shakers andmovers.” Regimes bring together public authorities with private power holders.They set the dominant framework for how people think about regional devel-opment as well as the concrete policies local governments pursue.

While some metropolitan areas have more coherent policy regimes thanothers, in the United States, nearly all are dominated by corporate interests.Thus, discussions of regional policy revolve around subordinating publicauthority to the needs of “the market.” Economic success is defined in corpo-rate terms of large-scale projects, outside investment, downtown-centric redevelopment, and business-defined success measures. Needless to say, corporate-dominated policy regimes place little emphasis on job quality, equity,or social justice. In corporate-dominated policy regimes, strong local labormovements are hardly seen as necessary components of economic health.

Regional power building for labor means constructing a new progressiveurban policy regime in which:

• Unions and community groups are seen as central partners in regional economic development.

• Business interests are reduced to one voice among many.

• Goals for regional development revolve around social and ecological needs.

• There is a renewed sense of public role in social welfare.

• The right of workers to form unions is seen as central to economic healthand democracy, and becomes a core principle protected by the local regime.

Whether during the 19th century or the 1930s, the labor movement grewby challenging local regimes and organizing in the community, not just theworkplace. Indeed, the national New Deal had predecessors in regional powerbuilding that fostered city and state reforms and planted seeds for stalwart pro-labor communities. Today, labor needs to return to this tradition.

The case studies demonstrate six key elements which local leaders mustfoster and connect together in order to build power successfully over the longterm: coalition building, preparing for governance, shifting the public debate,leadership development, victories, and organizing.

Deep Coalition Building. Constructing regional power requires going beyondlabor support groups. It means labor and community groups developing mutualagendas that often transcend their traditional activities. Together, partnersbroaden the scope of their actions into projects beyond their individual capac-ities and traditional sense of the possible. Through deep coalition building,organized labor repositions itself at the center of a broad regional movement

reynolds and ness: letter from the editor 125

for economic change. Unions come to be seen by others as a central and nec-essary force for community transformation.

Preparing for Governance. Simply electing majorities of union-endorsed candi-dates by itself does not mean that labor and its allies have acquired regionalpower. A governing coalition must have a concrete program for progressiveregional change. This agenda is more than simply a laundry list of coalitionpartners’ specific issues. Rather, it combines a broad vision of regional trans-formation with specific public policy reforms that build toward that vision. Inaddition, regional power requires grassroots political machinery—both a sharedmobilization capacity as well as a process for developing activist candidates pre-pared to champion the progressive agenda. In short, labor and its allies mustengage in the activities that in theory, political parties are supposed to do, butwhich the loose candidate-centered networks that pass for political parties inthe U.S. fail to do.

Shifting the Public Debate. Specific reforms and other victories cannot take placeas isolated events. The corporate right has been very successful in pushingagendas that over time moved public debate to terms in which economic pros-perity becomes a question of enhancing “the market,” personal freedom equateswith less government; and few public figures dare propose raising taxes on thewealthy or expanding the public sphere (be it comprehensive health care reform,paid family leave, mandatory paid vacations, public economic planning, etc.).Learning from the right, labor and its allies need think-tanks and research armsthat can generate both concrete information on the workings of the regionaleconomy and specific policy reform agendas. In three of the four councils, laborfounded a nonprofit research and action arm. Regional power building thentakes this economic information into the community and engages in broadpublic campaigns that redefine official public debates.

Leadership Development. Power building includes a process for generatingleaders that combine a broad movement-oriented vision with concrete politicaland coalition-building skills. Within labor, such leadership development is espe-cially important for those individuals likely to represent the next generation ofkey leaders. Leadership development, at least in part, is ideally done in con-junction with community allies so that the process generates bridge builders:leaders comfortable in more than one activist world.

Real Victories. Nothing builds a movement like tangible, if even modest, signsof success. These gains can take the form of specific public policy victories aswell as wins at the grassroots level such as coalition-linked union organizing,contract bargaining, community benefits agreements, etc.

Organizing. Power building must find ways to dynamically link political gainsto union organizing so that the two arenas mutually reinforce each other.


Political action helps establish a more favorable regional environment by chang-ing perceptions of unions, establishing allies, and providing concrete leverageto deactivate employer antiunion campaigns. In turn, more union membersmean a larger progressive voting base. Organizing gains need to be evaluatedboth in terms of leverage for immediate unionization victories, and the morelong-term effect of shifting the cultural and political climate within whichunions organize.

Two of the four essays provide the most developed examples of regionalpower building today: San Jose and Los Angeles. Amy Dean, who as presidenthelped revitalize the labor council in San Jose, also chaired until late 2003, theAFL-CIO’s Central Labor Council Advisory Committee. As the nation’s secondlargest city, Los Angeles is at the forefront of political and economic change.The increasingly Latino city has experienced one of the largest explosions ofpoverty-wage jobs in the nation. Similarly, as part of Silicon Valley, San Jose isalso at the center of the “new economy.” Thus, the labor movements in bothcities confront many of the nation’s core economic shifts.

Union supporters can take hope in the fact that these two regions that nowboast some of the best examples of labor innovation and revitalization have tra-ditionally been seen as labor movement backwaters. Neither of the region’seconomies enjoyed a particularly strong presence by heavily unionized manu-facturing industries. Union density, while not the worst in the nation, had notbeen particularly noteworthy either. Yet, while organized labor continues to losestrength nationally, union density in both regions, and California more gener-ally, has increased in recent years. The San Jose council’s three-legged strategyof policy research and advocacy, coalition building, and aggressive political workhas provided a model for inspiring power building elsewhere. The LA CountyFederation offers a vision of powerful political organizing based upon allianceswith under-mobilized communities. Along with Working Partnerships USA, theLA Alliance for a New Economy offers a model of a labor-linked movementbuilding 501(c)3.

Denver and Houston offer additional examples from regions not known forunion strength. For several years, the Colorado legislature has been just a fewvotes shy of passing right-to-work legislation. As the state’s major populationcenter, Denver offers a key to the state’s balance of power. Denver labor’s revitalization is a beginning story as local leaders struggle to pull together keyelements in a hostile climate with scarce resources. Indeed, most of the power-building components are only a few years old. Yet, enough has happened toshow power-building’s potential as well as to highlight the difficulties of foster-ing an aggressive long-term strategy.

As the nation’s fourth largest city, Houston has experienced a demographicearthquake as hundreds of thousands of immigrants have come to the region.For Houston’s largely white labor movement, the region’s new population rep-resents both a threat and opportunity. With immigrant workers especially vul-nerable to management exploitation, these communities can provide cannonfodder for employers’ war against organized labor. However, as Los Angeles’


story suggests, when immigrant communities and the labor movement inter-twine, they can become a powerful force. The Houston case study details howthe Harris County Labor Council has attempted to make labor a player in immi-grant community empowerment.

None of the articles provide a story of straightforward march to a tri-umphant future. All of the projects explored by the authors face significantobstacles. And many of the leaders profiled in the studies have no shortage ofcritics both within and outside the labor movement. The research suggests,however, that organized labor is not going to overcome its current crisis withoutlabor leaders who are willing to take risks. Not all specific experiments may panout, but innovation is the only path to power.

Future Research

The Building Regional Power Research Project continues to documentinstructive cases, publicize these stories, and process the experiences.Researchers are in the process of completing examinations of power building inCleveland and Seattle. Notable efforts at regional revitalization that the projectwill consider investigating in the future include Boston, the New York AreaLabor Federations, Miami and South Florida, Atlanta, Duluth, and several moreregions of California. The project continues to grow a list of qualifiedresearchers willing to investigate their own or other regions.1

Reviews

The book reviews in this issue revolve around a common theme: how tobuild the labor movement into a powerful voice for the working class. The booksin this issue all delve into the errors of the past and the ominous bureaucraticdirection that some leaders in organized labor seek to move organized labor. In the first review, Steve Early examines two new posthumous books by twoauthors. Singlejack Solidarity, representing the collected writings of Stan Weir,edited by George Lipsitz, was just published. The other, Punching Out by MartyGlaberman, published several years ago, remains vital to the debate of the futureof the labor movement. Both authors argue that, rather than looking for top-down solutions, the labor movement must turn in a more radical democratictradition to revitalize itself. For Early, both books provide a “welcome antidote”to the technocratic solutions advocated by the official wisdom of key leaders inorganized labor. Both Weir and Glaberman were outsiders whose criticismrankled union leaders of the past because of labor’s efforts to repress workerself-activity that interfered with solutions hammered out at the top. Early notesthat the books are even more relevant today as some unions do not consider thewants and desires of workers.

In the next review, Ken Estey examines Hard Work: Remaking the AmericanLabor Movement by Rick Fantasia and Kim Voss. The book advocates a form ofunionism that is based on a strategic perspective to organizing. Pointing to


recent initiatives by organized level, the authors argue that unions must be cog-nizant that the neoliberal economy has produced changes that require unionleaders to seek out creative solutions. Fantasia and Voss point to the new mili-tancy through corporate campaign or card-check union recognition campaignsas examples of the new thinking necessary to bring the labor movement backto prominence. Estey takes note of the promise of the new social movementunionism that Fantasia and Voss celebrate but notes that workers must beincluded in a social force for change, concluding that “[w]ith union density levelscontinually dropping, the road that the movement makes by walking is a per-ilous one. As with any dangerous journey, one should not do it alone.”

The next two reviews examine how global migration is transformingnational economies throughout the world. Theresa Case examines Leon Fink’sThe Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South, a bookthat recounts the struggle for dignity among Guatemalan Mayan workers atCase Farms, a large antiunion chicken processor in Morganton, North Carolina. Fink recounts the Mayan workers’ struggle against abuse and exploita-tion at Case Farms. The author documents how Mayan workers at the plantworked for low and uncertain wages under poor working conditions endeavoredto form a union. From 1991 and 2002, workers engaged in frequent and sus-tained walkouts, work stoppages, and strikes that were often unfathomableamong American workers. Case observes that a fuller discussion of gender wouldhave shed light on the choices that workers made in the struggle for respect anddignity through a union. The book, Case argues, is an outstanding contributionand resource for scholars of immigration, indigenous Americans, labor history,and trade unions.

Next, Immanuel Ness reviews Moving People to Deliver Services, a new editedvolume by Aadita Mattoo and Antonia Carzaniga. The book examines theongoing World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations to further liberalizetrade through creating a global temporary migrant labor force. The book isintended to provide information on what is known as the WTO’s GeneralAgreement on Trade in Services (GATS) for trade negotiators, corporateresearchers, regulators, and service trade providers committed to conclude aglobal agreement called mode 4 that would remove most national barriers tothe trade in workers.

Mattoo and Carzaniga argue that the global temporary labor force is essen-tial to filling skilled-labor shortages in advanced economies by creating an all-encompassing trade agreement that would allow third-world workers to migratefreely throughout the world. The WTO accord is seen by its corporate propo-nents as a step in creating a flexible global system of production and services toinclude further trade liberalization, and promoting greater freedom in facilitat-ing temporary international migration of workers. The authors do not ade-quately address how this global temporary workforce seen as the next step intrade liberalization would reduce job security for skilled workers in advancedcountries while depleting the number of essential workers in health care, edu-cation, and technology in the third world.


In the last review, Steve Duncombe examines What’s the Matter With Kansas:How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, a best-selling book that asserts thatthe Democratic Party’s turn to social liberalism has caused working Americansto vote against their class interests. As jobs disappear and workers’ wages rapidlydiminish, the working class is energized by the American flag, school prayer,and the traditional family rather than fighting a class war. As Duncombe notes,“The Democratic Party, in [Frank’s] estimation, has dug its own grave—not bychampioning issues like feminism, gay rights and abortion, or defending therights of minorities, but by abandoning class in order to appeal to the mythiccenter and garner corporate donations.” Alas, Duncombe concludes that classstruggle is here to stay, and that the Democratic Party will grow irrelevant if itfails to pay attention to the interests of the working class. True enough. But theDemocrats only embraced the working class after a militant working class chal-lenged the system with mass strikes and urban insurrections, opening prospectsfor a real democratic party so threatening to the Democrats in power.

—David Reynolds, Contributing Editor to section on labor councils

—Immanuel Ness, Editor

Notes

Special thanks to all the local leaders and activists who took time out of their busy schedules to talk to theresearchers and to comment on various drafts. We particularly appreciate their openness in discussing sensi-tive topics and their trust that this project would handle controversies in a fair and constructive manner. Iwould also like to thank all the researchers as well as AFL-CIO staff members Bruce Colburn, Scott Reynolds,Cathy Howell, Marilyn Sneiderman, and Nancy Dellemattera for their tremendous energy and enthusiasmfor the project. It has been an honor and a joy to work with such wonderful people. Finally, thanks to par-ticipants in the Central Labor Council Task Force of the United Association for Labor Education for theirexcellent feedback and ideas.

1. For more information on the central labor council project, contact: David Reynolds, Labor Studies Center,Wayne State University, (313) 577-2197, [email protected]. For more information on the project—including case papers and summaries—visit the website at http://powerbuilding.wayne.edu.

http://powerbuilding.wayne.edu.

Documents

Labor Builds Regional Power