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Chartered in 1921, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
is a worldwide organization that represents more than two million
workers in occupations from healthcare and government service to
custodians and taxi drivers. Women form more than half the
membership while people in minority groups make up approximately
forty percent. Luis LM Aguiar and Joseph A. McCartin edit essays on
one of contemporary labor's bedrock organizations. The contributors
explore key episodes, themes, and features in the union's recent
history and evaluate SEIU as a union with global aspirations and
impact. The first section traces the SEIU's growth in the last and
current centuries. The second section offers in-depth studies of
key campaigns in the United States, including the Justice for
Janitors and Fight for $15 movements. The third section focuses on
the SEIU's work representing low-wage workers in Canada, Australia,
Europe, and Brazil. An interview with Justice for Janitors
architect Stephen Lerner rounds out the volume. Contributors: Luis
LM Aguiar, Adrienne E. Eaton, Janice Fine, Euan Gibb, Laurence
Hamel-Roy, Tashlin Lakhani, Joseph A. McCartin, Yanick Noiseux,
Benjamin L. Peterson, Allison Porter, Alyssa May Kuchinski, Maite
Tapia, Veronica Terriquez, and Kyoung-Hee Yu
Chartered in 1921, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
is a worldwide organization that represents more than two million
workers in occupations from healthcare and government service to
custodians and taxi drivers. Women form more than half the
membership while people in minority groups make up approximately
forty percent. LuĂs LM Aguiar and Joseph A. McCartin edit essays
on one of contemporary labor’s bedrock organizations. The
contributors explore key episodes, themes, and features in the
union’s recent history and evaluate SEIU as a union with global
aspirations and impact. The first section traces the SEIU’s
growth in the last and current centuries. The second section offers
in-depth studies of key campaigns in the United States, including
the Justice for Janitors and Fight for $15 movements. The third
section focuses on the SEIU’s work representing low-wage workers
in Canada, Australia, Europe, and Brazil. An interview with Justice
for Janitors architect Stephen Lerner rounds out the volume.
Contributors: LuĂs LM Aguiar, Adrienne E. Eaton, Janice Fine, Euan
Gibb, Laurence Hamel-Roy, Tashlin Lakhani, Joseph A. McCartin,
Yanick Noiseux, Benjamin L. Peterson, Allison Porter, Alyssa May
Kuchinski, Maite Tapia, Veronica Terriquez, and Kyoung-Hee Yu
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 subjected to a steady
onslaught of attacks at the state level and growing hostility 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, political, 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.
Low-wage workers in the United States face obstacles including
racial and ethnic discrimination, a pervasive lack of wage
enforcement, misclassification of their employment, and for some,
their status as undocumented immigrants. In the past, political
parties, unions, and fraternal and mutual-aid societies served as
important vehicles for workers who hoped to achieve political and
economic integration. As these traditional civic institutions have
weakened, low-wage workers must seek new structures for mutual
support. Worker centers are among the institutions to which workers
turn as they strive to build vibrant communities and attain
economic and political visibility. Community-based worker centers
help low-wage workers gain access to social services; advocate for
their own civil and human rights; and organize to improve wages,
working conditions, neighborhoods, and public schools.In this
pathbreaking book, Janice Fine identifies 137 worker centers in
more than eighty cities, suburbs, and rural areas in thirty-one
states. These centers, which attract workers in industries that are
difficult to organize, have emerged as especially useful components
of any program intended to assist immigrants and low-wage workers
of color. Worker centers serve not only as organizing laboratories
but also as places where immigrants and other low-wage workers can
participate in civil society, tell their stories to the larger
community, resist racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, and work to
improve their political and economic standing.
Low-wage workers in the United States face obstacles including
racial and ethnic discrimination, a pervasive lack of wage
enforcement, misclassification of their employment, and for some,
their status as undocumented immigrants. In the past, political
parties, unions, and fraternal and mutual-aid societies served as
important vehicles for workers who hoped to achieve political and
economic integration. As these traditional civic institutions have
weakened, low-wage workers must seek new structures for mutual
support. Worker centers are among the institutions to which workers
turn as they strive to build vibrant communities and attain
economic and political visibility. Community-based worker centers
help low-wage workers gain access to social services; advocate for
their own civil and human rights; and organize to improve wages,
working conditions, neighborhoods, and public schools.In this
pathbreaking book, Janice Fine identifies 137 worker centers in
more than eighty cities, suburbs, and rural areas in thirty-one
states. These centers, which attract workers in industries that are
difficult to organize, have emerged as especially useful components
of any program intended to assist immigrants and low-wage workers
of color. Worker centers serve not only as organizing laboratories
but also as places where immigrants and other low-wage workers can
participate in civil society, tell their stories to the larger
community, resist racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, and work to
improve their political and economic standing.
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