A New Unionism?

Traditionally, when we think of workers’ rights and organizing,
we think of the union movement. With the changes in the way
people work, especially young workers, the labor movement,
labor activists and non-unionized workers have responded with
new models of organizing that are challenging and changing
the rampant workplace abuses in the service, security and
agriculture industries.
Organizations like the Freelancers Union, Young Workers
United (YWU), Restaurant Opportunities Center-NY (ROC-NY),
Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and Philadelphia Officers
and Workers Rising (POWR) are playing a leading role, with
support from unions, in organizing and winning concessions
from employers outside the traditional union model.
While they do many things that a union would do, they aren’t
unions in the traditional sense. These organizations are fighting
for the rights of workers without a contract, or going through
collective bargaining—which is the cornerstone of unionism.
Instead, they arrange agreements between their organizations
and individual employers, as well as tackle policy issues that
improve the working conditions for all workers in the city that
the organization works in.
There are some who question the need for traditional types of
contracts into today’s workforce. In an interview with the PBS
program NOW Sara Horowitz, the founder of the Freelancers
Union, said that collective bargaining was “important and that
it is not going to go away but when you have workers moving
from place to place and job to job collective bargaining just
isn’t a practical thing to focus on initially.”
With such a highly mobile workforce and the barriers to
unionization currently in place, could these organizations be
the replacement of traditional unions?
The conditions facing workers today have put up barriers to
forming unions. Instability, anti-labor laws and low union
density have created the need for organizations that, while
outside the traditional union model, are able to help workers
fight abuses on the job and improve their working conditions.
“It is definitely part of a larger trend … not just younger people
but workers in general in terms of decreasing job stability,” said
Marc Rodriguez, an organizer with the Student/Farmworker
Alliance who organizes students in solidarity with the CIW.
Rodriguez added that less and less people are able to find a job
with a decent wage, and be able to count on that job being
there for decades. With the transient workforce of today, it
makes it difficult to form a traditional union.
Many people now “go from job to job depending on what’s
available to us or suits our own personal lives and that simple fact
keeps us from having any unity, solidarity or representation,”
says Ashley Hershey, a member of YWU, which organizes and
advocates for workers in service sector jobs in San Francisco.
In many cases, workers are not covered under current laws
and are either barred from forming unions or restricted into a
very narrow way of unionizing. For example, security officers
are only able to join a union that is made up of other security
officers. This law bars them from joining larger unions, and
was originally passed “to prevent security workers from joining
the miners during the old mine strikes,” explained Eduardo
Soriano-Castillo, a field organizer with Philadelphia Jobs with
Justice, who works on the POWR campaign to organize security
officers in Philadelphia.
One of the major unions that organizes security officers is the
Service Employees International Union. However, in order to
win their contracts, SEIU has to push the employer to reclassify
the worker as something other than a security guard. If the
employer refuses, then the security officers can’t join.
Low union density in some of
the fastest growing sectors
of the economy, such as the
service sector, has also limited
the ability to organize workers
into unions.
The number of new restaurants
and the nature of the industry
relies heavily on immigrant
workers, and “a lot more
abuse,” added Rekha Eanni,
Co-Director of ROC-NY.
“There are 15,000 restaurants
in New York City. The union
density in the restaurant
industry is 1 percent,” noted
another ROC-NY Co-Director,
Sekou Siby. With such
low union density it seems
impossible to really make
gains for workers across the
restaurant industry.
With a workforce defined by mobility and instability, these new
organizations have taken a broader approach to organizing
that challenges whole industries and corporations rather than
individual workplaces. They have to be creative and use public
and community pressure tactics as well as legislative initiatives
in order to get their demands met.
In the case of POWR, the organization has built solidarity with
the students at the university where it is organizing to put
pressure on its president and other officials to demand better
working conditions.
Along with the Student/Farmworker Alliance, the Coalition of
Immokalee Workers has been able to build broad youth and
student support to take on entire corporations. In the most
recent campaign against Burger King, SFA organized actions
at local Burger King stores, organized a huge march and rally
at that corporation’s headquarters in Miami and led a massive
petition drive to get Burger King to improve the working
conditions of people who pick the tomatoes used in their
food.
To fight, a combination of tactics is necessary. Eanni
commented: “Using the law is one way to go about it. It also
includes using protests and marches and people who help us
out. It includes all these different approaches to put pressure
on the employer and really attract awareness.” ROC-NY has
sued several restaurants on behalf of workers for back wages
and other grievances.
Since it’s not possible for ROC-NY organizers to go to each of
the thousands of restaurants in New York, they have to work
at the policy level.
To do this, ROC-NY has issued studies on the working conditions
facing restaurant workers and has created an Industry
Roundtable that brings together restaurant owners that respect
their workers rights to help encourage other restaurants owner
Picking tomatoes in the fields of Immokalee, FL contract, organizations have been able to reach agreements
and improve the conditions of workers that would otherwise
not have been possible. On the other hand, they are missing
the political and organizational backing that a union contract
brings to the table.
“Well we are winning now and they are concessions that
the employer can take away whenever he wants. So I think
the difference between what we are doing now and actually
going for a union drive is that sort of in paper concreteness of
a contract. I believe that’s the strongest protection that you are
ever going to have, ” said Sariano-Castillo.
In the penny per pound won in the agreement between CIW
and Yum Brands the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, a group
representing the growers who sell to Yum Brands, has been
able to delay the workers from receiving their pay increase.
“Florida Tomatoes Growers Exchange are really putting a lot of
resistance to these agreements and trying to their growers not
to pass on the extra penny per pound to the workers and trying
to get them by any means necessary to not participate in these
agreements,” stated Rodriguez.
“Last season, the penny per pound from Yum Brands and
McDonalds was not actually being passed down to the workers
but what those two corporations are doing is paying the extra
money into an account and soon as we are able to get this
whole situation cleared up then that money is going to be
dispersed to the workers,” said Marc Rodriguez.
In talking with Young Workers United, many of their delegations
were with workers who had already left their job. They are
forced into a situation where they have to have multiple
meetings with the employer in order to get their back pay or
other issues dealt with.
If they had the ability to have a union contract, than the
employer would be forced to honor it and pay the workers all
their wages; instead of workers coming back later to demand
back pay or going without pay for weeks while on the job.
Still, many acknowledge that these non-traditional worker
formations are vital to growing the labor movement in the
future.
As Sariano-Castillo pointed out, these organizations can help
“organize workers into a physical and social space … and put
them in contact with labor organizers and educators to figure
out how to partner with labor—and go for a union drive.”