From L.A., a reinvention of Big Labor
A 'blue-green alliance' of workers, environmentalists, and others offers one model for union revival, analysts say.
By Daniel B. Wood | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the April 10, 2007 edition
Page 1 of 4
Los Angeles - It's no secret that labor unions are struggling with declining membership and loss of negotiating clout, but don't tell that to the hundreds of activists who gathered Friday for a rally outside the Hilton Hotel at Los Angeles International Airport.
These protesters see a different reality, one in which the labor movement's center of gravity is shifting from the older Rust Belt cities of the east to a newer, energetic, immigrant-rich Los Angeles. They see nothing short of a rebirth of union organizing, based on a West Coast model of coalition-building, decentralized leadership, and a speak-to-the-people approach to delivering their message.
The Friday rally for hotel workers is a case in point. It included religious leaders who, taking note of the Passover season, helped reenact the Israelites' escape from slavery and their crossing of the Red Sea, as an allegory for the workers' situation. It included community groups. It included the stories of workers like Alicia Melgarejo, a single mother who took home $1,200 a month from a $9.70-per-hour wage (until she was fired from her job last month).
"If I could make just about one dollar more per hour, it would really help raise my two kids," she says.
Move over Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. Unionism characterized by heavy manufacturing is giving way to a new labor movement built by service-sector employees: janitors, grocery workers, security guards, hotel workers, and truckers who hauls goods to and from area seaports. Such workers have proven difficult to organize in the past, say national labor analysts, but activists in Los Angeles seem to be having more success than anyone anywhere else.
"What is now happening in Los Angeles represents the future of the labor movement in America," says Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "I would contrast this new look of unionism to that of autoworkers and steel workers, which had long been the face of the movement to most Americans."
Why L.A.?
RSS feed
