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Immigrant Workers And the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement
Random House
August 2006
On Sale: July 30, 2006
ISBN: 0871546353
EAN: 9780871546357
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Sharp decreases in union membership over the last fifty
years have caused many to dismiss organized labor as
irrelevant in today’s labor market. In the private sector,
only 8 percent of workers today are union members, down from
24 percent as recently as 1973. Yet developments in Southern
California—including the successful Justice for Janitors
campaign—suggest that reports of organized labor’s demise
may be exaggerated. In L.A. Story, sociologist and labor
expert Ruth Milkman explains how Los Angeles, once known as
a company town hostile to labor, became a hotbed of
unionism, and how immigrant workers emerged as the unlikely
leaders in the battle for workers’ rights. L.A. Story shatters many of the myths about modern labor
with a close look at workers in four industries in Los
Angeles: building maintenance, trucking, construction, and
garment production. Though many blame deunionization and
deteriorating working conditions on immigrants, Milkman
shows that this conventional wisdom is wrong. Her analysis
reveals that worsening work environments preceded the influx
of foreign-born workers, who filled the positions only after
native-born workers fled these suddenly undesirable jobs.
Ironically, L.A. Story shows that immigrant workers, who
many union leaders feared were incapable of being organized
because of language constraints and fear of deportation,
instead proved highly responsive to organizing efforts. As
Milkman demonstrates, these mostly Latino workers came to
their service jobs in the United States with a more
group-oriented mentality than the native-born workers they
replaced. Some also drew on experience in their native
countries with labor and political struggles. This stock of
fresh minds and new ideas, along with a physical distance
from the east-coast centers of labor’s old guard, made Los
Angeles the center of a burgeoning workers’ rights movement. L.A.’s recent history highlights some of the key ingredients
of the labor movement’s resurgence—new leadership, latitude
to experiment with organizing techniques, and a willingness
to embrace both top-down and bottom-up strategies. L.A.
Story’s clear and thorough assessment of these developments
points to an alternative, high-road national economic agenda
that could provide workers with a way out of poverty and
into the middle class.
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