Central Labor Councils and the Revival of American Unionism: Organizing for Justice in Our Communities

Schrock

2022

Urban Affairs Review

Why are cities acting against inequality? We attribute the growth of municipal economic policy to multi-city urban policy entrepreneurship networks. These networks combine activists who create pressure to address inequality with policy experts who supply the legislative means to do so. We illustrate the concept through the Fight for $15 campaign in Seattle and Chicago. Drawing on more than 100 interviews, participant observation and secondary documents, we show that advocates for municipal policy reform use national policy entrepreneurship networks to develop policy-specific and generalized policy advocacy techniques. Centering urban policy entrepreneurship brings into focus three important aspects of current municipal public policy: 1) The two-way interaction between national and local policy campaigns. 2) Partnerships between activists who set the political agenda and policy entrepreneurs who act on political opportunity. 3) The role of national advocacy and policy entrepreneurship networks in converting new policy ideas into routine, off-the-shelf policy solutions.

Section: Urban Equity Policy and The Challenge To Political Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban Policy Entrepreneurship: Activist Networks, Minimum Wage Campaigns and Municipal Action Against Inequality

Schrock

2022

Urban Affairs Review

“…Every CLC is charged with coordinating outreach to and collaborating with geographically proximate community organizations. In practice, the composition of the resulting community-labor coalitions varies depending on the resources, policy orientation, and organizing culture of both the local unions and community organizations (Ness and Eimer, 2015). The institutional structure of CLCs proved especially effective in larger cities, where dynamic local labor unions and community organizations with strong political connections, such as MLK Labor and the Greater Boston Labor Council, formed successful campaigns to pass living wage legislation and related workplace measures (Luce, 2004).…”

Section: Community-labor Coalitions and The Perils Of Partnershipmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One important aspect of this historical change is how labor and community activists have reworked their political strategies to take advantage of their newfound leverage. Since the late 1990s, labor unions have devoted organizational and financial resources to building political coalitions with 1 community-based organizations (Jayaraman and Ness, 2015;Milkman and Ott, 2014;Ness and Eimer, 2015). Now, these mature community-labor coalitions regularly force action on inequality by making economic fairness a core political issue (Brown, 2018), electing city council members and mayors who pledge action on economic inequality (Doussard and Lesniewski, 2017), and providing draft legislation, testimony, and expertise on the minimum wage, earned sick time, and other issues relevant to lower-income families (Doussard and Gamal, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustaining the grassroots: How community organizations mitigate the downsides of collaborating with unions

Fulton

Journal of Urban Affairs

2021

Coalitions of community organizations and labor unions have played a central role in the recent expansion of municipal legislation regarding low-wage work. To date, most studies of communitylabor coalitions have focused on their successes in meeting policy goals set by organized labor. This paper shifts focus to the challenges community organizations encounter when they participate in union-led campaigns. Analyzing survey data from a national study of community organizations, we show that collaborating with unions can inhibit community organizations' resource-intensive strategies, local-level organizing, and mobilizing capacity. Using data from fieldwork with community-labor coalitions in Chicago, St. Louis, and Denver, we then explore three strategies community organizations use to mitigate these downsides: shaping campaigns, rationing participation, and not participating. Each strategy has distinct benefits and drawbacks. Regardless of the strategy community organizations adopt, our analysis shows that the experience of participating in union-led campaigns leads community organizations to re-examine their approaches to organizing, movement building, and public policy.

“…Community-labor coalitions devote their limited resources to pursuing these same goals. In the 1990s, AFL-CIO unions began to institutionalize efforts to partner with community organizations by founding more than 500 local central labor councils-elected boards of local union members charged with reaching out to local community organizations, coordinating policy campaigns, and building union support for community organizing initiatives (Ness and Eimer 2001). Sharing resources and participating in the same campaigns helped participants in community-labor coalitions learn about one another's organizational cultures, develop routines for working together, and build interpersonal relationships vital to capable organizing (Milkman 2006;Doussard 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The appeal of collaboration for community organizations came from the recognition that unions' resources and political relationships provide an effective means of promoting legislation to address the systematic problems of disinvestment, job loss, and working poverty facing low-income communities and people of color (Ness and Eimer 2001;Milkman 2006). However, these collaborations developed during a period in which community organizations' embrace of service delivery and neighborhood development work was already diverting time and financial resources away from grassroots organizing activities (Stoecker 1997;Fulton 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizing Together: Benefits and Drawbacks of Community-Labor Coalitions for Community Organizations

Fulton

2020

Social Service Review

Community-labor coalitions unite grassroots community organizations and hierarchical labor unions with the promise of increasing the effectiveness of each. Little is known, however, about whether and how community organizations benefit from such partnerships. We analyze survey data from the National Study of Community Organizing Organizations and field data from community-labor coalitions in Chicago to identify benefits and drawbacks for community organizations collaborating with unions. We find that community organizations that have unions as members generate more media attention, possess a broader tactical repertoire, and are more likely to mount state-level advocacy campaigns. Those benefits, however, come at the expense of grassroots mobilizing and result in less neighborhoodlevel organizing, fewer volunteers, and smaller turnouts at protest actions, all of which are vital to community organizing. Understanding these benefits and drawbacks can help advocates adjust strategy, tactics, and goals to ensure the long-term viability of community-labor coalitions. introduction Coalitions of community organizations and labor unions play important political roles in many US cities and states (Milkman and Ott 2014; Reich, Jacobs, and Dietz 2014; Luce 2015). 1 In the past decade, community-labor coalitions have won notable policy victories, such as a $15 minimum wage