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

Abstract

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

Bridging and Bonding: Disentangling Two Mechanisms Underlying the Diversity–Performance Relationship

“…For example, a Catholic leader reared in the Jesuit tradition likely draws on a set of tactics that differs from those of a Jewish leader influenced by the social justice teaching of Reform Judaism. Similarly, the organizing tactics and modes of mass communication used by advocacy groups vary by the class of its members (Dean, 2016; Doussard & Fulton, 2020). An additional analysis (not displayed) indicates that organizations with low-income leaders are more likely to use “low-tech” modes (e.g., newsletters and phone calls) to mass communicate with their constituents, and organizations with high-income leaders are more likely to use “high-tech” modes (e.g., Twitter and blogs).…”

Engaging Differences: How Socially Diverse Organizations Can Mobilize Their Resources More Effectively

“…They operate as community-based organizations that bring together individuals from their member institutions to address social, economic, and political issues that affect poor, lowincome, and middle-class sectors of U.S. society (Wood et al 2012). Similar to social movement organizations, these organizations mobilize constituents to address issues through the public exercise of political power (Doussard and Fulton 2020;Tarrow 1994), and similar to civic organizations, their most common forms of public engagement are collective civic actions (Sampson et al 2005). Each organization has a team of volunteer leaders consisting of representatives from its member institutions, which include religious congregations, nonprofit organizations, schools, unions, and other civic associations.…”

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

“…However, the value of community-labor coalitions specifically to community organizations remains much less clear. Some benefits have been observed: Community organizations that work with unions gain strategic capacity and organizing scope through access to organized labor's financial resources, technical expertise, political connections, and federated structure (Doussard and Fulton, 2020). Such organizations generate more media attention, possess a broader tactical repertoire, and are more likely to mount state-level advocacy campaigns (ibid).…”

“…However, partnerships between unions and community organizations also can have negative impacts on some community organizations (DeFilippis, Fisher, and Shragge, 2010). Specifically, community organizations that collaborate with labor unions tend to engage in less neighborhood-level organizing, have fewer volunteers, and turn out fewer members to organizing actions (Doussard and Fulton, 2020). Unchecked, these drawbacks can undermine the grassroots organizing activities on which not only community organizations but also community-labor coalitions depend.…”