A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement by Amy B. Dean & David B. Reynolds

Author:Amy B. Dean & David B. Reynolds [Dean, Amy B. & Reynolds, David B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Labor & Industrial Relations, Political Science
ISBN: 9780801458491
Google: Z_utDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 6829072
Publisher: ILR Press
Published: 2009-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Strategic Coalition Building

Leaders of regional power building work select issue campaigns based upon how such work will support their strategic relationship-building goals. In San Jose, California, the South Bay Labor Council’s Housing for All campaign illustrates a careful choice chosen to develop strategic relationships among partners key to building power over the long term.

A study by Working Partnerships USA found that regional median home prices had increased from $311,146 in 1997 to $513,950 in 2000. The same report offered public policy solutions that would result in 8,600 new units of affordable housing.2 It would have been possible to develop a strategy based on building new affordable housing units to address the housing crunch that was hitting relatively well-paid union members; however, the South Bay Labor Council’s first Housing for All policy push focused on the interests of lower-income renters. With a rental vacancy rate falling to 1.1 percent by 2000, average rental costs had climbed 61 percent in three years. In this environment, some landlords were evicting lower-income tenants to clear the way for wealthier renters. To stop that, the council fought for and won an eviction protection ordinance.

The campaign to protect renters accomplished several goals for the SBLC. It forged a strong alliance with the local tenants’ rights movement, producing a great deal of goodwill and credibility that labor was not simply seeking community alliances for its own narrow benefit. It also allowed organized labor to distinguish itself from Silicon Valley’s big employers, for whom “affordable housing” meant homes for the higher-paid knowledge economy workers that these firms hoped to attract to the region. By contrast, labor spoke as a representative of the interests of the working majority—uniting middle-income earners with those trapped in the region’s mushrooming low-wage “new economy” jobs.

Over the long term, such strategic campaigns help redefine labor’s image in the community. Building labor’s political influence and organizing more workers shifts from being a “special interest” to a mechanism for growing power that benefits a range of community organizations and the community at large. The research around the eviction protection campaign showed that the high cost of housing and rent in Silicon Valley made tenants’ rights organizing directly relevant to union members in lower-wage jobs who either struggled with rent or made long commutes from lower-rent areas. For tenants’ rights groups, labor’s participation brought to bear significant political clout well beyond what they could have achieved on their own. For both labor and community, the campaign helped to build greater trust and sense of shared values.

Australian scholar Amanda Tattersall, an activist who has helped build many labor-community coalitions, provides a helpful framework for thinking about the distinct kinds of coalitions fostered by regional power building work. Tattersall distinguishes among four types of coalitions. Table 4.3 summarizes a modified version of her model.3

TABLE 4.3. A Framework of Union-Community Coalitions

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