No Shortcuts: The Case for Organizing

This dissertation will explore how ordinary workers in the new economy create and sustain power from below. In workplace and community movements, individuals acting collectively have been shown to win victories using a variety of different approaches. In this dissertation, I will argue that different approaches lead to different outcomes, often very different outcomes. I will use a framework throughout of three broad types of change processes; advocacy, mobilizing, and organizing, though my emphasis is on the latter two. And I will argue that each is productive of a different kind of victory. In arguing my case, that advocacy, mobilizing, and organizing are different approaches to social change that produce different outcomes and relative successes, I will move in, out, and between key arguments in the literature of social movements and unions published over the past forty years: the years when progressive movements began to lose everything they had gained and the right wing began consistently winning back the ground progressives lost. The twelve cases I analyze involved one classic social movement organization, two national unions, and two local unions, one of them also a local of one the nationals. Strikes were utilized as part of the overall strategy in three of the cases. By focusing on campaigns that led to success, I will identify the factors that I argue facilitate rather than inhibit the rebirth of a vibrant workers movement. This research will contribute to the sociological literature on social movement strategy and power. Specifically, my dissertation will test the current debate about leaderless movements and horizontalism by sharply focusing on leaders, including who they are, how they are identified, how they develop, the choices they make, and the role they play. The cases involve workforces with mostly women workers, in projected growth sectors of the US labor force (healthcare and education) which are dominated by women. Therefore, my work will address the dearth in the literature about labor organizing in heavily gendered sectors of work. By analyzing the factors that explain successes under new political, economic, and work conditions, I will contribute to new collective action theory, and offer a substantive understanding of how strikes are won in the new millennium

Bottom-Up Organizing with Tools from On High: Understanding the Data Practices of Labor Organizers

This paper provides insight into the use of data tools in the American labor movement by analyzing the practices of staff employed by unions to organize alongside union members. We interviewed 23 field-level staff organizers about how they use data tools to evaluate membership. We find that organizers work around and outside of these tools to develop access to data for union members and calibrate data representations to meet local needs. Organizers mediate between local and central versions of the data, and draw on their contextual knowledge to challenge campaign strategy. We argue that networked data tools can compound field organizers' lack of discretion, making it more difficult for unions to assess and act on the will of union membership. We show how the use of networked data tools can lead to less accurate data, and discuss how bottom-up approaches to data gathering can support more accurate membership assessments

Forging New Class Solidarities: Organizing Hospital Workers

Amid the acrimonious debates about unions’ future direction, too little attention is being paid to the central question of power and the relationship between power and strategy: Is this strategy actually expanding our base of organic worker leaders? Is this strategy deepening working-class solidarity? Is this strategy helping workers and the unemployed to overcome racism, sexism and the other ‘isms’ capitalists use as weapons to defeat the building of class? Is this strategy building measurable power? This essay will focus on one example of mostly female healthcare workers in Nevada who were engaged in bold organizing drives that substantially improved their material and nonmaterial condition at work and at home. Central to their strategy, and to their subsequent ability to win substantial gains, was their decision to build their organizations wall-to-wall, putting not only registered nurses but all other hospital workers together in a single union. Wall-to-wall hospital organizing of the type described in this essay has great potential implications. In terms of collective power against an employer, the sheer number of workers involved matters a lot. Developing workplace solidarities that bridge intra-class differences, such as racism, sexism and more, has a ripple effect beyond the walls of the workplace, too. Nevada’s example of seven hospitals’ worth of nurses choosing a wall-to-wall union model still provides plenty of evidence of what strategic choices are needed today for forging new working-class solidarities, even in the face of existing union organizations which do not value them

Turning the Tables: Participation and Power in Negotiations

A report by Jane McAlevey and Abby Lawlor, illustrates best practices for building the power to win in today’s challenging union climate and features a series of case studies in collective bargaining during the four years under Trump. They cover four key employment sectors: teachers, nurses, hotel workers, and journalists. In each case, workers used high transparency and high participation approaches in contract campaigns to build worker power. Each victory points a path to raising workers’ expectations of what is possible to win at the negotiations table today

Turning the Tables: Participation and Power in Negotiations

A report by Jane McAlevey and Abby Lawlor, illustrates best practices for building the power to win in today’s challenging union climate and features a series of case studies in collective bargaining during the four years under Trump. They cover four key employment sectors: teachers, nurses, hotel workers, and journalists. In each case, workers used high transparency and high participation approaches in contract campaigns to build worker power. Each victory points a path to raising workers’ expectations of what is possible to win at the negotiations table today