immigration, employment, labor unions, Nashville

William Canak

English

Research Papers in Economics

by William Canak
ive years ago, the 2002–03 Immigrant
Community Assessment of Nashville
determined that Davidson County’s for-
eign-born population had tripled to almost 10
percent of its 600,000 residents during the
1990s. Middle Tennessee’s robust, full-employ-
ment service economy and moderate cost of liv-
ing have made it an attractive destination
community for immigrants and refugees over
the past two decades. Since the census of 1990,
Nashville has become transformed by a strong
and diverse set of immigrant and refugee
streams, especially from Latin America but also
from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Mid-
dle East. Today Nashville’s percentage of for-
eign-born residents approximates the U.S
average for all cities. Most of these foreign-
born Nashville residents (75 percent) are not
citizens, and 24 percent fall below the poverty
line, twice the rate for Nashville as a whole. The
poverty rate of Nashville’s foreign-born is sim-
ilar to that of African-Americans and Hispanics,
who constitute 25 percent and 5 percent of
Nashville’s population, respectively (Cornfield
et al. 2003; Cornfield 2004; Swarns 2003). 
The challenges of immigrant integration
have stimulated the development of a range of
advocacy networks and organizations. These
include umbrella organizations for social justice,
advocacy, and information sharing; ethnic com-
munity organizations and religious institutions
including mosques and cultural centers; neigh-
borhood organizations in Nashville’s southeast
quadrant (along Nolensville and Murfreesboro
roads), where the majority of the foreign-born of
many ethnic backgrounds reside; and progres-
sive, culturally sensitive, professional social
service and resettlement service providers
(Cornfield et al. 2003; Cornfield 2004). The
2002–03 Immigrant Community Assessment of
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IMMIGRANTS, EMPLOYMENT, AND 
26
F
The challenges of
immigrant
integration have
stimulated the
development of a
range of advocacy
networks and
organizations. Nashville suggests that immigrants are not
addressing their employment issues by unioniz-
ing. Instead, immigrants have developed their
own ethnic enclave economies, especially
Latino and Asian immigrant groups, informal
networks for job referrals and childcare arrange-
ments, paid homework, and English-language
acquisition (Cornfield 2004).
In the summer and fall of 2004, we con-
ducted intensive semistructured interviews with
a sample of 25 immigrant rights advocates and
union officials.
1 Follow-up interviews with
selected leaders in 2008 were used to gather
information on recent changes in coalition
building. Our interviews with leading activists
and leaders in Nashville’s immigrant rights and
labor movements suggest the available configu-
ration of cultural and organizational resources
can inspire and facilitate immigrant–labor
coalition building in Nashville.  The newness of
immigration in Nashville and short history of
contact between these two local social move-
ments, however, present cultural and organiza-
tional barriers that need to be surmounted for
immigrant–labor coalitions to form. An emerg-
ing, as yet inchoate and fragmented immigrant
rights movement lacks cultural and organiza-
tional resources—especially economic leverage
and access to the polity it can obtain from the
local labor movement that can address immi-
grant workers’ employment challenges. At the
same time, the declining local labor movement
lacks the requisite cultural and organizational
resources for organizing immigrant workers it
can obtain from the immigrant rights movement
and thereby revitalize and strengthen itself as an
advocate for working families. In short, the
available configuration of cultural and organi-
zational resources in Nashville lends itself to
the formation of immigrant–labor coalitions
based in a mutually beneficial exchange of cul-
tural and organizational resources between the
two local social movements.
Coalition-Building Frameworks
The potential for local unions to develop
effective immigrant-oriented organizing initia-
tives relates to their role in labor markets and ties
to parent international unions whose resources
and experience could provide important mobiliz-
ing resources. For example, some unions,
notably those in skilled crafts, recruit and train
members, contract with employers to provide
workers, and act as a “hiring hall” bringing
together workers and employers. Other unions
rely on employers to hire workers who may then
seek to be represented by a union. In addition,
some local unions have close and constant ties to
their parent national associations, with continual
flows of information, training, funds, and strate-
gic resource support for innovative initiatives.
Others function with an affiliation but few
resources and little day-to-day contact or
accountability. Union-centered, tightly coupled
local labor organizations are more likely than
other local unions to undertake initiatives that
incorporate information, strategic models for
coalition building, and nonlocal resources aimed
at coalition building. In contrast, leaders of
employer-centered, loosely coupled local labor
unions perceive coalition building as a cipher,
although they are not resistant or antagonistic to
the prospect of coalitions with immigrant com-
munities in Nashville. They cede to established
and institutionalized community organizations
such as religious organizations or the United
Way the role of defining coalition building, set-
ting agendas, and defining objectives.   
In middle Tennessee, union coalition build-
ing with immigrant organizations and associa-
tions remains limited and intermittent for both
union- and employer-centered local unions.
Even local unions whose international unions
have well-established and effective strategic
models for coalition building with immigrants in
other regions of the U.S. have lagged in immi-
grant organizing.  Coalition building has devel-
oped, however, during the past few years
through initiatives of the Tennessee AFL-CIO
state labor council and other community groups
under the umbrella name Nashville Movement.
The coalition is modeled on Memphis’s Inter-
faith Coalition for Economic Justice. This recent
effort to build a progressive union/community
alliance in metropolitan Nashville links unions
with numerous community service organiza-
tions. These groups include the Tennessee
Alliance for Progress, Jobs with Justice, Middle
Tennessee Interfaith Alliance, Tennessee Immi-
grants Rights Coalition, and Urban Epicenter.  
The Tennessee AFL-CIO state labor coun-
cil received a grant of $320,000 from the Public
Welfare Foundation to fund a three-year project
establishing a worker center (Fine 2006), hire
staff, and coordinate long-range planning.  Early
initiatives have included organizing drives with
continued on page 28
D LABOR UNIONS: NASHVILLE
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N600 West African taxi drivers, a campaign with
homeless temporary workers employed at sports
facilities, and the hiring hall functions for day
laborers. A traditional organizing model doesn’t
work with this population of entertainment and
tourism workers, taxi drivers, and temporary
workers, who frequently work for agencies
committing wage and hour violations. 
Through this worker center, the objective is
to establish an affiliation with the Central Labor
Council and work with some unions, such as the
United Steelworkers and United Auto Workers,
and other community groups. Immigrants com-
monly lack resources to navigate the legal and
bureaucratic infrastructure that regulates work
relations. A worker center can help immigrants
to navigate initial communications with unions
in the building trades, manage an 800 number
for complaints, and provide counsel for EEOC
(Equal Employment Opportunity Commission)
or ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Secu-
rity Act) violation and back-wage cases. In
addition, through work with faith-based groups,
worker center staff can link immigrants to craft
union pre-apprenticeship programs or Southern
Migrant Legal Services. Finally, these new
coalitions provide a durable structure for
Nashville’s Living Wage Ordinance initiative. 
As a globalizing city of the U.S. interior,
Nashville exemplifies opportunities and con-
straints facing union revitalization and potential
avenues for collaboration and coalition building
between immigrant communities and local labor
unions. These opportunities for collaboration and
support have been dormant. Nevertheless,
Nashville’s immigrant communities and labor
unions have built and sustained organizational
and cultural resources. These leaders place
responsibility on themselves and also on eco-
nomic and cultural factors that rationalize immi-
grant workers’ decisions to remain nonunion.
Second, national unions provide a range of
resources, including training programs and union
documents that have been translated into immi-
grants’ native languages. Third, local union lead-
ers recognize that their ability to communicate
with immigrants has been limited by their own
lack of knowledge and familiarity with language
and cultural practices, including immigrant gen-
der relations and religious beliefs. Fourth, local
union leaders have considerable experience and
well-established formal relationships with local
community service organizations that address
immigrant community interests. Finally, local
union leaders are familiar with union programs
developed elsewhere in the U.S. that have suc-
cessfully built coalitions with immigrant com-
munities and may support future coalitions.
Modeled on programs successfully estab-
lished in other regions, coalitions could open a
path for a mutually beneficial exchange of cul-
tural and organizational resources between the
immigrant rights and labor unions in Nashville.
Such organizational exchanges and joint proj-
ects can dispel fear and prejudice, create mutual
trust and awareness, and improve the prospects
of further coalition building between these two
movements in Nashville.
Finally, the specific exchange of organiza-
tional and cultural resources within and
between these movements favors a specific
union organizational model for immigrant
union organizing in the globalizing U.S. inte-
rior: the current Nashville initiative to found
worker centers effectively extends the union-
centered local labor organization model to local
conditions. In the past, Nashville labor unions
have established preliminary links to the immi-
grant community and contributed resources to
such community groups as United Way and
Good Will, but these efforts have tended to
become disassociated with organized labor and
frequently provide subsidies to nonunion
employers. In contrast, the developing union-
centered worker centers in immigrant commu-
nities may institute a viable resource exchange
and collaboration between Nashville unions and
immigrant rights advocates for addressing
immigrant employment needs and issues and
revitalizing the labor movement. 
William Canak is a professor in MTSU’s
Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
Note
1. This report incorporates data from a 2004–05
research project conducted by author and professor Daniel
Cornfield, Vanderbilt University. Results of this research
were published in “Immigrants and Labor in a Globalizing
City: Prospects for Unionization in Nashville, Tennessee,”
Labor in the New Urban Battlegrounds, Lowell Turner and
Daniel Cornfield, editors, Cornell University Press, 2007.
References
Cornfield, D., A. Arzubiaga, R. BeLue, S. Brooks, T.
Brown, O. Miller, D. Perkins, P. Thoits, and L. Walker.
2003.  Final Report of the Immigrant Community
Assessment, prepared under contract #14830 for Met-
ropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson
County, Tennessee, August. Available online at
ftp://ftp.nashville.gov/web/finance/immigrant-
community-assessment-nashville.pdf.
Cornfield, D.  2004.  “Immigrants, Employment, and Labor
Action: Strategies for Addressing Immigrant Employ-
ment Needs in Nashville, Tennessee.” Presented at the
99th annual meeting of the American Sociological
Association, San Francisco, August.
Fine, Janice. Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at
the Edge of the Dream, Cornell University Press ILR
Imprint, January 2006.
Swarns, R. 2003, July 20. “U.S. a Place of Miracles for
Somali Refugees,” New York Times, pp. 1, 23. 
continued from page 27 A traditional
organizing model
doesn’t work with
this population of
entertainment and
tourism workers,
taxi drivers, and
temporary workers,
who frequently
work for agencies
committing wage
and hour violations. 
28

Final Report of the Immigrant Community Assessment, prepared under contract #14830 for Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County,

Immigrants, Employment, and Labor Action: Strategies for Addressing Immigrant Employment Needs in Nashville, Tennessee.” Presented at the 99th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association,

U.S. a Place of Miracles for Somali Refugees,”

Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream,

Immigrants, Employment, and Labor Unions: Nashville—Prospects for Coalition

http://www.mtsu.edu/~berc/tnbiz/immigration/canak.pdf

Immigrants, Employment, and Labor Unions: Nashville—Prospects for Coalition

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