This study exposes the human side of the decline of the U.S. auto industry, tracing the experiences of two key groups of General Motors workers: those who took a cash buyout and left the factory, and ...those who remained and felt the effects of new technology and other workplace changes. Milkman's extensive interviews and surveys of workers from the Linden, New Jersey, GM plant reveal their profound hatred for the factory regime—a longstanding discontent made worse by the decline of the auto workers' union in the 1980s. One of the leading social historians of the auto industry, Ruth Milkman moves between changes in the wider industry and those in the Linden plant, bringing both a workers' perspective and a historical perspective to the study.
Milkman finds that, contrary to the assumption in much of the literature on deindustrialization, the Linden buyout-takers express no nostalgia for the high-paying manufacturing jobs they left behind. Given the chance to make a new start in the late 1980s, they were eager to leave the plant with its authoritarian, prison-like conditions, and few have any regrets about their decision five years later. Despite the fact that the factory was retooled for robotics and that the management hoped to introduce a new participatory system of industrial relations, workers who remained express much less satisfaction with their lives and jobs.
Milkman is adamant about allowing the workers to speak for themselves, and their hopes, frustrations, and insights add fresh and powerful perspectives to a debate that is often carried out over the heads of those whose lives are most affected by changes in the industry.
Sharp decreases in union membership over the last fifty years have caused many to dismiss organized labor as irrelevant in today’s labor market. In the private sector, only 8 percent of workers today ...are union members, down from 24 percent as recently as 1973. Yet developments in Southern California—including the successful Justice for Janitors campaign—suggest that reports of organized labor’s demise may have been exaggerated. In L.A. Story, sociologist and labor expert Ruth Milkman explains how Los Angeles, once known as a company town hostile to labor, became a hotbed for unionism, and how immigrant service workers emerged as the unlikely leaders in the battle for workers’ rights. L.A. Story shatters many of the myths of modern labor with a close look at workers in four industries in Los Angeles: building maintenance, trucking, construction, and garment production. Though many blame deunionization and deteriorating working conditions on immigrants, Milkman shows that this conventional wisdom is wrong. Her analysis reveals that worsening work environments preceded the influx of foreign-born workers, who filled the positions only after native-born workers fled these suddenly undesirable jobs. Ironically, L.A. Story shows that immigrant workers, who many union leaders feared were incapable of being organized because of language constraints and fear of deportation, instead proved highly responsive to organizing efforts. As Milkman demonstrates, these mostly Latino workers came to their service jobs in the United States with a more group-oriented mentality than the American workers they replaced. Some also drew on experience in their native countries with labor and political struggles. This stock of fresh minds and new ideas, along with a physical distance from the east-coast centers of labor’s old guard, made Los Angeles the center of a burgeoning workers’ rights movement. Los Angeles’ recent labor history highlights some of the key ingredients of the labor movement’s resurgence—new leadership, latitude to experiment with organizing techniques, and a willingness to embrace both top-down and bottom-up strategies. L.A. Story’s clear and thorough assessment of these developments points to an alternative, high-road national economic agenda that could provide workers with a way out of poverty and into the middle class.
Building on Karl Mannheim's theory of generations, this address argues that U.S. Millennials comprise a new political generation with lived experiences and worldviews that set them apart from their ...elders. Not only are they the first generation of "digital natives," but, although they are more educated than any previous U.S. generation, they face a labor market in which precarity is increasingly the norm. And despite proclamations to the contrary, they confront persistent racial and gender disparities, discrimination against sexual minorities, and widening class inequality—all of which they understand in the framework of "intersectionality." This address analyzes the four largest social movements spearheaded by college-educated Millennials: the young undocumented immigrant "Dreamers," the 2011 Occupy Wall Street uprising, the campus movement protesting sexual assault, and the Black Lives Matter movement. All four reflect the distinctive historical experience of the Millennial generation, but they vary along two cross-cutting dimensions: (1) the social characteristics of activists and leaders, and (2) the dominant modes of organization and strategic repertoires.
Dan Clawson, who served as RC44’s Vice President from 2006 to 2010, died suddenly on 7 May 2019 of a heart attack. He was a prolific labour sociologist, and a brilliant, tireless organiser with an ...unwavering commitment to social justice. He came of age in the late 1960s and was indelibly marked by the New Left. Dedication to participatory democracy, feminism and progressive politics permeated his scholarship, his activism, as well as his personal conduct over the years. He had truly extraordinary leadership abilities, and yet was utterly unpretentious – a rare soul who never craved personal recognition.
Ruth Milkman's groundbreaking research in women's labor history has contributed important perspectives on work and unionism in the United States. On Gender, Labor, and Inequality presents four ...decades of Milkman's essential writings, tracing the parallel evolutions of her ideas and the field she helped define.
This article argues that the immigrant labor movement in the contemporary United States has three distinctive strands. The first involves traditional trade unionism. Although US unions once supported ...restrictive immigration policies, that has changed dramatically in the twenty-first century. Several leading US unions have recruited Latino immigrants employed in low-wage janitorial, retail, and hospitality work, and to a lesser extent in residential construction and in manufacturing. And both major union federations now support immigrant rights and a path to legalization for the undocumented. The second strand of the immigrant labor movement revolves around the advocacy and organizing efforts of labor-oriented NGOs - known in the US as 'worker centers,' which number well over 100 and are scattered across the country. Finally, a vibrant immigrant rights movement has taken shape in recent years, which represents a third type of immigrant labor activism. Although it uses the rhetoric of human rights and/or civil rights, its quest for legal status for the unauthorized is motivated primarily by the desire to improve immigrant employment opportunities and conditions. Despite tensions and differences that divide these three strands of immigrant labor activism, their basic goals and activities are increasingly synergistic and sometimes directly intersect.
Este artículo sostiene que el movimiento del trabajo de inmigrantes en los Estados Unidos contemporáneos, tiene tres tendencias distintivas. La primera incluye el sindicalismo tradicional. A pesar de que en otro tiempo los sindicatos de E.E.U.U. apoyaban las políticas de inmigración restrictivas, esto ha cambiado dramáticamente en el siglo veintiuno. Varios de los principales sindicatos de E.E.U.U., han reclutado a inmigrantes latinos empleados en trabajos de bajo ingreso, como mantenimiento y limpieza, ventas al por menor y hospitalidad, y en menor grado, en la construcción residencial y manufactura. Y ahora, dos de los mayores sindicatos apoyan los derechos de los inmigrantes y la ruta hacia la legalización de los indocumentados. La segunda tendencia del movimiento del trabajo de los inmigrantes gira en torno a los esfuerzos de la defensa de las ONG orientadas al trabajo - conocida como "centros de trabajadores", cuyo número llega a más de cien y están repartidos por el país. Finalmente, un movimiento de derechos de inmigrantes vibrante ha tomado forma en años recientes, lo que representa un tercer tipo de activismo de trabajadores inmigrantes. Su búsqueda por un estatus legal a los no autorizados se ha motivado principalmente, por el deseo de mejorar las oportunidades y condiciones del empleo a los inmigrantes, a pesar de que usa la retórica de los derechos humanos y/o civiles. Sus actividades y metas básicas son cada vez más sinérgicas y a veces se cruzan directamente, al margen de las tensiones y diferencias que dividen estas tres tendencias del activismo de los trabajadores inmigrantes.
本文认为当代美国的移民劳工运动可分为各不相同的三股。第一股与传统工会运动有关。尽管美国工会曾一度支持限制性移民政策，但在21世纪已发生了巨大变化。几大主要美国工会已聘用拉美裔移民从事低工资的门房、零售和酒店工作。两大主要工会联盟现在也支持移民权利和将非法移民合法化。第二股移民工人运动围绕着劳工导向的非政府组织（这些组织在美国也叫做"工人中心"）的倡导和组织活动，其数量在100个以上且分散在全国各处。最后，一场活跃的移民权利运动近年来已经成形，它代表了第三类移民劳工运动。尽管它使用了人权和/或公民权利的词藻，但它给予非法移民以合法地位的诉求，主要是由改善移民就业机会和就业条件的愿望驱动的。尽管这三股移民劳工运动之间存在着紧张和差异，但它们的基本目标和活动越来越相互协同，有时直接交叉。
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Recruiting the growing numbers of immigrants into union ranks is imperative for the besieged U.S. labor movement. Nowhere is this task more pressing than in California, where immigrants make up a ...quarter of the population and hold many of the manual jobs that were once key strongholds of organized labor. The first book to offer in-depth coverage of this timely topic, Organizing Immigrants analyzes the recent history of and prospects for union organizing among foreign-born workers in the nation's most populous state. Are foreign-born workers more or less receptive to unionization than their native-born counterparts? Are undocumented immigrants as likely as legal residents and naturalized citizens to join unions? How much does the political, cultural, and ethnic background of immigrants matter? What are the social, political, and economic conditions that facilitate immigrant unionization? Drawing on newly collected evidence, the contributors to this volume explore these and other questions, analyzing immigrant employment and unionization trends in California and examining recent strikes and organizing efforts involving foreign-born workers. The case studies include both successful and unsuccessful campaigns, innovative and traditional strategies, and a variety of industrial and service sector settings.
Unfinished Businessdocuments the history and impact of California's paid family leave program, the first of its kind in the United States, which began in 2004. Drawing on original data from fieldwork ...and surveys of employers, workers, and the larger California adult population, Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum analyze in detail the effect of the state's landmark paid family leave on employers and workers. They also explore the implications of California's decade-long experience with paid family leave for the nation, which is engaged in ongoing debate about work-family policies.
Milkman and Appelbaum recount the process by which California workers and their allies built a coalition to win passage of paid family leave in the state legislature, and lay out the lessons for advocates in other states and localities, as well as the nation. Because paid leave enjoys extensive popular support across the political spectrum, campaigns for such laws have an excellent chance of success if some basic preconditions are met. Do paid family leave and similar programs impose significant costs and burdens on employers? Business interests argue that they do and routinely oppose any and all legislative initiatives in this area. Once the program took effect in California, this book shows, large majorities of employers themselves reported that its impact on productivity, profitability, and performance was negligible or positive.
Unfinished Businessdemonstrates that the California program is well managed and easy to access, but that awareness of its existence remains limited. Moreover, those who need the program's benefits most urgently-low-wage workers, young workers, immigrants, and disadvantaged minorities-are least likely to know about it. As a result, the long-standing pattern of inequality in access to paid leave has remained largely intact.
Domestic workers—specifically in-home health care workers, childcare providers, and house cleaners—are generally concentrated at the bottom of the US labor market. Yet, there is also substantial ...stratification among and within each of these occupations. This article explores the heterogeneity in pay and working conditions among domestic workers in the 21st-century United States, which has been understudied to date. After sketching national patterns of stratification in this set of occupations, the focus shifts to qualitative evidence on inequalities among domestic workers drawn from focus groups conducted in New York City shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the impact of the pandemic on in-home domestic workers is briefly considered.
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