Description
Book SynopsisNew York City boasts a higher rate of unionization than any other major U.S. cityroughly double the national averagebut the city's unions have suffered steady and relentless decline, especially in the private sector. With higher levels of income inequality than any other large city in the nation, New York today is home to a large and growing precariatworkers with little or no employment security who are often excluded from the basic legal protections that unions struggled for and won in the twentieth century.
Community-based organizations and worker centers have developed the most promising approach to organizing the new precariat and to addressing the crisis facing the labor movement. Home to some of the nation's very first worker centers, New York City today has the single largest concentration of these organizations in the United States, yet until now no one has documented their efforts. New Labor in New York includes thirteen fine-grained case studies of recent campaigns
Trade Review
The volume is written for a broader audience, and so it does not belong only on the bookshelves of academics; it should be given to any labor, community, or immigrant rights activist. Not only describing success stories but also laying out many of the successful failures (p. 84) as well as challenges the organizations face, enhances our understanding of how to move forward.... The contributors to this volume offer a glimpse into what goes on berhind the scenes in the life of your street vendor, your super-market cashier, your domestic worker, your restaurant cook, or your Broadway artist.
-- Maite Tapia * ILR Review *
While grounded in New York City, the book contains many important lessons for labour activists and academics beyond the five boroughs and makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature on organizing the precariat and especially to scholarship on worker centres and other models of community unionism.... ReadingNew Labor in New Yorkit became clear that from [the] cross-fertilization of resources and ideas, tactics and strategies, experiences and wisdom, that a powerful, transformative labour movement can grow.
-- Simon Black * Labour/Le Travail *
Table of ContentsIntroduction. Toward a New Labor Movement?: New York City's Precariat
Ruth MilkmanPart I. IMMIGRANT UNION ORGANIZING AND UNION-COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS1. Taking Aim at Target: West Indian Immigrant Workers Confront the Difficulties of Big-Box Organizing
Ben Becker2. Organizing Immigrant Supermarket Workers inBrooklyn: A Union-Community Partnership
Ben Shapiro3. Faith, Community, and Labor: Challenges and Opportunities in the New York City Living Wage Campaign
Jeff Broxmeyer and Erin Michaels4. UNITED New York: Fighting for a Fair Economy in "The Year of the Protester"
Lynne TurnerPart II. ORGANIZING THE PRECARIAT, OLD AND NEW5. Infusing Craft Identity into a Noncraft Industry: The Retail Action Project
Peter Ikeler6. Street Vendors in and against the Global City: VAMOS Unidos
Kathleen Dunn7. Protecting and Representing Workers in the New Gig Economy: The Case of the Freelancers Union
Martha KingPart III. IMMIGRANT STRUGGLES FOR JUSTICE IN AND BEYOND THE WORKPLACE8. The High-Touch Model: Make the Road New York's Participatory Approach to Immigrant Organizing
Jane McAlevey9. Bridging City Trenches: The New York Civic Participation Project
Steve McFarland10. Creating "Open Space" to Promote Social Justice: The MinKwon Center for Community Action
Susan McQuadePart IV. GOING NATIONAL: NEW YORK’S WORKER CENTERS EXPAND11. An Appetite for Justice: The Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York
Marnie Brady12. Not Waiting for Permission: The New York Taxi Workers Alliance and Twenty-First-Century Bargaining
Mischa Gaus13. "Prepare to Win": Domestic Workers United’s Strategic Transition following Passage of the New York Domestic Workers Bill of Rights
Harmony GoldbergAfterword: Lessons from the New Labor Movement for the Old
Ed Ott
