Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy 9780801459054

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Working for Justice

Working for Justice THE L.A. MODEL OF ORGANIZING AND ADVOCACY Edited by

Ruth Milkman, Joshua Bloom, and Victor Narro

ILR PRESS an imprint of

Cornell University Press,

ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2010 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2010 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2010 Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Working for justice : the L.A. model of organizing and advocacy / edited by Ruth Milkman, Joshua Bloom, and Victor Narro. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-4858-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8014-7580-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Labor movement—California—Los Angeles. 2. Labor unions— Organizing—California—Los Angeles. 3. Working poor—California— Los Angeles. 4. Foreign workers—Labor unions—Organizing—California— Los Angeles. 5. Community centers—California—Los Angeles. 6. Community organization—California—Los Angeles. I. Milkman, Ruth, 1954 – II. Bloom, Joshua. III. Narro, Victor, 1963 – IV. Title. HD6519.L75W67 2010 331.8809794'94—dc22

2009034828

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Contents

Foreword

vii

Joshua Bloom

Acknowledgments Introduction

xi

1

Ruth Milkman

PART I

Worker Centers, Ethnic Communities, and Immigrant Rights Advocacy

1 The Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance: Spatializing Justice in an Ethnic “Enclave” 23 Jong Bum Kwon

2 Organizing Workers along Ethnic Lines: The Pilipino Workers’ Center 49 Nazgol Ghandnoosh

3 Alliance-Building and Organizing for Immigrant Rights: The Case of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles 71 Caitlin C. Patler

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CONTENTS

4 Building Power for “Noncitizen Citizenship”: A Case Study of the Multi-Ethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Network 89 Chinyere Osuji

PART II

Occupational and Industry-Focused Organizing Campaigns

5 The Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance

109

Jacqueline Leavitt and Gary Blasi

6 From Legal Advocacy to Organizing: Progressive Lawyering and the Los Angeles Car Wash Campaign 125 Susan Garea and Sasha Alexandra Stern

7 NDLON and the History of Day Labor Organizing in Los Angeles 141 Maria Dziembowska

8 The Garment Worker Center and the “Forever 21” Campaign Nicole A. Archer, Ana Luz Gonzalez, Kimi Lee, Simmi Gandhi, and Delia Herrera

PART III

Unions and Low-Wage Worker Organizing

9 Ally to Win: Black Community Leaders and SEIU’s L. A. Security Unionization Campaign 167 Joshua Bloom

10 From the Shop to the Streets: UNITE HERE Organizing in Los Angeles Hotels 191 Forrest Stuart

11 The Janitorial Industry and the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund 211 Karina Muñiz

Afterword

233

Victor Narro

Notes

245

References Contributors Index

287

265 283

154

Foreword Joshua Bloom

This book is the fruit of an intensive two-year collaboration between the chapter authors and activists working to advance the interests of low-wage workers in Los Angeles. It documents some of the freshest and most effective campaigns of recent years. The initial idea for this volume grew out of the Public Sociologists Working Group in the UCLA Sociology Department. As a group of budding sociologists, we sought to consciously take our political commitments as the source of research problems and turn the discipline’s scientific methods toward addressing them. In that context, I wanted to launch a collaborative project, bringing our collective expertise into dialogue with a group of local activists and advocates, what Michael Burawoy has called the “double conversation” of organic public sociology. I discussed the idea with Ruth Milkman, who at the time directed the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE), and was the working group’s faculty adviser. After brainstorming about potential directions, she recruited Victor Narro. Before he became a Project Director at the UCLA Labor Center (an IRLE unit), Victor was directly involved in many of the campaigns documented in the pages that follow. Starting in the fall of 2006, the three of us set about organizing this project with the goal of co-editing this book. Authors for six of the chapters are graduate students in or close to the Public Sociologists working group; Victor and Ruth recruited the rest of the contributors—graduate and professional school students, postdoctoral scholars, as well as faculty—from other UCLA departments. vii

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Going back at least to Max Weber, many theorists have argued that what makes social research scientific is its logic of inquiry; but that research questions themselves can never be neutral—they are always rooted in social commitments. But who decides what questions are important to research? Rarely do the subjects of research have a direct role in determining which questions are worth pursuing. Instead, research agendas are usually set by researchers in terms of established academic debates. As Antonio Gramsci argued long ago, traditional social science reproduces and extends the dominant ideas of the society that produces it, and in so doing, helps reproduce dominant social relations. This volume takes a different approach. Although the authors are solely responsible for the final content of their chapters, community leaders were centrally involved in the process that generated this volume. Victor played a critical role here, drawing on his own deep personal networks to enlist the participation of activists, advocates, and campaign leaders as community partners in the project. That gave the authors unparalleled access to the organizations and campaigns analyzed in the case studies that follow. We began work on each chapter by discussing potential research questions as a group, typically arranging a meeting between the author, the community, and the three of us. Once the collaborative relationship was established, each chapter author drafted a research proposal. Community partners read and commented on these proposals, helping to shape the question that authors would seek to analyze. They also worked closely with the authors, setting up interviews with campaign participants and allies (in some cases multiple reinterviews) and providing access to a range of primary documents. Chapter authors also relied on documents from public sources as well as secondary literature for alternate perspectives and to check facts. But in most cases, the dearth of published information would have made the in-depth analysis authors achieved impossible if not for the access provided by this collaborative process. The community partners remained involved as the chapters developed, reviewing successive drafts and offering extensive feedback. In one case—that of the Garment Worker Center—community partners became so invested in the writing process that three staff members became coauthors of the chapter. The project had another collaborative dimension as well. The authors and editors met regularly as a group, starting in January 2007, to discuss the project as a whole as well as the individual case studies. Over the next year and a half the group met for several hours at least once every other week, and sometimes more frequently. In May 2007, we held a daylong meeting with all the authors and their community partners to discuss each case

FOREWORD

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in depth. Over the following summer, we collectively read and discussed relevant secondary works, and developed annotated bibliographies. In the fall of 2007, the authors and editors met weekly to discuss first drafts of each chapter. Community partners attended some of these meetings as well. All the participants read the paper in advance and provided both written and verbal comments. In this way we created a vibrant exchange of ideas across the cases. In early 2008, we created thematic subgroups, which met with the editors to read and discuss each project a few more times. This allowed authors to develop their ideas across cases within a smaller group, with more intensive and sustained critique. Then, in the spring of 2008, the full group of authors reconvened in a series of sessions where revised drafts were presented, with the editors acting as discussants. On June 20, 2008, we held a public miniconference at the UCLA Downtown Labor Center to present our findings to the broader community of advocates and scholars. We invited three prominent labor experts to serve as commentators: Dan Clawson, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Janice Fine, from Rutgers University; and Nik Theodore, from the University of Illinois at Chicago. In the months that followed, Ruth Milkman worked individually with the authors to further revise each chapter into publishable form. The project and the book have three goals. The first is simply to document these cutting-edge organizations and campaigns. Many of the cases have not been written about before, and none have previously been studied in such depth. Second, we aim to provide readers with a rigorous analysis of each case, revealing the complex organizational and political dynamics of Los Angeles’s rich labor movement and community-based organizations, which have often succeeded in advancing the cause of low-wage workers even in an era when overall conditions were eroding. Finally, by providing an analytic perspective on these recent campaigns, we hope to offer a contribution to public sociology and to the ongoing national dialogue among scholars, advocates, and activists about the possibilities for low-wage worker organizing in the twenty-first century.

Acknowledgments

The editors thank the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UCLA for its generous support of this project. We also are grateful to Terri Zhu for her meticulous and cheerful assistance in preparing the manuscript, Karen M. Laun for her excellent copyediting, and Fran Benson of Cornell University Press for her support from its earliest stage of the project that led to this book. Thanks also to Dan Clawson, Janice Fine, and Nik Theodore, who offered insightful and extremely helpful comments on earlier drafts of the case study chapters at a critical stage in the development of this volume.

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Introduction Ruth Milkman

Union and community-based organizing and advocacy campaigns among low-wage workers have proliferated across the United States in recent years. Although they have been unable to reverse the dramatic decades-long deterioration in the pay, working conditions, and employment security of those who struggle to survive at the bottom of the labor market, these economic justice campaigns have significantly increased public awareness of the plight of low-wage workers and have won some important victories on the local level. Both labor unions and the growing number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) known as “worker centers” have spearheaded such efforts, using distinct yet increasingly overlapping strategies. The burgeoning immigrant rights movement has been actively engaged in this arena as well—reflecting the fact that a large (and rising) proportion of the low-wage workforce is comprised of undocumented immigrants. Los Angeles is a national pacesetter in the new wave of low-wage worker organizing and advocacy; indeed this is a linchpin of the city’s growing reputation as a unique urban laboratory of progressive political experimentation. The L.A. labor movement began to recognize and actively exploit the potential for organizing low-wage immigrant workers starting in the 1980s

Thanks to Joshua Bloom, Janice Fine, Jackie Leavitt, and an anonymous reviewer for Cornell University Press for their astute comments on earlier drafts of this introduction. The ideas put forward here were also influenced by the insightful presentations of Dan Clawson, Janice Fine, and Nik Theodore at the June 2008 miniconference described in the foreword.

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(Milkman 2006), well ahead of unions in other parts of the United States. Los Angeles is also home to several of the nation’s leading worker centers— nonunion, community-based organizations that sprouted up all across the country in the 1980s and 1990s (Bobo 2009, chap. 6; Fine 2006; Gordon 2005). And crucially, whereas in other cities labor unions and worker centers tend to operate independently of one another, in Los Angeles they interact regularly and have developed, over time, a shared strategic repertoire. Also contributing to Los Angeles’s distinctiveness is the fact that no other U.S. metropolitan area has a larger concentration of undocumented immigrants, and in no other have immigrants been more politically engaged. Indeed, in 2006, when immigrants across the nation took to the streets to protest the punitive immigration reform legislation then under debate in the U.S. Congress, the largest and most animated demonstrations were in Los Angeles.1 That massive explosion of protest helped to raise the public profile of a rich variety of low-wage immigrant worker organizing and advocacy efforts that had taken shape in Los Angeles during the preceding decades, led by both unions and worker centers (see Wang and Winn 2006). This volume profiles eleven of the most prominent such efforts. It includes examples of L.A. worker centers that define their mission in terms of ethnicity, geography, or immigration status; worker centers that focus on specific occupations or industries; as well as a selection of recent union organizing drives among low-wage workers. Taken together, the case studies collected here suggest the contours of a distinctive L.A. model of economic justice organizing and advocacy. Central to that model is the shared strategic repertoire on which both unions and worker centers in Los Angeles have come to rely, representing an emerging synthesis of what were once distinctly different strategies. Initially, many worker center founders in Los Angeles (and elsewhere) explicitly rejected traditional trade unionism as an outdated and overly bureaucratic form of organization, ill-suited to the challenges of the late twentieth century. Although leaders of other local NGOs, whose focus was on supporting the rights of immigrants and refugees but who later took on worker center–like activities, were less hostile to unionism, they too saw organized labor as largely irrelevant to their own efforts. The worker centers and the immigrant groups alike concentrated their energies on advocacy and intensive grassroots leadership development, not on recruiting large numbers of members or establishing collective bargaining relations with employers. Over time, however, many of the L.A. worker centers began to emulate the successful strategies developed by local unions that were actively engaged in immigrant organizing; some even launched independent unionization drives.

INTRODUCTION

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Unions were initially at least as skeptical about the worker centers’ strategic approach as the worker centers were about unionism. But as the worker centers gained credibility in the progressive community, key L.A. unions that were already engaged in organizing immigrants, like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and UNITE HERE,2 began to adopt some of the community-based approaches to low-wage worker advocacy and organizing that the centers had developed. Thus, over time, what were at first distinctive and competing organizing models gradually began to converge, and a shared strategic repertoire took shape that involves a mix of union and worker center approaches. Some elements in this repertoire have parallels and precedents in other times and places, and many have been adopted by organizations around the country. But the model as a whole—an emerging synthesis of union and worker center strategies—is rooted in the social ferment of contemporary Los Angeles. Los Angeles has neither the largest number of worker centers nor the highest rate of unionization among major U.S. cities.3 But what may be more significant is that both types of organizations are more tightly networked in Los Angeles than are their counterparts elsewhere in the country. In her comprehensive study of U.S. worker centers, Janice Fine observes that whereas such organizations are generally “under-networked,” Los Angeles is the exception to this rule: “Local networks . . . in Los Angeles enable worker centers to aggregate their resources and magnify their impacts,” she notes. “In cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, no such local networks of worker centers currently exist” (Fine 2006, 240). Local unions are unusually well-integrated in Los Angeles as well, largely due to the efforts of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, one of the nation’s most active central labor councils. The “Fed” has built formidable political capacity and has strong ties to the Latino community and to the city’s vibrant immigrant rights advocacy groups (Frank and Wong 2004). Most important, in addition to networks among L.A. worker centers, and among unions thanks to the Fed’s efforts, the city’s worker centers and unions have become increasingly interlinked with one another over time, with staff members moving easily (and frequently) between the two types of organizations. This is a distinctive feature of the L.A. political landscape. The L.A. model of organizing and advocacy may be understood in part as the product of “mimetic isomorphism,” or the process through which organizations facing similar environmental challenges and uncertainties imitate other successful organizations (DiMaggio and Powell 1983). Yet the city’s unions and worker centers are rarely in direct competition; on the contrary, they regularly provide one another with advice and support. If on occasion L.A. worker centers have vied with one another for funding from

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the same foundations, cooperative efforts among them are also common, and some centers have even served as fiscal sponsors or incubators for one another. Indeed, the L.A. model, with its synthesis of union and worker center approaches, is less the product of organizational competition than of an interactive process of organizational cross-fertilization within a vibrant local advocacy network—similar to the “transnational advocacy networks” Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (1998, 1–2) have analyzed. That synergy evolved gradually, as both unions and worker centers confronted the challenges of organizing the city’s massive and relatively homogeneous undocumented immigrant population. Over time, the L.A. labor movement—which was ahead of its counterparts elsewhere in the United States in actively recruiting low-wage immigrants (including the undocumented) into its ranks as early as the 1980s, but which nevertheless faced enormous challenges—developed relationships with both worker centers and immigrant rights groups in local advocacy networks focused on economic justice. The city’s unique political economy also helps explain the emergence of the L.A. model of low-wage worker organizing and advocacy.

The Growth of Low-Wage Work in Los Angeles The model developed in the context of dramatic social and economic changes that reshaped southern California starting in the 1970s. Low-wage work proliferated as globalization, deregulation, and neoliberal economic restructuring undermined both labor unions and labor law enforcement, historically the twin bulwarks of protection for workers’ living standards. This great transformation was by no means limited to Los Angeles, but it began earlier and developed especially quickly there, which in turn helped to galvanize the efforts of local unions and NGOs. The L.A. economy’s expansion in the twentieth century’s closing decades was accompanied by widening inequality between rich and poor, the rapid spread of labor law violations, and a huge influx of new immigrants. Indeed, Los Angeles was on the leading edge of broader trends that soon fostered the growth of low-wage work throughout the nation. The real wages of U.S. workers without a college education had been stagnant or declining since the mid-1970s, despite increasing productivity, even as earnings rose among managers and professionals. Job security also was severely eroded in this period, as were benefits like health insurance and pensions, as well as vacations and paid sick leave (Mishel et al. 2007). And as employers sought to transfer market risk to subcontractors or directly to workers themselves, they assigned a growing number of jobs “temporary” status,

INTRODUCTION

5

even as day labor corners and other types of informal employment arrangements proliferated. Similarly, more and more workers found themselves classified—often incorrectly—as “independent contractors,” often placing them beyond the reach of wage and hour law and other forms of legal protection (Kalleberg et al. 2000). Even for those workers still covered by traditional workplace laws and regulations, violations became commonplace in this era. Labor law enforcement steadily deteriorated, with reduced staffing and funding, and employers increasingly ignored minimum wage and overtime laws, health and safety regulations, and other established legal standards (Bernhardt et al. 2007; Zatz 2008). These problems multiplied as union density declined sharply across the nation, not only because collective bargaining often generated higher standards than those required by law, but also because unions’ capacity to monitor workplaces for labor law violations was greatly reduced. Deunionization was both a result of the broader economic transformation and helped to accelerate it, as more and more employers successfully undermined existing unions and vigilantly sought to combat new ones with the help of antiunion labor “consultants” (Logan 2002). Deindustrialization and outsourcing further contributed to the downward pressure on wages, working conditions, and job security among less-educated workers. In the manufacturing sector, indeed, the reemergence of sweatshop conditions was driven directly by the pressure of global competition. Yet subminimum pay and labor law violations also became the norm in industries that are inherently local and thus invulnerable to outsourcing—such as construction, transportation, and the rapidly growing service sector. Thus not only globalization and outsourcing, but also deregulation and deunionization, drove the process of labor market transformation. All these developments converged especially early and with particular intensity in Los Angeles, a city whose political economy had originally developed on the basis of cheap labor, as Carey McWilliams (1946, 276– 77) observed long ago. In keeping with this historical legacy, by the end of the twentieth century southern California had the dubious distinction of being a national leader in the “low-road” economic restructuring that fostered the growth of low-wage work, labor law violations, and precarious employment arrangements. Los Angeles experienced impressive economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s, but the income and wealth generated by that growth was not shared with the city’s burgeoning population of low-wage workers. Instead, inequality surged to levels even greater than those in the nation as a whole, along with a greater degree of polarization between “good” and “bad” jobs than in other regions (see Milkman and

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Dwyer 2002). During these years, Los Angeles became notorious for an underground economy where transactions were increasingly conducted on a cash basis, and where payroll taxes and other types of regulation were routinely evaded (Haydamack and Flaming 2005). If low-road growth predicated on low-wage work was in keeping with the region’s earlier history, in two other respects contemporary Los Angeles presents a sharp contrast to the past. First, whereas during the first half of the twentieth century the L.A. working class had been overwhelmingly U.S.–born (Fogelson 1967, 76–82), today immigrants comprise over a third of the city’s population and close to half of its overall workforce. The L.A. foreign-born population, predominantly comprised of Mexicans and Central Americans, is also far more homogeneous than its counterparts in other cities. Moreover, the L.A. metropolitan area is home to about a million of the nation’s estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants, more than any other part of the nation (Fortuny et al. 2007). Undocumented immigrants, overwhelmingly Latino, are concentrated in the city’s manufacturing, construction, and service industries, where wages are low, benefits scarce, and labor law violations widespread. But the erosion of wages and conditions was not caused by the influx of unauthorized immigrants to the region. Rather the deterioration of pay and conditions in these jobs largely preceded the immigrant influx; increased immigrant employment in Los Angeles (and later nationally) was thus more a consequence than a cause of that deterioration (see Milkman 2006, 104–13). The second respect in which recent L.A. history marks a departure from the past is in regard to the city’s organized labor movement. Whereas a century ago Los Angeles was an “open-shop” territory where unions were notoriously weak, in recent years it has earned a reputation as one of the few parts of the United States where organized labor is thriving, against all odds. Even as union density in the nation as a whole has continued its relentless decline, in Los Angeles (and in the state of California as a whole) density has been flat, and in some years it has risen substantially, since the mid-1990s (Milkman and Kye 2008). As I have argued elsewhere, this reflects (among other factors) the historical weakness of manufacturing and of industrial unionism in southern California. The dominance of nonfactory unionism in the local labor movement, in an earlier era, contributed to L.A. labor’s relative backwardness; but in the age of deindustrialization the weakness of industrial unionism became a source of comparative advantage for the region. In addition, to the surprise of many observers, the vast and relatively homogenous flow of immigration to southern California that took off in the 1970s helped reinvigorate the city’s labor movement (Milkman 2006).

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Birth of the L.A. Model Located at the epicenter of the labor market transformations of recent decades, Los Angeles has also been a leading site of innovative political responses to those transformations. Starting in the late 1980s, the city’s unions began organizing the low-wage and immigrant workers at the bottom of the labor market—most notably in the SEIU’s “Justice for Janitors” campaign. The worker centers that proliferated a few years later also contributed to the city’s rich mosaic of advocacy and organizing efforts, along with a critical mass of immigrant rights NGOs. Over time, networks and synergies developed among these various types of organizations, all of which were developing economic justice campaigns. The first wave of initiatives come directly from the labor movement and helped anchor the efforts that followed. Once a backwater of insularity and conservatism, in this period L.A. unions rose to the challenge posed by neoliberal employment restructuring far more effectively than their counterparts elsewhere in the nation. As Mike Davis (2000, 145) so aptly puts it, Los Angeles became “the major R&D center for 21st century trade unionism.” Starting in the 1980s, some of the city’s leading unions launched pioneering organizing drives among low-wage and immigrant workers. Early on, they learned to avoid the traditional National Labor Relations Board election– based approach to seeking union recognition. Instead, the L.A. affiliates of SEIU and UNITE HERE adopted a mix of top-down and bottom-up tactics to exert direct pressure on employers and to mobilize workers at the grassroots level. Their campaigns focused on organizing low-wage janitors, hotel workers, and others—many of them foreign-born and often undocumented. Highlighting the contrast between the impoverishment of low-wage immigrants and the vast wealth of Los Angeles’ affluent population, the unions adroitly deployed the language of social justice to stake out the moral high ground—setting a template for the discursive strategies the worker centers would adopt later. In this initial wave of efforts to organize low-wage immigrant workers, Los Angeles’ innovative unions fit precisely into the pattern identified by Kim Voss and Rachel Sherman (2000): they faced a crisis of organizational survival in the wake of successful employer deunionization strategies; they had strong support from the national leaderships of the unions with which they were affiliated; and their leadership included individuals with experience in social movements from outside the labor movement. Adding to the mix, among the architects of the L.A. immigrant unionization campaigns launched in the 1980s and 1990s were several seasoned veterans of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union. These organizers now

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confronted conditions in the urban low-wage labor market that bore a surprisingly close resemblance to those they had found among farm workers in the 1960s and 1970s. That these former UFWers had previous experience organizing immigrants proved to be an asset as well. SEIU and UNITE HERE in particular drew on many elements of the UFW’s strategic repertoire (Shaw 2008). For example, just as the UFW had done in the 1960s, the L.A. low-wage union organizing drives of the 1980s and 1990s—of which the SEIU’s Justice for Janitors campaign soon became the iconic case— included extensive outreach to allies in the wider community, like churches and community-based organizations. Such coalition-building helped the L.A. labor movement overcome the social isolation that all too often had characterized it in the past. Building on such UFW-like efforts, and simultaneously leveraging longstanding relationships with elected officials, the L.A. local unions affiliated with SEIU and UNITE HERE carved out a bold strategic approach to low-wage and immigrant organizing in the 1980s and 1990s. They were among the first in the nation to actively promote living wage laws and also led in negotiating “community benefits agreements,” under which developers agree to provide new jobs and other benefits in exchange for permission to build new projects (Gottlieb et al. 2005). In addition, starting in the mid-1990s, the L.A. labor movement decisively broke from the populist anti-immigrant backlash embodied in California’s Proposition 187. Instead, the unions reached out to the growing Latino immigrant community, encouraging naturalization and voting registration among those eligible. This led to the consolidation of a powerful labor-Latino alliance that expanded the unions’ political clout and laid the groundwork for enduring ties with the growing immigrant rights movement (Milkman 2006, 131–33). In this period, L.A. unions gained a national reputation as leaders of labor movement revitalization. Meanwhile, however, with a much lower public profile, a variety of nonunion forms of organizing and advocacy among and on behalf of low-wage workers had begun to take shape in the city, led by the new worker centers. Their campaigns often focused on occupations in which unionization seemed difficult or impossible—such as day laborers or domestic workers—or tackled industries that unions had virtually abandoned as “unorganizable,” such as garment manufacturing or restaurants. And unlike late-twentieth-century unions, they took up not only workplace issues but also the social needs of low-wage workers, such as education and housing (see Fine 2007, 341). Worker center leaders and staff—typically highly educated young people, often women—were committed to social justice for low-wage workers

INTRODUCTION

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but often ambivalent about trade unions, which they saw as ill-suited to the challenges of organizing informal economy workers, and also as overly bureaucratic, inflexible, and conservative. Some centers were organized on the basis of ethnic or national identities, like the Pilipino Worker Center (PWC) analyzed by Nazgol Ghandnoosh in this volume; others had a geographic or neighborhood focus, such as the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA), the subject of Jong Bum Kwon’s chapter; still others targeted specific occupations or industries, like the National Day Laborers’ Organizing Network (NDLON) described in Maria Dziembowska’s chapter, or the Garment Worker Center (GWC), which Nicole Archer and her coauthors explore. Worker centers developed all across the country in this period, but southern California offered them particularly fertile soil. Along with the region’s extreme economic polarization and aggressive low-road employers, the L.A. worker centers’ growth was nurtured by the dynamism of the local labor movement with its early interest in organizing low-wage immigrants, and also by the longstanding presence of ethnically oriented, community-based organizations in the region (Gutiérrez 1995; Wong 2006). Los Angeles’s huge concentration of undocumented newcomers also made it the capital of the emerging immigrant rights movement, which assisted those eligible for amnesty under the 1986 Immigrant Reform and Control Act (IRCA), and soon went on to address the ongoing problems that immigrants faced in the workplace. A key player here was the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), analyzed in Caitlin C. Patler’s chapter in this volume, later joined by the Multi-ethnic Immigrant Organizing Network (MIWON), the focus of Chinyere Osuji’s chapter. The Mexican and Central American newcomers to Los Angeles who comprise the bulk of the city’s unauthorized immigrant population, as well as the even larger number of legal immigrants, proved highly receptive to the recruitment efforts of unions and worker centers alike, despite many observers’ early expectations to the contrary. Both types of low-wage worker organizing gained momentum after the passage of IRCA in 1986, which offered amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants and—contrary to the legislation’s intent—stimulated a massive influx of new immigration (see Massey, Durand, and Malone 2002). The L.A. worker centers whose efforts are documented in this volume were all established in the post-IRCA period. Unions and ethnic- and community-based NGOs had facilitated IRCA’s passage, and now they offered vital support to workers who were eligible to apply for legal status. This not only helped the unions build what would later prove to be critically important ties to immigrant rights advocacy groups but also deepened the labor movement’s

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awareness of labor law violations and other issues disproportionately affecting immigrants. Although the term worker center is of recent vintage, and few of the centers that exist today are more than a decade or two old, this mode of organization has venerable historical precedents in the settlement houses and other labor reform groups that served immigrant workers a century ago (see Fine 2006, 33– 41).4 Those Progressive-era organizations disappeared in the era of restricted immigration that began in the 1920s; but after 1965, when U.S. immigration policies were loosened, a new wave of immigrant-oriented NGOs emerged in the shape of worker centers. Few if any among these centers consciously emulated their early twentieth-century predecessors, however; and many were equally unaware of more recent models such as the UFW (Shaw 2008) or the community organizing traditions developed by Saul Alinksy’s Industrial Areas Foundation (Osterman 2002; Warren 2001). Even local union drives like SEIU’s Justice for Janitors campaign were an indirect influence rather than a source of immediate inspiration for many of the worker centers in the early years of their existence. As Fine (2006) has pointed out, worker centers are hybrid organizations with multiple functions. They not only organize low-wage workers directly but also provide legal services to those experiencing labor law violations, along with other social and educational services. They often engage in policy and legislative advocacy to improve labor law enforcement, and expose employer abuses to the public through media outreach as well as via direct appeals to consumers. Because so many low-wage workers are foreignborn, many centers engage in immigrant rights advocacy as well. The L.A. worker centers fit this general profile, but over time many of them have come to be strongly influenced by the strategic repertoire of the city’s immigrant-oriented unions and by the immigrant rights advocacy community as well—which directly overlaps with the local worker centers in groups like CHIRLA and MIWON.5 Economic justice organizing and advocacy campaigns in Los Angeles, whether initiated by worker centers or by unions doing low-wage and/or immigrant organizing, typically draw on the following elements: • strategic research on organizing targets to identify vulnerabilities and

to extract politically valuable information; • grassroots organizing focused on low-wage workers and leadership development efforts to empower those workers; • legal initiatives, including filing claims with government regulatory agencies as well as lawsuits on behalf of low-wage workers subjected to illegal employment practices;

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• building alliances with key actors in the local community—ranging

•

• • •

from consumers to faith-based groups to ethnic and political leaders and organizations—to gain material and moral leverage over employers and government officials;6 producing compelling narratives that include the stories and voices of low-wage workers themselves, and framing claims in the moral language of social justice; using such narratives to stage “public dramas” (Chun 2005) to attract media attention; shaming employers into making concessions; and generating public pressure on lawmakers to win passage of legislative and regulatory reforms.

The chapters in this volume document a wide range of campaigns with these elements, in various combinations and permutations, deployed by both worker centers and labor unions. To be sure, many economic justice advocates and organizers in other parts of the country also draw on this menu of strategies. What is peculiar to Los Angeles is the extensive interaction and mutual learning between unions and worker centers, which is still largely absent in other cities. Yet the union–worker center relationship is not entirely free of tensions, even in Los Angeles.

Worker Centers and the Limits of Advocacy The worker centers first presented themselves as an alternative organizing form, sharply differentiated from the traditional union model both structurally and culturally (Fine 2007). Although they emphatically define themselves as part of a larger progressive movement dedicated to long-term social change, the centers bear little resemblance to either trade unions or “social movements” in the conventional sense of the term. They rarely attempt to mount large-scale popular mobilizations. The massive 2006 immigrant rights protests are the exception that proves this rule; nothing remotely approaching their scale has taken place before or since (see Bloemraad and Voss forthcoming). Nor are worker centers in the business of setting up long-term collective bargaining relationships with employers. Worker centers are small NGOs with limited resources (de Graauw 2008; Fine 2006), and most have found that they can deploy those resources to maximum effect by focusing on staff-driven research, media outreach, and legal and political campaigns to win concessions from employers and governments. Worker center leaders think of themselves as organizers, but most of the time they function as advocates ( Jenkins 2002).

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Whether on their own or in coalition with other community-based NGOs, such as immigrant rights groups or religious organizations (see HondagneuSotelo 2008), worker centers operate in a manner that closely resembles that of the transnational advocacy networks (TANs) that Keck and Sikkink (1998, 1–2) have so insightfully analyzed. Like TANs, worker centers are “nonstate actors . . . [that] mobilize information strategically to help create new issues and categories and to persuade, pressure and gain leverage over much more powerful organizations and governments.” Of course, worker centers are locally rather than transnationally oriented (unless one considers immigrant worker issues as inherently transnational); but apart from that the parallels between their mode of operation and that of TANs are striking. Worker centers are professionally led and staffed by advocates—often lawyers or individuals with other types of specialized training—who “introduce new ideas, provide information, and lobby for policy changes” (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 9). Like their TAN-based counterparts, worker center staff and activists frequently circulate from one organization to another: the “political entrepreneurs who become the core networkers for a new campaign have often gained experience in earlier ones” (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 14). Victor Narro’s career, recounted in his afterword in this volume, is but one striking example of this kind of circulation in the L.A. context. Moreover, TANs and worker centers employ a similar repertoire of political strategies and tactics.7 Many worker centers devote considerable energy to grassroots organizing and education, as well as leadership development efforts. They not only provide basic information—both in written form and through workshops— to rank-and-file workers about their rights under U.S. labor and immigration law but also foster leadership development among their recruits. This work is explicitly rooted in the popular education methods of Paulo Freire (1970; see also Fine 2006, 13, 206–8), to which some key Latino immigrant worker center leaders were exposed in their home countries. The grassroots ties that worker centers have built in the community through these efforts are an especially important aspect of their work, directly informing their advocacy agendas. In addition, many centers offer direct services to workers, especially in filing legal claims to remedy labor law violations. Because most U.S. employment and labor laws apply to all workers, regardless of immigration status, unauthorized immigrants can seek redress for violations, and worker centers often assist them (as well as low-wage workers who are U.S born or legal immigrants) in doing so. However, at least in the L.A. cases documented in this volume, the demand for legal assistance is so vast that most

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worker centers that start out with a service provision mission begin to limit this aspect of their work early in their organizational development. Not only are they fearful that service provision could rapidly absorb their limited resources; but also, they tend to view it as incompatible with the goal of long-term institutional change, since it merely treats the symptoms of the labor and immigration problems they want to address. They have had more success with class-action lawsuits, such as those described in the chapters by Garea and Stern on behalf of car wash workers and by Muñiz for janitors, in which litigation functions as a tool that facilitates worker organizing. For most worker centers, then, litigation and/or advocacy tend to take priority over service provision, but despite the aspirations of these organizations, that emphasis may actually limit the potential for long-term change. As Steve Jenkins argues in his critical analysis of worker centers in New York City, the concrete reality of advocacy largely involves “professionals such as lawyers and social workers [who] mobilize elite institutions such as government agencies, foundations, media, or courts to help clients achieve the changes they are seeking. . . . However, the changes that can be achieved are limited to those that are palatable to elite decision-makers.” Ultimately, Jenkins suggests, this approach reduces “the radical aspirations for worker power . . . to a liberal belief in the transformative force of truth and justice” ( Jenkins 2002, 61, 72; see also Piven 1975). The accomplishments of the centers do make a difference, and advocacy may be the best use of their limited resources; yet their self-conception as agents of radical social change belies the inherent constraints of advocacy. Many worker centers do engage in grassroots, community-based organizing in addition to their service and advocacy efforts. In her analysis of this aspect of center activities, Fine distinguishes between “economic action organizing” and “public policy organizing” (Fine 2006, 101), depending on whether employers are the target of a campaign or, alternatively, if the goal is to seek new legislation or some other public policy initiative. In either case, the term organizing has a very different meaning in this context than in the union world. Some worker centers actively recruit “members,” but most find it difficult to forge long-term relationships with workers once the immediate need for legal services or the like have been addressed. Lowwage workers often work long hours, commute great distances, and have families to care for, which leaves them with little time to devote to membership activities in these organizations, particularly without the incentive of ongoing representation of the sort unions can provide. As a result, whether focused on extracting concessions from employers or on public policy advocacy, worker center campaigns are usually staff-driven efforts in which relatively few workers actively participate.

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The unions that organize immigrants and other low-wage workers have faced these problems too; indeed the SEIU in particular is often criticized for being too “top-down” and staff-driven, and for recruiting too many highly educated “outsiders” into leadership roles (e.g., Early 2004). But the crucial difference is that, unlike unions, most worker centers lack the institutional capacity and the financial resources necessary to maintain a large membership base. Worker centers do successfully engage rank-and-file workers in campaigns, often for extended periods of time, and sometimes even as paid staff. If the workers involved are undocumented, which is often the case, their participation in campaigns can also involve them in what Jennifer Gordon (2005, chap. 6) calls “noncitizen citizenship.” Although their presence in the United States is unauthorized, and they lack voting and other citizenship rights, undocumented workers can still testify at public hearings, make personal appeals to legislators, and engage in “public dramas” or other types of protests. These activities are at the center of worker center advocacy efforts, which vitally depend on the willingness of ordinary workers to tell their stories. Those stories—strategically disseminated via the mass media—fuel the symbolic politics that are central to the strategic repertoire of local advocacy networks.

Tensions and Convergence between Unions and Worker Centers Nearly all of the nation’s worker centers—97 percent, according to Fine (2006, 121)—have at least occasional contact with unions. But the relationship between worker centers and organized labor is complicated and sometimes fraught with tension. Sometimes there is cooperation between the two—especially in the L.A. context—but in many instances the relationship involves mistrust or even direct antagonism (Fine 2007). Many worker centers were established by activists for whom mainstream unions were anathema: bureaucratic institutions fundamentally inhospitable to the empowerment of rank-and-file workers. Yet worker centers have increasingly drawn on the repertoire of strategies and tactics that service sector unions like SEIU and UNITE HERE had developed in the 1980s, especially their media-oriented, research-intensive efforts to win public sympathy for lowwage and immigrant workers and to exert pressure on employers in order to extract concessions. Organized labor has always engaged in advocacy and promoted legislation on behalf of working people, but starting in the 1980s, some unions—faced with intensifying employer attacks and other threats to

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their survival—began to deploy “corporate campaigns” that advanced explicit moral claims on behalf of labor’s cause aimed directly at the public (Manheim 2001). Typically those claims were made as part of defensive struggles involving already-unionized workers, but in this same period a few unions—SEIU and UNITE HERE most notably—launched aggressive efforts to organize the unorganized, and they increasingly embraced the corporate campaign approach too. They recruited highly educated staff members similar to those that worker centers later came to rely on, who had the research skills and other expertise needed for these types of campaigns. In Los Angeles, where these unions were actively organizing immigrant workers in low-wage service industries, they began to frame their claims in terms of social justice, highlighting the extreme disparities between lowwage immigrant workers and the affluent communities they served. In contrast to such union organizing drives, however, most worker center economic justice campaigns neither strive for nor result in large-scale worker recruitment or ongoing collective bargaining relationships with employers. Sometimes this reflects practical considerations—for example if the employers are geographically dispersed or constantly shifting (as for day laborers or domestic workers); in other instances it reflects worker center leaders’ disillusion with unionism as a vehicle for lasting social transformation, as well as the far more limited resources that worker centers, unlike unions, have at their disposal. Worker centers’ “economic action organizing” typically aims to pressure employers for concessions directly, or through legal avenues, without seeking to build permanent membership-based organizations. Such efforts often succeed in winning settlements from employers, under which individuals or small groups of workers receive back pay or other types of remedial compensation, and which also may include employer promises to refrain from future labor law violations. Examples include the “Forever 21” campaign discussed in the chapter by Nicole Archer and her colleagues, and the Korean restaurant campaign Jong Bum Kwon documents. Worker centers have also launched many successful “public policy organizing” campaigns, winning passage of new legislation or regulations that provide concrete benefits for low-wage and immigrant workers—although ensuring adequate enforcement has often proven difficult in the aftermath of such victories. Examples include the successful effort to pass regulatory legislation for car wash workers in California, recounted in the chapter by Susan Garea and Alexandra Stern; or the successful defeat of local antisolicitation ordinances affecting day laborers that Maria Dziembowska discusses in her chapter. Unions also routinely engage in public policy organizing, but considering that most worker centers are tiny organizations with a handful of paid

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staff and modest financial resources, their record of legislative and public policy accomplishments is extremely impressive. Even campaigns that do not achieve their concrete goals—those that employers manage to resist, or that encounter political opposition that block their policy or legislative aims—often affect public perceptions and debates, like the “successful failures” Eve Weinbaum (2004, 267) has analyzed: Successful failures do not always transform the economy, or the social or political landscape, but they can accomplish crucial outcomes. First, [they] demonstrate to marginalized groups that resistance is possible, even against powerful forces of oppression. Second, they create structures and networks of people that are essential to any mobilization attempt—for even if they decline, they always have the potential to be rebuilt. Third, struggle itself trains people in the skills of political action and democratic citizenship. Fourth, small victories along the way teach marginalized communities the strength and power of collective action, and thus make them more likely to stand up for their goals in the future. And finally, failures in particular teach communities the strength and power of their opposition—essential knowledge for any political effort.

This perspective is relevant to even the most successful worker center campaigns, which typically yield concrete improvements in pay and conditions for very small groups of workers. The primary achievement of such campaigns is on the moral and discursive level, gaining wide publicity for labor law violations and other problems affecting low-wage workers. This is the comparative advantage of small-scale organizations with very limited resources, for “the existence of an injustice can be communicated by even a handful of people” ( Jenkins 2002, 64). As Victor Narro has pointed out, the L.A. worker centers in particular have “impacted the way the media reports on and the way the larger public perceives immigrant and low-wage worker issues. . . . changing the climate and altering the terms of debate at the local level” (Narro 2005–6, 512–13). Yet as Jenkins has pointed out, “unlike union campaigns where workers can potentially demand higher wages, vacation days, and health insurance,” worker centers tend to engage in “advocacy campaigns primarily confined to remedying illegal practices” ( Jenkins 2002, 69). He adds that while foundations are more than willing to support efforts to give “voice” to workers who would otherwise be voiceless, to expose them to the media, and to include them on public advisory panels, this does nothing to alter the fundamental power relationship between workers and employers. If few worker center leaders would fully agree with Jenkins’s critique, many have come to recognize the limitations of their capacity to foster lasting social change using the worker center model alone. This, in turn, has led some

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to reconsider their initial view of organized labor and to experiment with efforts to promote unionization among low-wage workers. They typically have formed independent unions, rather than collaborating with established labor organizations, which many continue to regard as overly bureaucratic and insufficiently accessible to direct participation from rank-and-file workers. In some cases, as well, worker centers’ efforts to build ties to existing unions have been rebuffed outright (Bobo 2009; and Fine 2007 for examples). Worker centers’ independent union efforts have often encountered serious obstacles. Like all unionization drives in recent years, these are typically met with intransigent resistance from employers. Given that resistance, as well as the limited resources and lack of experience of most worker centers with unionization, these independent efforts have been largely unsuccessful, as illustrated by the examples described in the chapters on the Korean Immigrant Workers Alliance by Jong Bum Kwon and on the Pilipino Worker Center by Nazgol Ghandnoosh in this volume. Nevertheless, such attempts to foster unionization suggest the increasing convergence in the strategies being pursued by unions and worker centers in Los Angeles, and the ongoing process of mutual learning and synergy across the divide separating the two types of organizations. The L.A. Taxi Workers’ Alliance, analyzed in the chapter by Jacqueline Leavitt and Gary Blasi, is another example of an organization that draws on both union and worker center models, although because most taxi drivers are not legally “employees” traditional unionism is not an option here. Unions and organized labor federations, searching for new strategies in the face of the precipitous decline in the organized share of the U.S. workforce over recent decades, have become increasingly intrigued by and receptive to the worker centers’ efforts—especially in the aftermath of the huge immigrant rights marches of 2006 (see Fine 2007). In August 2006— not coincidentally, just a few months after those marches—the AFL-CIO announced a new partnership with worker centers, making it possible for them to formally affiliate with state and local AFL-CIO bodies.8 As Maria Dziembowska’s chapter in this volume notes, both the American Federation of Labor—Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and the Laborers’ union (which left the AFL-CIO in 2005 to join the rival Change to Win labor federation) have forged formal ties with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), headquartered in Los Angeles. NDLON in turn has recently embraced the view that unionization is key to improving the lives of day laborers (Fine 2007, 350). And the United Steel Workers union recently launched a campaign to organize L.A. car wash workers, hiring staff from the worker center movement and building on the previous work of legal advocates in that industry, documented in Susan Garea

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and Sasha Stern’s chapter in this volume. These developments recall Dorothy Sue Cobble’s (2001, 1997) insights about the contemporary relevance of all-but-forgotten modes of union organization that flourished in the early twentieth century, such as those rooted in a geographical space rather than a workplace. Indeed, both unions and worker centers have (often unwittingly) begun to revive these older organizational forms in recent years. Over time, then, the strategic repertoires of L.A. worker centers have increasingly borrowed from the playbook of the local labor unions that first pioneered low-wage and immigrant worker organizing in Los Angeles. The converse is also true: in recent years, those unions have drawn on the worker centers’ efforts in their own campaigns, as the last three chapters in this volume illustrate. Both Joshua Bloom’s analysis of the L.A. security officers’ union campaign and Forrest Stuart’s study of the hotel workers’ organizing near the LAX airport highlight the use of community outreach strategies. A third chapter, by Karina Muñiz, documents the SEIU’s innovative partnership with unionized L.A. building service employers, the Maintenance Trust Cooperation Fund (MCTF), which jointly monitors the regional janitorial industry for labor law violations in a manner that replicates the work of many worker centers. Although in all three cases, labor unions were the protagonists, all three also embraced community-based approaches to organizing. In the hotel and security officer union drives, nonunion allies in the wider community— including clergy and church groups, political clubs, elected officials, and a variety of other constituencies—played integral roles in the union campaigns. The L.A. security campaign is an especially powerful example of the cross-fertilization between union and community-based organizing approaches. The extensive involvement of African-American clergy and community leaders in that campaign went well beyond the level of community involvement in the Justice for Janitors’ campaign two decades earlier. The hotel organizing effort Stuart recounts, similarly, was centered on a community-based coalition strategy. Finally, the MCTF case, as Muniz notes, also has striking parallels to the worker center model. Here the SEIU forged a unique tripartite cooperative arrangement that involved not only the union but also employers and government enforcement agencies in an ongoing effort to improve nonunion janitors’ conditions and at the same time protect the gains of unionized janitors.

Looking Forward Union organizing among immigrants and other low-wage workers was a key component of the L.A. model from the outset, but the ethnic- and

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community-based organizing and advocacy approaches developed by the city’s worker centers have significantly expanded the horizons of the labor movement in recent years. In turn, L.A. worker centers have become more open to conventional unionism over time, recognizing at least implicitly the advantages organized labor has in staff and financial resources as well as in institutional capacity. Worker centers have come to appreciate the potential advantages of establishing collective bargaining relationships with employers in order to win significant and lasting social change—even if they remain skeptical about the top-down, bureaucratic aspects of traditional unionism. Thus L.A. unions and worker centers have learned from one another, and their organizing and advocacy approaches have increasingly converged. A similar process of mutual learning has unfolded in regard to the immigrant rights movement, which has been increasingly concerned with workers’ rights, not least because of the Bush administration’s dramatic escalation of workplace raids and deportations in the aftermath of the spring 2006 immigrant rights marches (Bacon 2008). As the Latino immigrant population itself becomes more and more widely dispersed geographically, and as low-wage work itself becomes increasingly widespread, the L.A. model of organizing and advocacy is of growing relevance nationwide. The prospect of new opportunities for labor movement growth in the aftermath of the 2008 election, in the context of a dramatic economic crisis that has brought renewed public attention to the plight of working people, further adds to the model’s potential appeal. Even before that, there were signs that the local advocacy networks that helped to foster the convergence of union and worker center strategies in Los Angeles were beginning to emerge elsewhere. In New York City, the Taxi Workers’ Alliance was invited to affiliate with the Central Labor Council in late 2006, and since then the council has built relationships with other local worker centers as well (Greenhouse 2008b). In Chicago too, there is growing rapprochement between worker centers and local unions (Eyck 2008). Thus the case studies of low-wage worker organizing and advocacy by L.A. worker centers and unions in the chapters that follow—most of which have not been documented previously in any detail—should be of widespread interest well beyond the boundaries of Los Angeles itself. The challenges ahead are massive, but the L.A. model, rooted in synergy between worker centers, with their vibrant grassroots community ties, and progressive unions, with their legacy of extensive financial and institutional resources, may be the nation’s most promising approach to addressing the needs of low-wage workers in the coming years.

PART I

Worker Centers, Ethnic Communities, and Immigrant Rights Advocacy

1 The Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance SPATIALIZING JUSTICE IN AN ETHNIC “ENCLAVE”

Jong Bum Kwon

On the morning of April 24, 2007, the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA) convened a press conference at the entrance to Assi Supermarket to announce the settlement of a class-action lawsuit it had filed against Assi in the autumn of 2002. The press conference was attended by local Korean ethnic media, the attorneys who handled the lawsuit, community supporters, Latino and Korean workers, and leaders of the Immigrant Workers Union (IWU). For the workers, their supporters, and KIWA staff, the market entrance was an all-too-familiar space. For five years, they had marched, picketed, chanted, sung, beaten drums, and fought with store security and management there, first to demand recognition for IWU and then to boycott the market after the owner suspended fifty-six union supporters. The longawaited settlement marked the official end to the Assi union struggle and closed a chapter of KIWA’s Market Workers Justice Campaign (MWJC). Publicly, this was an occasion to proclaim a final victory. Speakers recalled the vibrancy and historic nature of the Assi union drive, celebrated the workers’ passion and political commitment, and congratulated them on the settlement. Workers, in turn, testified to their harsh experiences at Assi, their politicization through the union struggle, and their conviction that workers can fight and win. The settlement was a handsome one, with a fund of $1.475 million to be distributed to former and current employees with claims of racial discrimination and wage and hour law violations. Furthermore, the settlement included a court order that required Assi to desist 23

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from discriminatory practices, create procedures to ensure compliance with state equal employment laws, develop a comprehensive antidiscrimination policy, conduct annual diversity trainings, and report on its compliance with the terms of the decree. The settlement was repeatedly described as a “great and historic” victory. But behind the scenes KIWA staff and organizers were more subdued and self-critical. The settlement had taken more than four years to achieve. Fifty-six workers (fifty Latinos and six Koreans) had been suspended and never reinstated. The union election was a 67–67 tie, with fifteen contested ballots and an official “no result” outcome declared by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The IWU was now defunct. The Assi union struggle was part of KIWA’s seven-year effort to organize immigrant workers and improve work and wage conditions in the “Koreatown” supermarket industry. Assi was the first, as well as the most visible and contentious, of several targeted markets in the industrywide MWJC. In addition to Assi, KIWA fought California Market, Hankook Super (HK), and Galleria Market. In those three markets, KIWA won living wage agreements, and its public struggles brought lasting changes in others. However, in part due to Assi, those victories were perceived as limited. As KIWA campaign coordinator Vy Nguyen remarked, “Everyone knows that the victories were imperfect, but that is what we could do; it was what we could do together.”1 The MWJC was a transformative campaign for KIWA, as indicated by the change in the organization’s name from “Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates” to “Koreatown Immigrant Workers’ Alliance.” This signaled not only internal organizational changes but also a reimagining of “Koreatown” as community and social space, and a repositioning of KIWA within that space. As I argue below, KIWA’s struggles involved not simply workers’ rights and ability to make a just living but also spatial practices: specifically, the power to produce and impose an alternative and legitimate vision of “Koreatown.” Thus “Koreatown” was not merely the context of KIWA’s activities (see Brettell 2003) but also the object of its struggle.2 This chapter assesses KIWA’s decision to undertake a daunting union organizing campaign, an effort unprecedented not only for Koreatown but also for the organization. It is not, however, simply an evaluation of “victories” and “losses.” Success and failure are not transparent. Even the lost union election at Assi, as I will show, contributed to the victories at the other markets. My aim is to analyze the social, cultural, and political-economic conditions that shaped KIWA’s strategic decisions, vision of social change, and organizational dynamics in order to document its transformation from an implicit to an explicit spatial justice organization.

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KIWA: An Experiment in Urban Instigation Janice Fine (2006) defines worker centers as community-based mediating institutions that service, organize, and advocate for low-wage workers. KIWA shares many of the characteristics of immigrant worker centers, most importantly their emphasis on place-based rather than worksite-based activism and their strong ethnic or racial identification (Fine 2006, 13). KIWA’s initial mission, according to Danny Park, one of the founding members and current executive director, was to target Koreatown and Korean immigrant workers, but the organization soon enlarged its focus to encompass the Latino workers laboring in the predominantly Korean-owned businesses in the neighborhood. While KIWA’s reputation is based mostly on its work with Korean and Latino immigrants employed in the Koreatown restaurant and supermarket industries, its activities have never been limited to specific sectors. And like many other immigrant worker centers, KIWA had experimented with various forms of service provision, including case management, referrals to free medical and legal clinics, ESL classes, computer classes, and worker rights and labor law seminars. It had also spent considerable resources on legal advocacy for immigrant workers, filing numerous wage and hour violation and race discrimination claims and lawsuits. Unlike some other worker centers, however, KIWA has been intensely campaign driven. Fine observes that most worker centers, due to their long-term vision and transformational approach to social justice, are not “campaign-oriented.” Much of their focus, she relates, is on the internal life of the organizations and the political development of their members (Fine 2006, 201). KIWA has only recently begun to focus on leadership development, a decision made in the midst of the MWJC. The public face of the organization has been its direct-action campaigns. From its inception, KIWA’s founding members decided to be publicly aggressive, even at the risk of alienating the community’s ethnic elites and thereby cutting off potential sources of financial, political, and coethnic support. Over the years, KIWA gained considerable esteem as well as notoriety for its visible, forceful, and innovative campaigns. Disruptive picketing, marching, and chanting to the concussive rhythms of traditional Korean drums, and face-to-face confrontations with employers became KIWA’s trademark. KIWA has engaged in a wide array of struggles over the years: fighting for the equitable distribution of relief funds to dislocated Korean and Latino workers after the L.A. civil uprising (1992); campaigning for unionized workers affiliated with HERE Local 11 at the Koreana Hotel (1991– 92) and the L.A. Hilton (1994–95); recovering back wages for Korean and

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Latino janitors from A-1 Building Maintenance Company (1994); serving as a coplaintiff on the class-action suit brought against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority by the Labor/Community Strategy Center and the Bus Riders Union (1994); and advocating on behalf of Latino, Chinese, and Thai garment workers with Asian Immigrant Women’s Advocates in Oakland (1992–95) and with the L.A. Garment Worker Center (1997). Those campaigns illustrate KIWA’s longstanding interethnic coalition-building and its collaborative work with unions and other progressive organizations. Alongside this, starting in the mid-1990s, KIWA launched its own directaction campaigns targeting specific Korean-owned restaurants to raise public awareness of low-wage workers’ plight in Koreatown. The diversity of KIWA’s campaign targets and its willingness to tackle a wide variety of issues reflect its overarching mission to transform Koreatown as a social-cultural space. As Roy Hong, the other founding member, stated: What I like about KIWA is its willingness to drop shit and fight; its capacity for quick, flexible response is an asset. That was a conscious choice for the organization. . . . In order to make change you have to make mid- and longterm goals and plan and stay the course, true . . . but too many groups end up doing set things in a repetitious manner . . . and don’t do anything else, even as conditions change. . . . I think KIWA has a lot more latitude than other groups . . . it looks erratic and disjointed, but it is a symbol of the fact that there aren’t that many progressive [organizations] willing to put up [that kind of] fight. . . . KIWA is an instigator, not necessarily the one to carry on the fight.3

Hong captures in one word KIWA’s primary identity and mission—instigator. The word encapsulates the organization’s self-conscious militancy and provides coherence to its “erratic” activities: the emphasis on aggressively challenging the social-cultural boundaries of Koreatown and the willingness to respond flexibly to the wide range of issues workers face in a putatively homogenous ethnic enclave. Previous research on KIWA has seldom explicitly examined KIWA’s militancy or its strategy of aggressive direct actions.4 The most comprehensive study is Angie Chung’s (2007), which argues that KIWA’s strategy of dramatic direct action is pragmatic and functional. Chung states that militant actions are the most economical tactics for organizations like KIWA that have limited financial resources, since they require the mobilization of people rather than political or economic resources. Functionally, she argues, direct actions are effective because they “best publicize the needs and problems of Korean immigrant workers to outside groups where their strongest bases of support lie. Using less militant tactics would keep the issues contained within the ethnic community and fail to challenge internal

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power structures” (157). Chung astutely analyzes the marginal status of KIWA in the Korean-American community, which constrains the organization financially and politically. Nonetheless, she overstates KIWA’s reliance on outside intervention or agitation. The external bases of support that she emphasizes are themselves equally marginal progressive organizations. Although as Chung suggests, publicity and attention from law enforcement agencies are important sources of leverage against employers (see also Fine 2006, 150), the ultimate significance of KIWA’s diverse and public direct actions is their ability to disrupt the hegemonic vision of Koreatown. Militant street actions are strategies to not only redefine “Korean American” community politics but also to challenge representations of Koreatown as a Korean entrepreneurial enclave. KIWA’s confrontational and highly public demonstrations are cultural performances that function as definitional dramas.5 In addition to communicating grievances and demands for redress from individual businesses, those protests display for the Koreatown public and for the participants themselves an alternative vision of community, cultural space, and social justice. As definitional dramas, they challenge the symbolic economy of Koreatown—the economy of images, the representation of space “that yields real returns in terms of attracting new businesses, corporate investment, tourism, and consumption” (Zukin 1995, 7). In KIWA’s campaigns, young Latino men, working in the “back of the house” as busboys, dishwashers, and cooks in the restaurant industry, and as “box boys” in the market industry, and Korean women, whose presence signified ethnic authenticity overshadowing their class status, “invaded” the streets and disrupted the image of harmony and homogeneity (Puwar 2004). Workers were transformed “from a state of invisibility and marginality into a state of explicit recognition” as legitimate, productive members of Koreatown (Chun 2005, 2006). KIWA’s militant actions thus embodied a transformational politics of symbolic power that sought to secure workers’ “right to the city” (Smith 2001, 116) by contesting its hegemonic representation.6 These definitional dramas disrupted the symbolic economy and instigated a reimagining of Koreatown and its public. The enclavement of Koreatown as an ethnic commercial zone, then, became the scene for struggles over “what—and who—should be visible and what should not, on concepts of order and disorder, and on uses of aesthetic power” (Zukin 1995, 7).

Fixing Koreatown The predominant representation of Koreatown is as a Korean economic enclave; however, this obscures more complex lived realities.7 Recent census data reveal that the number of Koreans residing within its current

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boundaries is 46,664, slightly more than half the total Korean population in the City of Los Angeles and one-quarter of all Koreans in L.A. County. Yet Koreans comprise only 17.5 percent of Koreatown’s residents, with Latinos constituting the overwhelming majority at 52.2 percent (Park 2005, 95). In addition, despite its recognition as a thriving entertainment and commercial area, a study commissioned by KIWA reveals that it is also a growing residential area in which more than 30 percent of the largely immigrant population falls below the federal poverty line (KIWA 2005). The majority of the business owners do not reside in Koreatown but commute from outlying suburbs. Thus the area is not merely diverse in terms of ethnicity and class, but the lived reality problematizes the representation of the social space as predominantly “Korean” and “entrepreneurial.” For KIWA staff and organizers, Koreatown constitutes a powerful ethnic and spatial social imaginary. Despite its expansive geographic area, they routinely referred to it as a “small community.” Despite their keen awareness of its multiethnic inhabitants, they regularly called it a “Korean community.” Koreatown was much more than simply a context for KIWA’s activities; its characteristics shaped the organization’s strategies and behavior. Koreatown was, in the words of several staff members, like the “wild wild West.” The phrase suggests an image of lawlessness, outside the bounds of mainstream law enforcement, but also a dense power structure against which KIWA struggled. As one member explained: It’s like there are no rules in Koreatown . . . it’s just crazy here. Sometimes it feels like a company town . . . the market owner owns the building that is evicting tenants or the market owner is the best friends with the editor of the Korea Times, we can’t get stories published. . . . Sometimes it feels like that there is a network of power in Koreatown that is really hard to penetrate.8

To KIWA organizers and staff, Koreatown was “a lawless enclave” where a vexing and recalcitrant body of business interests could obstruct their activities. Ethnic elites and business owners, often allied with development agencies and local politicians, are “place entrepreneurs” (Logan and Molotch 1987). They are deeply implicated in Koreatown’s economic and political power structures, and invested in the enclavement of the area as a “Korean” entrepreneurial, commercial zone (Light 2002; Smith 2001, 92). Although, as Chung cautions, the ethnic elite is not a uniform or consensual body, their entrepreneurial interests converge “to structure community politics around relatively homogenous conceptions of ethnic political solidarity” (Chung 2007, 61–62). Elite investments in the symbolic economy effectively rendered invisible multiethnic immigrant working-class interests and concerns,

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instead constructing Koreatown as an economically and ethnically homogenous enclave. Until the L.A. uprising in April 1992, “immigrant generation” ethnic elites dominated community politics and defined their interests narrowly around business issues and a nationalist ethnic and economic agenda. For example, the Korean Federation of Los Angeles (KFLA), the most influential organization in the community before the uprising, “viewed Korean Americans as an overseas extension of Koreans and saw its mission to safeguard the interests of Koreans living in a foreign society” (Park 1999, 169). As Edward Park states: KFLA derived most of its political legitimacy through its ties to homeland politics and through its connection with the Korean Consulate in Los Angeles. . . . While KFLA did engage in mainstream politics, it was largely limited to symbolic politics, including receiving official recognition of “Koreatown” from the city and ensuring the participation of local leaders in the annual “Koreatown Parade.” (Park 1999, 169)

Park’s observations expose KFLA’s narrow investment in the symbolic economy of the area and its implicit characterization of the community as ethnically homogenous and entrepreneurial. The “community,” moreover, was ideologically pro–United States, anticommunist, anti–North Korea, and strongly antiworker.9 The majority of the immigrant generation had left South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, a period of considerable political turmoil in which the labor movement was widely condemned as procommunist, pro–North Korea, and antinationalist.10 As historian Nam Hee Lee writes: The government and media portrayed the student/worker activists as procommunist, agitators, and “impure” elements who were interested only in creating problems and not genuinely concerned with the workers’ or the nation’s welfare. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, any attempts to organize workers were branded as anti-state and procommunist. (2002, 59)

The term worker (nodongja) had connotations of class and class struggle, and was commonly understood to express identification with the aims of the militant labor movement.11 “Even today,” Hong observed about Koreatown, “there is a lot of . . . what I would call Cold War remnant ideology that drives people’s instincts when they come up against uncomfortable situations . . . that KIWA often causes in the community.”12 Ethnic elites have established a variety of trade associations to protect their interests. Business interests also reach into Koreatown through community projects and by sponsoring scholarships and funding Korean

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community-based organizations, many of which rely heavily on such entrepreneurial support (Chung 2007, 72–74). In addition, Korean ethnic elites exercise power in the community through their influence over ethnic media. The two most popular Korean-language newspapers are headquartered in Koreatown as are several television and radio stations. As Chung observes, “Because most Korean immigrants regardless of residence or background rely heavily on the ethnic media, the Korean television, radio, and newspaper conglomerates were particularly formative in shaping public opinion on events within the community” (66). Those media are critical instruments in the construction of an imagined Korean community (see Anderson 1991) and have historically sought to create community consensus by reinforcing notions of Korean nationalism and culture (Chung 2007, 66). KIWA’s emphasis on public direct actions must be understood within this conservative cultural-economic context. Indeed, besides organizing and advocating on behalf of immigrant workers, a critical dimension of KIWA’s activities is its effort to project a progressive voice and vision within Koreatown (see Chung 2007, 155; Chung 2005, 923). The 1992 uprising confirmed the founders’ apprehensions about the consequences of unchallenged ethnic elite hegemony. Hong commented, “Frankly speaking, the [conservative] Korean community and its ethnic media were fanning nationalist and racist views towards the black community, which weren’t in the interest of the community as a whole.” Furthermore, KIWA’s leaders understood that the portrayal of Korean immigrants as “model minorities” was driving a wedge between racialized groups. In their view, the interests of low-wage immigrant workers, including Koreans, were ignored or misrepresented in the crossfire. As Hong put it, “We have more in common with African American and Latino workers who struggle with un- and under-employment” than with Korean entrepreneurs. “If we didn’t address this,” he added, “the conservative leadership would have a monopoly and [claim to] speak for the community” (see also Chung 2007, 2005; Park 1999, 1998). As a progressive, prolabor organization, KIWA was generally shut out of conventional community forums. Only on the street was it able to put forth an alternative social and political vision. Direct actions—definitional dramas—were integral to KIWA’s effort to empower and organize workers in Koreatown. KIWA’s strategy was not to draw workers into its fold but rather to help them form their own organizations in which they themselves would take leadership positions. KIWA staff functioned as “technocrats,” according to Nguyen, providing technical and institutional knowledge and access to resources, including funding and office space. The success of this incubation model, however, was contingent on the will and capacity of workers to self-organize, something that might

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not result from service provision or legal advocacy (Fine 2006; Gordon 2005). Thus, in the context of job insecurity, racism, and given the business orientation of Koreatown ethnic elites, leaders like Hong argued that workers had to learn from experience that they can “challenge the powers that be.” He emphasized, Through struggle workers become empowered. If there is a worker activist who is just as active as staff, it means that that organization has gone through some serious fights. The fights, the campaigns, politicize and empower.13

Through its definitional dramas, KIWA enabled both Korean and Latino workers to envision themselves as valued and empowered actors in Koreatown while simultaneously challenging hegemonic visions. As Danny Park explained: It is physically, directly winning whatever small victories with your own hands . . . through this type of struggle, once people get involved, they are challenged to ask why are they are out there and not just workers but also the community. It’s not going to a hearing and begging or pleading to those in power. Direct actions are when workers and community are taking on the decision-making power and exercising it on the street. By doing direct actions, it implicates community. It educates the community, because it forces people to become aware of the issues. You do it enough times . . . in the beginning they might spit at you, but if you do it for a long time over the years, if you are good at messaging as well as getting the word into the community . . . the community is not dumb . . . if you do it enough people will come around. . . . We’ve seen that many times.14

KIWA’s direct actions not only enabled workers to claim power and staff to engage with workers but also instigated the community at large to reimagine Koreatown’s boundaries.

Militancy and “Enclave” Politics KIWA’s position in Koreatown was, from its inception, a matter of contention. It “is part of and not part of Koreatown,” simultaneously an “insider” and “outsider.”15 By making a claim of “insider” status, KIWA asserted its legitimate standing in the community to voice opposition. At the same time, by making a claim of “outsider” status, KIWA challenged the entrepreneurial hegemony that sustained the interests of the ethnic elites. KIWA’s history reveals a tense struggle for cultural and political legitimacy, negotiating that thin but entangled line between ethnic solidarity and class antagonism.

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Roy Hong and Danny Park first discussed the possibility of forming a worker center in 1990.16 They approached the idea cautiously. Although they decided early on that confrontational tactics would be a key element in their strategic repertoire, they remained acutely conscious of the entrenched cultural and political conservatism of the “enclave,” knowing full well that a worker center advocating class struggle in Koreatown would receive a less than warm reception from local elites. As Hong recalled in an interview, they were concerned about being ostracized or being “red baited”: “We knew that they would try to brand us as Communists or otherwise smear us so that workers wouldn’t come to us. . . . So, we were being very careful.”17 Hong and Park spent more than a year laying the groundwork for KIWA, building trust inside the community (Chung 2007, 156). Their initial strategy involved direct service provision, focusing on wage and hour law violations. Hong stated, “We had to train ourselves to really learn the basic labor laws and how to use the labor enforcement agencies . . . it was really critical for our success.”18 So we started with . . . service so that we’re not a major threat to anyone and make it easy for workers to talk to us and get service and then advocating [for] more community-wide issues that relates to civil rights, immigrant rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights. . . . Now we feel like we have enough bases of support in the community to be able to become bolder about our demands for change in the community, and we’re not just red-baited or completely silenced by the media to the point where we become completely defective. (Hong, quoted in Chung 2007, 156–57)

This work filled a void in Koreatown, providing in workers’ own language and cultural understandings a direct means to address their experiences of exploitation. In addition, Hong and Park sought the “blessing” of community members, as Park recalled: [We wanted] blessing from key people in the Asian American and progressive mainstream community . . . we were like in our early thirties . . . we talked about it and studied for a year . . . and still coming out to the community, and saying we that we know everything, we now want to start a labor organization; we didn’t want to appear presumptuous . . . especially in KoreanAmerican community . . . therefore we needed to portray ourselves as not being arrogant, . . . but someone that respects other people’s work and [that] we were open to advice and support from the Korean-American community and other community at large.19

They did not expect support from Korean community leaders, but they needed to establish their moral legitimacy before aggressively challenging the politically and economically hegemonic ethnic elites.

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Winning acceptance from Koreatown’s self-appointed leaders, business owners, and even workers was far from assured. According to Hong, two events helped establish their place in Koreatown: the Koreana Hotel labor dispute and the 1992 uprising. The former cemented KIWA’s reputation among progressive organizations and labor unions, and the latter facilitated KIWA’s entry into Koreatown. In the winter of 1991, the Koreana Hotel Company bought the Wilshire Hyatt (presently the Plaza Hotel). The new management fired 175 (mostly Latino) workers affiliated with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 11, replacing them with nonunion workers, only months after the union had successfully negotiated a contract with the previous owners (Cho 1992; Chung 2007, 158). Local 11 hired Hong to conduct corporate research on the Korean company and generate local Korean community support (Lee 1996, 55). According to Hong, KIWA played a vital role in organizing a meeting between Local 11 leaders and the corporate owners in Korea, in helping the union build alliances with the Asian American community, in mobilizing consumer boycotts, and in pressuring the Korean Consulate over the issue (Hong, interview; Omatsu 1995, 105). KIWA’s local and transnational ethnic connections contributed to the union’s victory at Koreana in 1992. The union’s victory was also a breakthrough for KIWA, establishing it as a visible and vital player in local progressive and labor politics. Hong stated, “That also helped us be put on the map . . . of who and what KIWA is for the progressive labor movement and progressive community outside of the Korean community. In less than six months we held a fundraiser, and these people came and bought a table. It helped us get started.”20 Funding and resource support (staff and expertise) from the local progressive community would help sustain KIWA’s activities over the years, especially as KIWA became more visibly confrontational, further alienating Koreatown elites. KIWA (then called Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates) was formed in March 1992, one month before the civil uprising devastated Koreatown and nearby neighborhoods and shocked the L.A. Korean-American community into awareness of its precarious position in the political and racial landscape. The L.A. Police Department’s (LAPD) blatant refusal to protect Korean businesses demonstrated its marginal status in the city, even as the Korean government’s failure to provide significant political support led many Korean immigrants to realize the limitations of their narrow focus on homeland politics (Chung 2007, 97). The immigrant generation’s inability to counter the mainstream media’s depiction of the “riot” as the inevitable outcome of “Black-Korean conflict” confirmed the ethnic elite’s lack of influence. They lacked the social networks and cultural linguistic capacity to communicate the community’s grievances to mainstream,

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white culture. They were even excluded from “Rebuild Los Angeles” (RLA), the quasi-governmental, corporate-led redevelopment organization (Park 1998, 45). This crisis loosened the hold of the traditional Koreatown leadership on community politics and prompted the ascent of “postimmigrant” generation leaders (Park 1999, 166). For example, Angela Oh, a 1.5 generation Korean-American attorney and previously a relative unknown in community politics, appeared on the May 6 broadcast of Nightline to provide a Korean-American perspective on the uprising. This “created an important space for other 1.5 and second generation individuals who likewise became important spokespersons for the community, articulating the Korean American perspective and subjectivity to the mainstream media and the political system” (Park 1999, 166). The emphasis on interethnic coalitions and interracial cooperation in the official redevelopment rhetoric privileged the new generation of community leaders with linguistic and cultural resources and experience in multiethnic organizing (Park 1999, 166; Park 1998, 46). All this helped lay the groundwork for KIWA to earn a symbolic place in Koreatown. Hong recalled that they were in a small two-room office on the outskirts of Koreatown at the time, unsure how they would make ends meet. Then the unrest happened. So we looked at the media and other agencies to find out what people were doing . . . it turned what people were doing was social service work, and media was raising money to help the “victims.” So, we did two things: we immediately recruited volunteers and got some donations. . . . Our program was to write for victims of violence payment delay letters . . . because people lost their jobs and ability to generate any income, and too many people were living month to month, paycheck to paycheck. We immediately said that we needed to write letters to say that they can’t pay their bills, give us some time. . . . We recruited volunteers. . . . We were doing thousands and thousands of letters.

The letter writing campaign helped establish their legitimacy in the community; he explained, “But that effort, for two, three weeks, quickly put us on the map in the community as a group that does something meaningful for the community. . . . We actually got in the community much easier . . . the community had to accept us. . . . Without the civil unrest we would’ve been an outsider and maybe never become an insider because of the antiworker sentiment.”21 KIWA’s effort to foster awareness of class inequality within the KoreanAmerican community antagonized the conservative power holders in the enclave, however. For the next several years, KIWA focused on the “4.29 Displaced Workers Justice Campaign,” a bitter fight with the Korean

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American Relief Fund (KARF) to recover Korean and Latino workers’ share of the large sums of relief money that flowed into the community. KARF had distributed relief checks only to business owners and planned to use the remaining $1.7 million to build a community center. KIWA organized demonstrations and press conferences and interrupted KARF board meetings, demanding that the organization “KARF up the cash” (Lee 1996, 59). The campaign dramatically pitted the interests of workers against ethnic entrepreneurs, publicly shaming the board on the streets and in both the ethnic and mainstream media.22 Thus KIWA began to directly challenge ethnic entrepreneurs and conservative power holders. As Chung (2007, 157) notes, the campaign was symbolically significant “for its effective use of direct-action tactics against the power holders of the entrepreneurial community,” drawing attention not only within Koreatown but also from L.A. progressive organizations. As Edward Park also emphasized, the real victory was that KIWA was able to aid both Latino and Korean workers, prefiguring the restaurant campaign, a highly visible, multiethnic labor struggle launched a few years later.23 The successful campaign against KARF emboldened KIWA and justified its strategy that combined aggressive direct actions and skillful use of ethnic and mainstream media to shame ethnic elites and tarnish the image of Koreatown.24 Hong recalled, “By then we had built up some political capital so we thought that we could rattle the cage; we looked for fights.”25 Meanwhile, after processing thousands of worker wage and hour legal violations, KIWA decided to develop a campaign challenging the labor practices of the Koreatown restaurant industry. Through the mid-1990s KIWA coordinated militant protests against Korean-owned restaurants, winning decisive victories for underpaid and overworked Korean and Latino workers. These definitional dramas rendered visible the appalling working conditions of the restaurant industry in Koreatown, more than 95 percent of which failed to meet minimum wage standards according to the U.S. Department of Labor.26 In 1996, KIWA officially launched the Koreatown Restaurant Workers Justice Campaign.27 Even as these actions dramatized the organization’s unwillingness to genuflect to ethnic power holders and challenged their “business as usual” stance toward labor exploitation, they also subjected KIWA to accusations of political extremism and ethnic betrayal. For example, in the campaign against Pequa Jong, one of the first that targeted a Korean business owner for exploitation of Latino workers, mainstream Koreatown sentiment was mobilized against KIWA. Park recalled that there were accusations about his betrayal of the Korean community and questions about how KIWA could

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“beat up one of their own.”28 KIWA countered that it was not attacking all Koreans, but the “few” that tainted Koreatown: Not all Koreans are bad employers. There are a few but if we don’t take care of our own business, then the mainstream will make it out that all Koreans are bad. . . . Then the Korean community as a whole would be condemned or the Latino community will condemn us. It will become racialized . . . remember April 29. In the Korean community, KIWA is here to resolve issues and the Korean business [owners] should thank us. . . . And the issues is wages . . . does it make sense to underpay Latino workers? This is a basic right, a fundamental moral and human obligation, and it is part of running a business.29

KIWA’s skillful messaging took advantage of the community’s sensitivity toward accusations of racial discrimination and invoked the specter of another “riot.” Park recounted that overt accusations of ethnic betrayal declined after this particular campaign, but it remained difficult to sever the connection between Korean immigrant success and business success. Although the uprising raised critical questions about the “assimilation” of Korean immigrants into American society, social mobility through entrepreneurship remained the fulcrum of ethnic elite ideology (see Chung 2007, 61). During the Chosun Galbi restaurant campaign (1997–98), for example, business associations and owners launched a media campaign promoting their probusiness “immigrant ideology” (see Cheng and Espiritu 1989) to discredit KIWA; Hong recalled, It was the most successful restaurant in Koreatown by far . . . at that time they said that it sold 50% of all the meat sold in Koreatown . . . when we fought them, they bought a lot of ads . . . they felt like we were ruining a successful business . . . the Korean Federation would deliberately eat there everyday, crossing the picket line . . . other business associations would systemically organize lunches and meetings there and organize counter protests.30

During this campaign, there was a complete media blackout, and Park was compelled to protest at the Korea Times. KIWA mobilized progressive community members, staging colorful and vociferous pickets at the restaurant, and Hong went on a hunger strike. This became a turning point in the restaurant campaign. KIWA managed to reinstate the fired cook (a Korean), and demonstrate its strength and tenacity to the rest of the industry. “When that happened [the victory], the industry was all watching it and knew that they couldn’t take us on. . . . Now, we would call upon the employer and they would listen,” Hong remarked.31

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The restaurant campaign was successful in many respects. According to a survey of restaurant workers conducted by KIWA, the minimum wage compliance rate increased to more than 50 percent as a result (Fine 2006, 111; KIWA 2000b), and a mediation and arbitration panel was established to handle labor disputes in 1999 (Kang 1999). Significantly, the traditionally conservative Korean American Federation (KAF) mediated the antagonistic interests of the workers and owners, suggesting deep concern by ethnic elites about KIWA’s growing influence and its potential to spoil the image of Koreatown. In 2000, after this successful effort to transform the industry, an ad hoc workers’ committee launched RWAK (Restaurant Workers Association of Koreatown), an independent worker organization with a sizable membership.32 The restaurant campaign also produced strong organic leadership, notably Jung Hee Lee and Roman Vargas, former restaurant workers who became full-time KIWA organizers. Daunting challenges to worker organizing in Koreatown remained. KIWA’s militancy and stress on visible demonstrations of opposition cultivated some committed worker leaders but intimidated many others, who feared employer retaliation. Chung remarks that the formation of RWAK as an independent organization was strategic: “Because it is in the fledgling stage of development, KIWA believes it is important for RWAK to retain a separate identity so that employers and employees do not associate the workers’ association with the negative image and aggressive reputation of its parent organization” (2007, 237). Former KIWA staffer Mrs. ( Jung Hee) Lee asserted that it was difficult to organize Korean workers, not only because of their often precarious immigration status but also because of KIWA’s negative image. Given its aggressive stance against Koreatown businesses, some workers feared that if they got involved with the organization, they would lose their jobs ( J. H. Lee, interview.33 According to Nguyen, the majority of Korean workers who came to KIWA had already left their place of employment (see Gordon 2005, 195). Similarly, Hong noted that many workers were only motivated to reach out to KIWA after their relationships to coethnic employers were severed due to abuse, verbal or otherwise. Despite the achievements of the restaurant campaign, then, many workers remained ambivalent about KIWA’s militancy. One of the most effective mechanisms of disciplining immigrant labor has been blacklisting. Formal and informal networks among Korean employers facilitate the policing of reputed “troublemakers.” The experience of Mrs. Lee is quite telling. While working at a Korean restaurant as a waitress, she hurt her back. Unable to work, she was then dismissed without compensation. She sought out KIWA and filed a claim. When the employer was notified, the owner began to call her in the middle of the night threatening to

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inform the police and the INS about her undocumented status. Because of her association with KIWA, moreover, she couldn’t find any employment in Koreatown after her recovery. For years, Mrs. Lee (as well as other KIWA staff) could not even eat in local restaurants. She was virtually banned from Koreatown because of her claim and her affiliation with KIWA. Still, KIWA’s militancy has proven effective in transforming Koreatown. As Fine observes, direct public actions are often ineffective in producing lasting, institutionalized change: So far, direct public actions targeted at single employers on behalf of one or a small group of workers seem to be the most consistently effective way of reclaiming money owed. When workers engage in these tactics, employers often agree to pay back the back wages. But these actions generally do little in terms of altering firm structures, raising pay scales, or changing business practices inside firms unless they are linked to an effort to create ongoing organization in particular workplace or engage in broader industry-wide campaign. (2006, 146–47)

But Fine cites KIWA as a counterexample, arguing that the continued threat of direct actions intimidated restaurant employers into compliance with basic wage and hour laws. I would add that the efficacy of KIWA’s actions was shaped by the culture and politics of the “enclave.” Koreatown is a space of intense internal scrutiny and anxiety over its meaning and place in the racial, political, and economic landscape. Public direct actions disrupted Koreatown’s carefully crafted symbolic economy and instigated internal discussions about the place of immigrant labor in the imagined community. KIWA’s direct actions were in fact intended to “educate” the community. Park provides an example from the Elephant Snack restaurant campaign: Before that, business owners were like, “shit, we can do anything we want in Koreatown, if we just pay $600 and tips they can live on that, this is our rules, this is Koreatown.” But after Elephant Snack shop campaign, attitude had changed in Koreatown: we should at least pay the minimum wage . . . if we don’t it’s against the law, and it’s embarrassing for us . . . so, . . . that even though there were still people paying just $600/mo., no one could defend it anymore, no one could make a show of it . . . even within their own circles they would be embarrassed, ashamed.34

Public protest served as a powerful vehicle for workers’ collective voice and visibility and helped instigate a critical reappraisal of the moral and representational boundaries of the community. Through direct actions, KIWA performed opposition, positioning itself simultaneously “inside,” as a legitimate actor in the community, and

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“outside,” as a vehement opponent of the conservative, entrepreneurial hegemony of Koreatown (see Eyerman 2006). Its hard-fought “insider” position gave KIWA’s actions moral force. It can no longer be ignored or dismissed, but is now an established part of Koreatown, with respect from ethnic elites, if not support. KIWA’s reputation remains “extreme”; it continues to have an uncomfortable relationship with business owners and other ethnic elites. “But,” Park asserts, “there is also respect. We didn’t quit in the first year but lasted fifteen years [at the time of writing].”35 KIWA’s moral integrity remains intact, unsullied by accusations of scandal or personal gain.36 It is a part of Koreatown, and it is not going away.

Assi, the MWJC, and Spatial Justice The Assi union struggle was a risky departure from the successful directaction model. When KIWA decided to launch a union organizing campaign at Assi Supermarket, there was considerable consternation among its allies in the progressive community. Questions were raised regarding its organizational capacity, funding, union organizing experience, and the jurisdiction of local unions. Some labor leaders even attempted to dissuade KIWA from the campaign. The consequences of the later election loss and protracted struggle were considerable, both for the broader MWJC and for KIWA itself. The Assi struggle and MWJC may be understood as an “imperfect victory,” however. It did impact local markets and introduced the union concept into Koreatown. As one former staff member put it: “We can call Assi a loss or a campaign that transformed the industry.”37 It was also a campaign that transformed KIWA, sparking a strategic reorientation to an explicit concern with spatial justice. Outside observers point to two areas of the Assi campaign in which KIWA miscalculated: the sophistication of the corporate antiunion efforts, and the decision to file for an NLRB election rather than seeking card-check recognition. Assi Supermarket was a dramatic departure from KIWA’s traditional targets of owner-owned and run restaurants. It is among the holdings of Rhee Bros., Inc. (est. 1976), which claims to be the largest Asian food corporation in North America.38 KIWA did not anticipate the resources that would be mounted by the Assi ownership to undermine its campaign. As Fine reports, “Lee and the rest of the KIWA leadership were shocked that Assi had gone out of the confines of the ethnic enclave to hire one of the nation’s largest and most renowned union-busting law firms” (2006, 141). KIWA’s shift from the restaurant to market industry was not undertaken lightly. The leaders deliberated on the possibility of a market campaign for at least one year prior to the Assi struggle. They understood the dangers of a campaign focused on an NLRB election and knew that many recent union

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campaigns had pursued “non-Board” strategies (Milkman 2006; Milkman and Voss 2004; Sherman and Voss 2000, 85–86). The leadership reasoned that the NLRB election process would provide legal and moral sanction for an unprecedented and controversial movement in Koreatown. The NLRB process was one that Assi ownership could not refute, as it publicly conceded (K. Choi 2001a).39 The decision to undertake the union effort, despite the known risks, is understandable in light of KIWA’s self-definition as an instigator, a disruptive force in Koreatown. As Nguyen explained, “The idea was always to push the envelope.”40 KIWA leaders felt that Koreatown and the organization itself had to be further challenged. By 2000, Park remembered, there was a feeling of fatigue and inertia: I experienced both campaigns. There is fatigue that takes a toll on the organization, staff, everyone, even funders. Also, there is fatigue in the community. When first a campaign starts, for a year or two, there is always talk and media coverage, but after two, three years, media tends to ignore the issues. It is not a fresh movement anymore. It was really hard to draw in community support and media coverage.41

As Paul Lee explained: We had to take on a bigger catch and a bigger set of employers, as a way to challenge ourselves and challenge the community, and grow as an organization, which I believe it did, despite the outcome [at] Assi. The organization did grow. Organizations grow by hard challenges. I don’t think we grow by having an easy time all the time. That’s the struggle, climbing seemingly unclimbable mountains.42

The restaurant campaign had transformed the industry, resulting in a remarkable increase in labor law compliance and the formation of an independent workers’ association. But many workers remained in poverty, even those whose employers were now in compliance. Park noted: Because KIWA wants to grow, not only as an organization, but also power for workers, it didn’t make sense to go back to the old campaign style. . . . We felt that the next step in Koreatown was not fighting for minimum wage or labor law violations, but the next step was improving the wage and working conditions. So, the strategy was unions.43

This new vision was highly ambitious: to organize an independent, community-based union. Lee recalled, “It would’ve been a major breakthrough for worker centers and for KIWA. So, we had to challenge ourselves and put ourselves out there, knowing that we faced great risks and workers faced

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great risks.”44 The restaurant industry was the first “mountain”; a union was the next. The market industry was chosen because of its visibility and importance in Koreatown’s economy. It was, moreover, an industry dominated by a handful of corporate entities (driving out mom-and-pop operations) that could afford to pay union wages. The decision to organize Assi specifically was, according to Nguyen, serendipitous. KIWA leaders had been preparing to organize the market industry, but the Assi campaign itself was not planned until, in the summer of 2001, a small group of Latino workers from Assi cautiously approached KIWA about their working conditions. According to Max Mariscal, a former worker in the produce section at Assi who became an IWU organizer, the group met with Lee, who explained that to improve their situation they needed to organize. “So, we started organizing and talked to each other, and I think, at the beginning, it wasn’t the idea of having a union, but it was the idea of organizing, like be together, stand together, and defend ourselves.”45 They formed a worker committee of twenty to thirty people that met regularly at KIWA. When the possibility of a union was raised, he recalled, “The committee was on board with the . . . idea from the beginning.”46 In November 15, the newly formed IWU filed for a NLRB election, and with KIWA and other allies staged a press conference demanding union recognition from the market. The election was scheduled for March 9, 2002. KIWA followed “textbook” union election strategy. It brought in progressive allies with union experience to train the staff and worker leaders and recruited experienced organizers from RWAK, Jung Hee Lee and Roman Vargas. KIWA and IWU organizers met with workers one-on-one to gauge their commitment and organized group meetings. A card signing effort revealed that there was clear worker support. Mariscal stated that half of the Assi workers signed cards in one day, and all the Latino workers, who composed the majority, in two days (only three of the Korean workers signed cards). The strategy was clear: turn out the Latino workers. In the weeks leading up to the election, there was a growing sense of confidence and optimism. Although it would be close, organizers felt that there was a solid prounion majority. On the day of the election, the mood was “electric”; hundreds of supporters gathered at the market, eagerly anticipating victory. In the early evening, Lee faced the animated crowd and announced the unexpected—a tied vote. He then proclaimed that the struggle was not over. They would take the fight to the streets where KIWA was strong, where they had won before. The result, however disappointing, did not dilute commitment and enthusiasm. KIWA and IWU leaders, along with their progressive allies and

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the workers, mounted a spirited campaign to protest Assi’s unfair labor practices and to demand union recognition. There were daily pickets at the market gate and innovative actions to disrupt business and urge customers to shop elsewhere. On Father’s Day (2002), for example, organizers’ and workers’ children made a “justice quilt” of handmade holiday cards. With balloons in one hand and a part of the quilt in the other, they walked to the market and attempted to deliver their message to the owner: work conditions at the market were harming their parents and home lives; the children of the community support the union. It was an emotional and powerful tactic, and Assi responded by blocking the market entrance and violently pushing back accompanying adults. Similarly creative actions were organized throughout the five-year-long struggle. On August 1, Assi management went on the offensive, placing fifty Latino and ten Korean workers on “non-disciplinary indefinite suspension.”47 In July, Assi had received SSA (Social Security Administration) “No-Match” letters. Although the letters specifically stated that they should not be used as a basis for terminating workers or any other retaliatory action, management called in and threatened both Latino and Korean workers, demanding verification within seven days. On the evening before the scheduled suspensions, KIWA/IWU and their allies denounced Assi’s actions as discriminatory and held a candlelight vigil as workers finished their final shift.48 The following morning, the suspended workers tried to return to work but were removed from the market under threat of arrest by the LAPD. The suspensions did not come as a surprise to KIWA/IWU leadership; some kind of retaliation was anticipated. However, what no one expected was the change in the legal landscape that took place just a few months earlier. On March 27, 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB was that undocumented workers are not entitled to back pay for lost wages after illegal termination for union organizing. Combined with the “no-match” letters, the Hoffman decision strengthened Assi’s position that it was not obligated to reinstate workers without legal status; it was merely following the letter of the law. The workers themselves understood from the start that they were putting their jobs on the line. While they may have feared job loss, it was a fear, Mariscal noted, that they had lived with every day as undocumented workers. At the same time, while the rank-and-file were told of the risks, Mariscal reflected that many may not have been fully conscious of the consequences. Yet, they continued to demonstrate commitment and determination.49 KIWA/IWU leadership decided to hit back hard and make Assi an example for the rest of the industry. They hoped that the committed and energetic

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base of progressive community support they had cultivated over the years, combined with aggressive direct actions on the street, would force management to settle. IWU announced a communitywide boycott. Suspended workers picketed eight hours a day, every day, for a full year; and those still working joined them when they could. KIWA also mobilized hundreds of allies, including students, members of other worker centers (some of which had been established with KIWA support), and Korean-American community leaders. They joined workers on the line, beating drums, marching, and chanting in a single voice, “Si se puede.” KIWA also organized innovative, theatrical actions, as on Halloween (2002), when costumed protesters picketed the market while chanting, “Monster Rhee, you can’t scare us away.” Those performances were intended to “give energy to the picketers” and to educate the customers.50 In addition to these creative and playful demonstrations, workers and allies protested at the owner’s house, ultimately leading him to move, and distributed fliers at his church. KIWA/IWU also developed a legal strategy to put further pressure on Assi’s ownership. Latino workers filed employment discrimination charges with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) in January 2002, and Korean and Latino workers filed wage and hour violations claims with the State Labor Commission in March. After the EEOC ruled in September that Assi had violated Latino workers’ civil rights and management refused arbitration, IWU filed a class-action civil lawsuit in November. The suit not only increased the financial pressure on Assi, but also provided a legal and moral frame for worker action. The union struggle, subsequent suspensions, and the drama of Latino and Korean workers picketing at the market gates drew considerable Koreatown attention and consternation. The ethnic news media reported on the union struggle, and articles revealed growing anxiety among local businesses (for example see D. Choi 2001; K. Choi 2001b; Han 2001). One prevalent theme in the reportage was of Latino-Korean relationships in Koreatown; some accounts praised those markets that “transcended” race, for example, by employing Latinos as cashiers, a position generally reserved for Korean women (Chung 2002; cf. D. Choi 2001). One widely read Korean newspaper editorialized that Korean businesses might now have to seriously consider accommodating unions because of the potential for interethnic conflict (Korea Daily 2001). According to Park, sentiment in Koreatown turned more negative toward Assi after the dismissal of one of the few openly supportive Korean workers in April 2002, and after the suspension of the predominantly Latino workers. Park recalled that the Korean American Chamber of Commerce and

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other ethnic elites tried to push for a quick resolution to the conflict, but ultimately failed. Park explained, Why did they step in? It just looked bad for the Korean community. It didn’t make sense about the suspensions. The other thing was . . . who got kicked out? A lot of the Latino workers. How is this going to look? Historically, the Korean community went through 4.29 [L.A. uprising]. . . . They wanted it to get resolved.51

Significantly, elites did not side with Assi management but took a neutral position, according to Park. KIWA put to powerful effect the rhetorical frame of class and interethnic conflict in spring 2002, on the anniversary of the civil uprising (McDonnell 2002). By September 2002, Assi management was concerned enough to respond to the boycott and the negative publicity with full-page ads in the major Korean language dailies refuting KIWA/IWU charges of racial discrimination, legal violations, and unfair dismissals. The daily pickets, combined with the negative press coverage, discouraged customers from patronizing the market, especially at the beginning of the boycott. Park recalled: We were able to turn away a lot of customers. Not only turning away . . . they would shop and feel guilty. While they were coming out, they would give us rice, snacks . . . buy bags and bags of hamburgers and give it to the workers. And people who had some political consciousness . . . they wouldn’t shop.

Other organizers and staff told similar stories; one remembered that women from nearby residences bought and distributed ice cream to the picketers during the hot summer months. Although KIWA and IWU were not able to turn away all or even the majority of customers, they did dissuade numerous community members from shopping at Assi. Park noted, “As long as the picket line was there, I don’t think any of them [those they turned away in the initial few months] went back. So, after the last press conference [April 2007], I said that now people can go back; the boycott is over. A lot of people still ask me, call me at the office, if it is okay to go back.”52 Although KIWA/IWU put up a valiant and energetic fight, Assi ownership stood its ground, even as it suffered financial losses.53 KIWA was then thrown into what one staff member called “crisis mode.” There was no strike fund; nor could KIWA use its foundation grants to support the IWU strikers. Furthermore, the struggle required increased organizational capacity, and KIWA was forced to hire additional staff. In order to maintain the boycott and financially support the vulnerable workers, KIWA had to frantically raise new funds. As one former staff member recalled,

THE KOREATOWN IMMIGRANT WORKERS ALLIANCE

45

the organization raised more than $6,000 per month, nearly $100,000 in the first year, mostly through grassroots fundraising events like house parties and worker car washes.54 Park recalled the struggle to feed the workers and volunteers on the picket line each day: In order to feed ourselves . . . what was the cheapest . . . We learned very quickly that hotdogs were the cheapest. Forty dollars of hotdogs, buns, and ketchup and stuff could feed 70–80 people. That was kind of painful having to eat hotdogs twice a day.55

Soon, he continued, they got sick of this diet. Later, he was able to collect leftover food from a local buffet-style restaurant. KIWA fell into substantial debt. The initial surge of progressive community support waned, as donors were rapidly “tapped out.” Staff and directors took pay cuts, and one took out personal loans. It was a fight that KIWA felt it had to win, for the sake of the workers and the organization, and many staff made considerable personal sacrifices. The union struggle became a battle of attrition. As the months passed, the suspensions began to exact a tremendous toll from the workers. The exigencies of making a living inevitably took over; the strikers had to find jobs, but as Mariscal remarked, the Assi workers, Korean and Latino alike, found it difficult to find other employment in Koreatown. According to Mrs. Lee, many of them were forced to find employment outside of the area, and a few even left the city. If they were hired within Koreatown, they were dogged with questions about their activities with KIWA and union organizing. One Korean worker was questioned about his “unsavory” association and had to assure the employer that he would no longer be involved with union organizing or with KIWA. After a year, the picketing dwindled, as more and more workers found new jobs. With the Assi struggle at a standstill, KIWA brought in an outside consultant to facilitate a strategic planning process in 2003. This led to intense and candid internal criticism. Leaders and members were wracked by guilt and frustration because of the election loss and suspensions. They raised sharp questions regarding the organization’s vision, capacity, decision-making structure, membership accountability, and future direction. They broached the possibility of ending the struggle but decided to persevere, regardless of the immediate consequences to the organization. Staff and organizers were emotionally attached and felt morally obligated to the workers. They only relented when workers found new employment and voiced their disinterest in reinstatement. Still, KIWA had to find a way to declare victory. Assi was a very public loss, the first in its history. Workers, other market owners, and residents

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were intensely scrutinizing the struggle. Among the workers, Park noted, there was a palpable chill. “It’s a small community and all the workers know each other,” he explained. “They move around in the same industry. They knew exactly what happened at Assi, and unless we had positive closure, we wouldn’t be able to organize workers in the future.”56 KIWA could not afford to appear weak in Koreatown. As many of the leaders acknowledged, the organization’s efficacy and existence was contingent on its legitimacy as a powerful social force rooted in Koreatown. In that regard, KIWA was very different from traditional unions, as Lee pointed out: We would not walk away; we have nowhere else to walk away to. This is it, just as it is for the workers. We had to show the workers, to Assi, to the other businesses and to the community that we won’t go away.57

Thus KIWA continued the Assi boycott and strategically escalated the direct actions, even as it launched living wage campaigns at other Koreatown markets as part of its effort to “figure out positive paths to victory,” reclaim power, and thereby “leave space for when workers [were] ready to organize.”58 The idea was to capitalize on KIWA’s militant reputation while addressing the weaknesses that surfaced during the Assi struggle, namely, its ambivalent standing in Koreatown. The strategic planning participants repeatedly referred to the need to “repair longstanding relationships with the [Korean] community.” Nguyen explained, We were sort of used to being the fringe element [in Koreatown] and in some ways sort of liked it . . . I don’t think that was a good thing . . . you know . . . “KIWA is crazy, KIWA is confrontational” . . . all these things. We didn’t make enough of an effort to engage with those in the community, people who we may not agree with but who could be helpful.59

KIWA recognized that large-scale campaigns like the MWJC could only succeed with Korean residents’ support: “If we were going to focus geographically on Koreatown, we had to engage more with the mainstream Koreatown community.”60 During the Assi campaign, for example, while the boycott and actions were initially effective, the protracted struggle eventually generated sympathy for the owner within the community. Nguyen recalled: It was a dynamic that I’ve seen a lot. [Mainstream community would say,] “The owner, he’s a good man, he’s really suffering, he’s praying. . . .” It’s interesting because that all these actions are seen as excessive . . . and there is a strange sense that KIWA has a lot of power in Koreatown. Sometimes in the media, KIWA is like this bully . . . attacking Korean community businesses.61

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47

While its aggressive public actions had been effective, KIWA leaders eventually came to believe that they had to reform the organization’s image in Koreatown as well. The living wage campaign was officially announced in April 2005, along with a comprehensive poverty report on Koreatown.62 KIWA framed the campaign as “fair share” and asked members of the community to sign a pledge. As Park explained, “In order to resolve this [poverty] everybody has to do their share and employers can help by paying better wages, not minimum wages, which is still poverty wages.” The message did not target specific businesses but emphasized mutual responsibility and the reputation of Koreatown. The message resonated powerfully in the Korean American community and ethnic and mainstream media published excerpts of the report. With the rhetorical frame put in place, Assi was held up as the “poster child” of community irresponsibility and KIWA approached market owners. Park explained the strategy: Our strategy at that point was to use Assi as a “poster child” . . . to beat the hell out of them, so that other markets . . . you know they already were afraid that something like Assi may happen in their own markets . . . with all that in place, we talked to the workers and all the owners . . . this would be a compromise that we were willing to make. It worked. It actually worked.63

HK and Galleria markets negotiated and accepted a living wage agreement within three months. Those owners, Park recalled, calculated that this would be less costly than a public fight with KIWA. In addition, the rhetorical frame of the “fair share” enabled market owners and KIWA to claim positive roles and leadership in Koreatown. Although California Market required a more complicated negotiating process, involving the mediation of the CRA (Community Redevelopment Agency) regarding the owner’s plan to redevelop, it, too, was finalized in 2007. Despite the union election loss, KIWA’s work dramatically altered the social and cultural landscape of Koreatown. The Assi campaign introduced the concept of unionism to Koreatown and especially to its immigrant working class. The organization’s deep commitment and willingness to stay and fight, despite the unfavorable odds and the considerable costs, provided leverage for the living wage campaign. The strategic shift to the living wage issue also demonstrated the organization’s flexibility and critical reflexivity. KIWA gained in increased political sophistication through its work with the CRA; learned how to skillfully frame its issues; developed capacity to do corporate research; built alliances with unions, such as the Iron Workers and the Building Trades Council, both of which came out in full support of KIWA during the California Market campaign; and improved relationships with the mainstream Korean community.

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Conclusion KIWA’s early identity and political practice were implicitly informed by a spatial imagination. Its struggle for relief funds for Korean and Latino workers in the aftermath of the 1992 uprising and the Restaurant Workers Justice Campaign marked KIWA’s emergence as an instigator in Koreatown. Its aggressive and highly visible actions functioned as definitional dramas rendering visible the area’s marginalized immigrant working class. KIWA’s actions claimed Koreatown as a multicultural and working-class space that in turn transformed workers into legitimate members of the Koreatown public (see Mitchell 2003, 129). The Assi union struggle was a transformational campaign that propelled KIWA toward a more explicit and strategic engagement with spatial justice in Koreatown. In evaluating the Assi struggle, leaders were confronted with the consequences of their militant, aggressive image in Koreatown. During the restaurant campaign, KIWA had accepted the risks of instigating change in the symbolic economy of Koreatown through its definitional dramas, even at the risk of alienating the mainstream Korean American community. Assi, however, demonstrated the organization’s need to repair relationships with Koreatown entrepreneurs and residents in order to create a sense of shared political and economic responsibility. As Park observed: When the Korean American community sees Koreatown, they don’t see it as a community. . . . Koreatown is just a place where they come to do or run business or come at night to drink soju . . . so, they don’t see Koreatown as community where different peoples of color live . . . they don’t see it as a holistic thing.64

The MWJC, framed as a “fair share” campaign, launched the struggle to collectively reimagine Koreatown as a shared space. It put KIWA on a path that eventually would go beyond workplace issues, embracing housing, education, and neighborhood safety as part of a broader vision in which all inhabitants of the community have a “right to the city” (Harvey 2000; Lefebvre 1996; Mitchell 2003). In this spirit, KIWA has extended the living wage struggle to take up issues of affordable housing and has opened its doors to the public as a cultural education center. As Robin Kelley argues, “The battle for livable wages and fulfilling jobs is inseparable from . . . the struggle to remake culture itself, to develop new ideas, new relationships, and new values that place mutuality over materialism and collective responsibility over ‘personal responsibility’ ” (Kelley 1997, 125–26; see also Clawson 2003).

2 Organizing Workers along Ethnic Lines THE PILIPINO WORKERS’ CENTER

Nazgol Ghandnoosh

Worker centers often attract members who share a geographic area or ethnic background—rather than an occupation or industry—and help them claim and expand their rights. Working predominantly with immigrants scattered across various industries, these centers are attuned to members’ problems not only at work but also in other domains such as immigration and housing (Fine 2006, 13, 20–22). This chapter examines how building a membership along ethnic lines impacts a worker center’s campaigns. Previous scholars have shown that geographic or ethnic-based worker centers have been effective in directing work-related legislative campaigns (Gordon 2005) and in mobilizing for tenant and immigrant rights (Fine 2006). Because organizing along ethnic lines can be so consequential for a worker center—from determining its industry focus to establishing its organizational allies— I seek to delineate the impact of this organizing strategy on a center’s trajectory. Through an analysis of four campaigns at the Pilipino Workers’ Center

I thank the organizers and members of the Pilipino Workers’ Center—especially Aquilina Soriano-Versoza and Lolita Lledo—for the time and support they contributed to this project, Bongoh Kye for analyzing the census data used in this chapter, Anthony Ocampo for recommending key sources on Filipino migration, and the other contributors to this volume for their encouragement and comments on earlier drafts. For their close readings and invaluable comments, I would like to especially thank Ruth Milkman, Roger Waldinger, and Janice Fine. This project was financially supported by the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and an earlier version of this chapter was presented at the 2008 meeting of the American Sociological Association in Boston.

49

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(PWC), I trace how one organization implemented the ethnic organizing principle and the resulting support and setbacks it experienced. For more than ten years, PWC has been organizing low-wage, primarily undocumented Filipino immigrants in Los Angeles to help them make advances on issues of work, housing, banking, and immigrant rights. Since its inception, PWC grew from an unsuccessful union organizing drive to a membership of five hundred adult workers and fifty youth; from borrowing desk space at another worker center to directing a forty-eight-unit affordable housing complex on its own property; and from accepting small marketing fees from Western Union to challenging the company’s business practices and entering a profit-sharing plan with a competitor. How did the organization experience this growth, and how did its decision to serve an exclusively Filipino immigrant population shape its path? I will explore these questions with the goal of highlighting useful lessons for other worker centers, labor unions, and community-based organizations that are considering adopting an ethnic organizing strategy either in its entirety or as part of a broader organizing agenda.1 The chapter is organized in two sections, each considering a different aspect of PWC as a Filipino worker center. The first section explores how PWC became a Filipino worker center—in other words, how it met the unique needs of the immigrant Filipino low-wage population, many of whom are wary of organized labor and protest movements, in order to build its membership. The second part of the chapter examines PWC’s experience as a Filipino worker center, arguing that its focus on Filipino immigrants has had mixed results in its workplace struggles but has helped the organization develop crucial alliances to address non-workplace issues. To contextualize the organization’s activities, I begin with an overview of Filipino migration to the United States and description of the L.A. Filipino population.

Filipino Immigration Filipinos are the second largest Asian population in the United States and roughly two-thirds are foreign-born (Reeves and Bennett 2004). The Philippines’ distinct status as a former U.S. colony, coupled with changes in immigration policy, have shaped the experience of the Filipino population in the United States. While the first wave of Filipino immigrants arriving at the turn of the previous century were mainly unskilled laborers, in recent years the Philippines has been the single largest source of professional migrants to the United States (Espiritu 2003). Yet the success that has characterized the second wave has not been shared by all.

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After annexing the archipelago following the 1898 Spanish American War, the United States exerted significant economic and cultural influence on the colony, creating a legacy that continued after independence in 1946. The Philippines’ economy was stymied by its transformation into a singlecrop (sugar) economy and by its economic dependence on the United States. High rates of inflation and unemployment (Espiritu 2003) pushed people to find work abroad. Currently, one in seven workers from the Philippines are abroad at any given time (DeParle 2007). About one in three emigrants settle permanently, primarily in the United States, while 40 percent make long-term careers as temporary contract workers in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, spending extended periods of time away from their families. Finally, an estimated 1.3 million are working abroad without authorization from their host countries. While U.S. economic influence motivated Filipinos to migrate from their country, changes in immigration law and policies created two distinct waves of Filipino immigrants to the United States. Colonization enabled the first wave of Filipino immigration, composed primarily of young single men recruited as migrant farm workers. While exclusionary immigration policies closed the gates to Asian immigrants beginning in the 1880s, Filipinos were exempt because of their “U.S. national” status. But when the 1934 TydingsMcDuffie Independence Act granted the Philippines independence, it also stripped Filipinos of their exempt immigration status (see Ngai 2004) and curbed the flow of Filipinos to the United States. Migration picked up again with the passage of the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which sparked a second, and distinct, wave of Filipino migration. The 1965 act admitted newcomers primarily under the family reunification criteria but also allocated visas based on domestic occupational needs. Compared to other countries, a far greater share of Filipinos entering the United States after the 1965 act—between one-third and one-half—entered using preferred occupation categories (Choy 2003, 97–98; Espiritu 2003, 34; Lobo and Salvo 1998, 745). After settlement in the United States, this professional population was able to further multiply its ranks through family reunification visas. The legacy of U.S. influence in the former colony helped prepare these Filipinos for the roles they would serve in the United States. For example, the United States installed English as the language of instruction in the Philippines (Espiritu 2003) and increased access to higher education and professional training, particularly in medical professions (Choy 2003). Thus, while more than two-thirds of the U.S. Filipino population are now foreign-born, three-quarters report speaking English very well (Reeves and Bennett 2004). With relatively high levels of professional training, particularly in the medical field, Filipinos can fill shortages

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in the U.S. health care industry (Choy 2003; Ong and Azores 1994). As a result of their concentration in professional occupations, the Filipino population in the United States today fares better than the non-Filipino population. In 1999, Filipino median family income was $65,000, compared to $50,000 for non-Filipinos; and only 6 percent of Filipinos lived below the official poverty line, compared to 12 percent of non-Filipinos (Reeves and Bennett 2004). Yet the success that has characterized the second wave of Filipino migrants has not been ubiquitous. Among those who do not fit the image of immigrant success are relatives of the earlier wave of low-wage immigrants who entered the United States through the family reunification clause of the 1965 Immigration Act (Espiritu 2003); those unable to apply Filipino educational credentials to the U.S. system (Allen 1977); and those who cannot work at positions commensurate with their skills because they are residing in the United States without proper documents— usually on expired tourist visas. This last group, the Filipino undocumented population, was estimated to number 280,000 in 2006 (Hoefer, Rytina, and Campbell 2007). California is home to nearly half of the Filipinos in the United States, with nearly 300,000—or 13 percent of the total U.S. Filipino population—living in Los Angeles County in 2000 (U.S. Census 2000). Foreign-born Filipinos outnumber U.S.–born Filipinos by two to one in L.A. County, and a considerable portion of the foreign-born population, 39 percent, is comprised of noncitizens (see table 2.1). Paralleling the national figures, Filipinos in Los Angeles are a generally successful immigrant population, but the most recent immigrants—especially those who are noncitizens—are at a noticeable disadvantage. As can be expected from their higher levels of education (see table 2.2), Filipinos on average suffer from a lower poverty rate than the general population in L.A. County, but there is a great deal of variation within this population (see table 2.3). While the average poverty rate in the county was

Table 2.1. Nativity and citizenship status of Filipinos, L.A. County, 2000 Filipinos U.S.-born Foreign-born naturalized citizens Foreign-born noncitizens Total Source: U.S. Census 2000.

Population size

Percentage of total

97,287 123,333 77,839 298,459

33% 41% 26% 100%

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17 percent in 1999, the rate among Filipinos was only 8 percent. Yet noncitizen immigrant Filipinos had a much higher rate, 12 percent, compared to their naturalized or native-born counterparts. While even the 12 percent rate is far below the L.A. County average (17 percent), it is surprisingly high given the Filipino population’s relatively high level of education. Table 2.2. Educational attainment of Filipinos and non-Filipinos, by nativity and citizenship status, L.A. County, 2000

Filipinos U.S.-born Foreign-born naturalized citizens Foreign-born noncitizens Total foreign-born Total Filipinos Non-Filipinos U.S.-born Foreign-born naturalized citizens Foreign-born noncitizens Total foreign-born Total non-Filipinos L.A. County total

Less than HS degree

HS degree

Some college

College degree

Total

9% 11

20% 10

35% 29

36% 50

100% 100

12 11 11

11 10 11

29 29 30

49 50 48

100 100 100

14% 37

22% 18

34% 22

30% 23

100% 100

60 50 31

15 17 19

12 17 26

12 17 24

100 100 100

30

19

26

25

100

Source: U.S. Census 2000. Note: Only persons over 25 years of age are included in these data.

Table 2.3. Poverty rates of Filipinos and non-Filipinos, by nativity and citizenship status, L.A. County, 2000 Filipinos

Poverty rate

U.S.-born Foreign-born naturalized citizens Foreign-born noncitizens Total foreign-born Total Filipinos

8% 6 12 8 8

Non-Filipinos U.S.-born Foreign-born naturalized citizens Foreign-born noncitizens Total foreign-born Total non-Filipinos

16% 13 27 22 18

L.A. County total

17%

Source: U.S. Census 2000.

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Making a Filipino Worker Center Unlike many voluntary immigrant associations that have social or serviceprovision goals, PWC’s founders are deeply committed to creating social change. Yet their transformative vision has often been met with skepticism by the workers they are trying to organize. In response, PWC has adapted its organizing strategies to address the conservative political outlook held by many of its members.

PWC’s Vision: Organizers’ Revolutionary Ideals PWC was launched in 1995 by American-born Filipinos who envisioned it as an organization that would incorporate low-wage immigrant Filipinos into the anti-imperialist movement in the Philippines. Several among the original founders, including Aquilina Soriano-Versoza and Jay Mendoza, met as student activists while attending the University of California, Los Angeles.2 They aimed to combine two previously distinct types of Filipino organizations in the United States. The first type was made up of political organizations oriented toward the anti-imperialist movement in the Philippines, but which tended to attract only a small number of native-born Filipinos (“Fil-Am’s”) and even fewer from the large numbers of low-wage immigrants. The second type was made up of Filipino service organizations that provided assistance to the low-wage immigrant population, but operated without a strategy to change the conditions these workers faced in the United States, and did not grapple with the economic and political conditions in the Philippines that initiated their migration.3 PWC’s hybrid approach was premised on a strong belief among its founders and organizers that immigrant workers must be mobilized in order to create political change in the United States and abroad, and that this cannot be done without addressing their pressing everyday problems. In pursuing this dual goal of organizing for economic rights and broader political power, PWC organizers understood themselves to be emulating the labor organizing model within the Philippines, as Jay Mendoza explains: The Philippines unions mobilize not only for strikes on the picket lines or inside the workplace, but an equal amount of effort is placed on being involved in the national politics. . . . Whereas in the U.S., the unions are more heavily oriented towards primarily the workplace and secondarily politics outside of the workplace . . . in the Philippines it’s the opposite.4

According to PWC organizer Lolita Lledo, the worker center seeks to create “short-term victories” for members in order to draw them into broader

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political struggles.5 This perspective is captured in PWC’s official mission statement: We provide services and resources that help meet the immediate needs of Pilipino workers and their families while organizing for long-term change. We also believe that the conditions of Filipino workers and the community here in Los Angeles are inseparably linked to the conditions in our homeland, the Philippines. Justice here includes justice there.6

This orientation to politics in the Philippines has been a key factor driving the leadership to target the Filipino population and has shaped the campaigns they have organized. PWC began by taking note of the absence of Filipinos in multiethnic immigrant organizations in Los Angeles. They attributed this to the distinct experience of low-wage Filipino immigrants, many of whom came from higher class backgrounds than other immigrants in the region. Further, PWC organizers believed that undocumented Filipino immigrants were especially cautious about jeopardizing their presence in the United States, as deportation can pose a distinct reentry problem for those whose mode of entry is through airports rather than across land borders.7 PWC wanted to create an organization that Filipinos would consider their own, following the early models of Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates (KIWA; see Kwon, this volume), an organization that housed PWC in its early days, and the Thai Community Development Center. By serving this unmet need, PWC sought to re-create the bayanihan—explained to me as the communal spirit of working together to address shared problems—that Filipinos had lost in their migration to the United States.

PWC’s Strategy: Members’ Conservative Outlook In targeting the foreign-born Filipino population, PWC’s founders had to overcome the cultural divide between themselves—U.S.–born, middleclass Filipinos—and the population they sought to organize—foreign-born, low-wage Filipinos. They also had to bridge the divergent political ideologies of organizers and members. Because politics often does not rank high among immigrants’ motivations to formally organize (Moya 2005, 850–51, 857), PWC organizers faced the twin task of increasing civic participation and revising conservative ideologies. By overcoming three organizing challenges—locating low-wage workers, relating to them, and slowly introducing them to an alternative political vision—PWC was able to build its Filipino membership base. Beginning in 1997, PWC embarked on what its staff often describe as a “trial-and-error” effort to locate and organize low-wage Filipino immigrant

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workers. Aquilina Soriano-Versoza recalls reading accounts of exploited Filipino workers—unpaid garment workers, abused maids, victims of human trafficking—but at the time she did not know about the scale of these issues or how to address them.8 The familiar strategies of protesting against the Philippine government at the Consulate or participating in protests against the World Trade Organization did not lead to encounters with low-wage immigrants. In its efforts to make contact with low-wage Filipinos, PWC began by offering individual legal services. This led to a few cases: a domestic worker who was being abused in her client’s home, or a home care worker who was wrongly charged with elder abuse. But the legal clinic, an effective recruitment strategy for many other worker centers (see, e.g., Gordon 2005), did not bring in many members for PWC because at this nascent stage, the organization did not have a strategy to spread the word about its services, leaving the clinic infrequently attended. Also, there was no clear pattern in the small number of cases. As Mendoza recalls, “We were looking for a bigger campaign where we could organize a group of workers, but most of the people we were working with were just individual cases.”9 Eventually, PWC struck on its most successful membership-building strategy: in 2000, it launched a food distribution program to attract the residents of apartment buildings that had a high concentration of Filipinos. Borrowing an approach often used by church groups, they collected unwanted produce from a wholesaler and distributed it to residents for free, in order to make contact and gain trust. Then, in 2001, PWC conducted a needs-assessment survey among these residents and learned that the issues that mattered to them most were health care, immigration, and work. In the meantime, organizers undertook several measures to prepare themselves to relate to the population they were seeking to organize. For U.S.–born staff, gaining linguistic and cultural fluency was crucial. In addition to the obvious need to be able to communicate with recent immigrants, cultural competence was necessary to overcome the belief among some recent Filipinos immigrants that their U.S.–born coethnics looked down on them. As one of the youth members of the organization told me: There’s a separation between Fil-Am’s and immigrants, it’s like they call the immigrants FOB’s [“fresh off the boat”] and stuff like that. Other immigrants that have been here longer are joining the Fil-Am’s and then criticizing the ones that still have the accent or still dress like an immigrant.

To gain fluency in Tagalog and learn about their heritage, three U.S.–born members of the leadership and staff—Jay Mendoza, Aquilina SorianoVersoza, and Strela Cervas—toured the Philippines on exposure programs that connect Filipino-Americans to social justice campaigns in the Philippines. Meanwhile, Philippines-born organizers, Dong Lledo and Lolita

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Lledo, who both had extensive organizing experience in the Philippines, also prepared themselves to better relate to recent immigrants. In their case, this meant shelving Marx and Hegel to watch Filipino telenovelas on TFC, The Filipino Channel, a popular conversation topic among recent Filipino immigrants. Yet while organizers sought to bridge the distance between themselves and members, it was precisely because of their different life experiences that they could be helpful to the recent immigrants. The U.S.– born leadership had familiarity and ease of access with legal institutions and service providers in the community, while the foreign-born organizers could help members think strategically, drawing on organizing skills cultivated in the Philippines. Finally, to build and retain its membership, PWC had to be responsive to the distinct needs and constraints of the Filipino immigrant population. Most significant, according to organizers, was members’ frequent experience of downward class mobility, or what Parreñas (2001, 150) describes as “contradictory class mobility.” Because many of these immigrants entered the United States with visas that have asset requirements, they came from middle-class backgrounds in the Philippines. Thus, while most members of the Association of Filipino Workers (AFW: PWC’s membership arm) struggle to meet their basic financial needs, nearly three-fourths of them have at least a college degree (see table 2.4). PWC organizers believe that this makes workers more individualistic, ashamed, and cautious about affiliating with the type of militant labor activism they watched from a distance in the Philippines. Indeed, most PWC members I spoke with described disinterest in and distance from grassroots political activism in the Philippines. Even some currently active PWC members, such as “Mike,”10 still hold a radically different perspective from PWC organizers: A friend asked me “Why don’t you join [a protest against U.S. influence in the Philippines]?” I said, “I don’t understand what you want me to do.” He said, “The Americans want to get everything,” but I said “All the businesses here are Chinese . . . . From my understanding, the Americans are helping protect us against the rebels.”

In expressing this belief in the goodwill of U.S. influence, Mike’s remarks reveal the stark contrast between the political outlooks of PWC members and organizers. PWC’s recruitment practices reflect the organization’s careful adaptation to members’ lingering middle-class dispositions. The politics of naming is one window into this struggle. Workers are invited to join the Association of Filipino Workers (AFW), PWC’s membership arm, which currently helps

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Table 2.4. Educational attainment of members of Association of Filipino Workers (AFW)

AFW members, total AFW homecare workers

Less than HS degree

HS degree

Vocational degree

Some college

College degree

Postcollege

Total

4%

8%

6%

4%

72%

6%

100%

1%

5%

8%

7%

74%

4%

100%

Source: Pilipino Workers’ Center n.d.b.

members access discounted health care and offers education and casework services. Launched in 2001 with a hundred members, AFW’s membership has swelled to more than five hundred. Each part of this part of the organization’s name, Association of Filipino Workers, is a compromise between the worker center’s revolutionary vision, and the members’ far more conservative sensibility: association rather than union, Filipino rather than Pilipino, but workers rather than employees. To instill a sense of collectivity among workers who consider themselves not workers, but employees, AFW comes close to hitting a nerve by calling its members “workers” and highlighting their current, rather than foregone status. This approach is not taken too far, however: the organization is called an association rather than a union because PWC believes the latter term would set off too many alarm bells because of potential negative associations with radical unionism in the Philippines. Similarly, PWC staff decided to take down potentially radical-seeming posters that might scare off members but would not budge on the mural it placed at the entry of its property depicting workers with raised fists. Finally, in arriving at the name Association of Filipino Workers, Filipino was selected in favor of Pilipino because although Pilipino is the more progressive term used by some Filipinos in the United States (a linguistic purging of colonial influence: Tagalogspeakers could not accommodate the f sound in King Felipe II’s name), Filipino remains prevalent in the Philippines and therefore among new immigrants. The inconsistency in using Pilipino in the center’s name and Filipino in the association’s name is intentional, as Soriano-Versoza explains, because it at least raises the topic for discussion with members.11 Yet while PWC organizers cite workers’ middle-class backgrounds and their disaffection from witnessing violent crackdowns on activism in the Philippines as a great challenge, the members I spoke with shared fond memories of their experiences at protests and with unions in the United States. Mike, the active member who shunned protests in the Philippines, told me of his positive experience at the 2007 May Day march for immigrant

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rights (see Osuji, this volume), notwithstanding the “melee” started by the police at the end: “It’s risky there [in the Philippines]. They use rubber bullets here. But there, they use real bullets.” Members who had exposure to U.S. unions similarly spoke of positive experiences. “Gloria,” for example, plans to approach the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) home care workers’ local to ask how she can continue to be a member, having had a taste of membership while working as a home care worker for a client that qualified her to join the union. She told me that she was attracted to the ease with which she was able to sign up for the union’s services. But of course she, or at least her less active peers, might have a different reaction to a confrontational organizing campaign. These and other members I spoke with most often cited lack of time, rather than lack of interest, as the cause for their limited involvement in the center’s campaigns: holding down two or three jobs and being dispersed throughout the city, they found it very difficult to attend meetings at the worker center.12 These members’ accounts reflect the growing consensus among labor researchers and organizers that contrary to earlier expectations, certain aspects of immigrants’ experiences make them at least as—if not more— responsive to labor organizing as the native-born. Restricted to low-wage jobs because of limited skills and/or legal status, immigrant workers, and particularly the undocumented, were once considered “unorganizable” because they were seen as content with the greener pastures in the United States and fearful of deportation (Delgado 1993). Yet recent successful immigration campaigns have shown that other factors make immigrants more likely than the native-born to accept the risks inherent in a unionization drive: their foreign reference point makes the risks of U.S. unionization seem trivial, their negative reception by the U.S. born motivates them to defend their rights, and their tight ethnic networks help sustain the campaigns (Fink 2003; Milkman 2006). By customizing its organizing message for its members, PWC could address their hesitations while strengthening their motivations for becoming active in campaigns.

Making a Filipino Worker Center While working to recruit Filipinos to join the worker center, PWC also faced the challenge of organizing campaigns suitable for its Filipino membership. In this section, I consider the potential and constraints of PWC’s ethnic organizing strategy. PWC’s commitment to a specific ethnic population has encouraged it to look at members as more than workers and to look beyond the workplace for its organizing efforts. I therefore consider how PWC’s ethnic focus impacted two workplace and two non-workplace campaigns.

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Workplace Organizing: The Parking Attendants’ Unionization Campaign PWC’s first workplace campaign began fortuitously in 1997 when a PWC volunteer recounted the problems his father was having at his work as a parking attendant at the University of Southern California (USC)—a job site with many Filipino employees. Building on his community organizing skills from his previous union work at the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees’ Local 11, Jay Mendoza arranged meetings with workers at this classic “hot shop”—a workplace with aggrieved and agitated employees who were eager to take risks to unionize and demand changes from their employer. A number of the USC parking attendants were inspired by a coworker who had previously been an organizer in the Philippines, and with his help, the organizing meetings gained momentum. But USC management was soon alerted to the meetings, and PWC found itself enmeshed in a full-blown campaign to organize an independent union among the fifty workers. PWC had no choice but to file for a union election through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the U.S. government agency charged with oversight of official union elections. For large organizing campaigns, successful unions have increasingly avoided this route of seeking union recognition because the NLRB’s rules and decisions often give an edge to employers (Sherman and Voss 2000b, 84–88). Instead, unions with enough leverage seek “neutrality agreements” with employers to allow them to bypass NLRB certification and demonstrate majority demand for union recognition through a “card count.” PWC—lacking the resources to bargain for a neutrality agreement and a card count—instead went head-to-head with USC through the NLRB. Not surprisingly, USC contested PWC’s definition of the bargaining unit, arguing that the election should include a large number of workers with whom the worker center had not been in contact. PWC would have to defend its definition of the bargaining unit at the NLRB. Acutely aware of what they were up against, Mendoza turned to established unions for help, even offering to turn over the campaign to them. But the unions offered only advice and no resources, since for them the unit was too small and not strategically significant. Mendoza defended the case himself at the NLRB, a trying experience not only for him, but also for workers who were put on the stand and asked to identify leaders. After the NLRB hearing, PWC learned that the NLRB had ruled in its favor: the election could proceed with the bargaining unit PWC had defined and with which it had already made extensive inroads.

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PWC then confronted the challenge of organizing an ethnically diverse workplace. Just under half of the fifty USC parking attendants were Filipino. By contrast, most of the workers at PWC’s meetings were Filipino, although many of the committed worker organizers were African American and Latino. Mendoza recalls the campaign had achieved “multi-racial unity,” but once management went into full “divide and conquer” mode, this unity began to unravel.13 Management used PWC’s identity as a Filipino worker center against it, discouraging Latino, African American, and white workers—who together comprised a slight majority of the workforce— from supporting the unionization drive. They cautioned non-Filipino workers that they might be left out of the benefits that would accrue to Filipino workers and would be disadvantaged with shift allocations. In response, PWC tried to start a multiracial consortium with other worker centers, including KIWA and the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA; see Patler, this volume). But PWC was ultimately on its own with the organizing drive and was its only public face. When the NLRB election was held in 1998, PWC lost by three votes. The organization’s first effort at a “hot shop” unionization drive was thwarted in part because PWC’s ethnic affiliation proved divisive among a racially and ethnically diverse group of workers. Although this conclusion should be qualified by the observation that many NLRB-oriented unionization campaigns are unsuccessful, researchers have shown that a union’s characteristics, strategies, and tactics are consequential in determining the outcomes of these elections (Bronfenbrenner and Juravich 1998; Sherman and Voss 2000b).

Workplace Organizing: The Home Care Workers Legislative Campaign After the setback at USC, PWC spent several years building its membership in Filipino communities. The organization attracted members using the food distribution program mentioned earlier, but soon found itself involved in another workplace campaign, this time targeting the home care industry.14 This section explains how the worker center’s residential organizing strategy led to and supported a workplace campaign, and how its nearly exclusive focus on Filipino immigrants influenced the outcome of this campaign. Because some occupations become ethnic niches, a worker center organizing along ethnic lines can easily become enmeshed in a particular industry. In 2001, when PWC conducted a survey of the members recruited through its food-distribution program, it found that a significant portion were home care workers.15 This pattern reflects the broader trend among

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Filipino immigrants, who are disproportionately concentrated in the health care industry and in home care work (see table 2.5). While foreign-born Filipinos make up 2 percent of the population in L.A. County, they make up 10 percent of the county’s home care workforce (see table 2.6). Table 2.5. Filipinos and non-Filipinos employed in health care and home care occupations, L.A. County, 2000 Percent employed in health care & social assistance industry

Percent employed in home care

U.S.-born Foreign-born naturalized citizens Foreign-born noncitizens Total foreign-born Total Filipinos

13% 28 28 28 26

1% 3 9 5 5

Non-Filipinos U.S.-born Foreign-born naturalized citizens Foreign-born noncitizens Total foreign-born Total non-Filipinos

10% 11 6 8 9

1% 2 2 2 2

L.A. County total

10%

1%

Filipinos

Source: U.S. Census 2000. Note: “Home care workers” as shown in the rightmost column here include two occupations: “nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides” and “personal and home care aides.” These are codes 360 and 461 in the 2000 U.S. Census, respectively, and are equivalent to codes 31-1010 and 39-9020/1 of the U.S. Standard Occupational Classification. For details, see http://www.bls.gov/OCO/

Table 2.6. Filipinos as percentage of home care workers and of total population of L.A. County, 2000 Filipinos

Home care workers

Total population

U.S.-born Foreign-born naturalized citizens Foreign-born noncitizens Total foreign-born Total Filipinos

1% 4 6 10 11

1% 1 1 2 3

Non-Filipinos U.S.-born Foreign-born naturalized citizens Foreign-born noncitizens Total foreign-born Total non-Filipinos

40% 21 28 49 89

62% 13 21 35 97

100%

100%

L.A. County Total Source: U.S. Census 2000

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Ethnically organized worker centers are often drawn to not just any occupational niche, but to those that have posed a challenge for organized labor. Traditional unionization models developed from organizing in manufacturing are not well suited for the distinct challenges of organizing the service sector, especially where workers are mobile and work is subcontracted (Gordon 2005, 52–58). Some labor unions, like SEIU, have begun to develop innovative strategies to organize service workers (Milkman 2006). But many workers still remain on the sidelines. The Filipino home care workers that PWC attracted were not part of the seventy-four thousand workers swept up in SEIU’s renowned twelve-year organizing drive of L.A. County’s home care workers (see Boris and Klein 2006; Delp and Quan 2002; Mareschal 2006), which was limited to workers who were reimbursed through a state agency, California’s In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS), and excluded private-sector workers. At the same time, stricter immigration law enforcement in the public-sector workforce means that most of the immigrant workers in this sector are documented, while many more in the private-funded home care workforce are undocumented. For those workers on the unorganized margins of the home care industry, fraud and fear are common features of the employer-employee relationship. The home care industry is known for its rampant labor law violations, and one does not have to look far to hear disheartening anecdotes from home care workers. For example, “Gloria,” a home care worker and active PWC member, recalls that her former home care placement agency systematically delayed paying employees for two weeks or a month. She recounted an incident involving her former employer at the agency, who offered to help legalize her immigration status. Gloria paid her five thousand dollars for the promised service. Months passed, and her boss put off a conversation about this money. Only when she visited the agency accompanied by a PWC organizer, who explained to the employer the illegality of this practice, was the money refunded. Gloria wondered aloud how many other workers lost money to services promised by her boss and were reluctant to speak up for fear of being reported to immigration authorities or losing their jobs and endangering the revenue stream on which their families in the Philippines depend.16 In 2003 PWC launched the COURAGE Campaign: Caregivers Organizing for Unity, Respect, and Genuine Empowerment. The campaign aimed to improve working conditions in the home care industry by educating workers about their rights, advocating on their behalf to employers, and demanding legislative change to increase these rights. As the summer 2004 issue of Balitang AFW, PWC’s newsletter, claimed: “The average wage of home health care workers is only $65 for a 24-hour shift!” (Pilipino Workers’

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Center 2004a). Correcting this problem entailed enforcing existing labor laws and passing new ones. The educational component of this campaign brought workers and employers up to speed about workers’ rights. With the help of the Philippine Nurses Association of America (PNAA), PWC offered a training program for home care workers. The program was free to AFW members, and in its first year, 2006, nineteen graduates received instruction on topics ranging from proper lifting techniques for avoiding injuries to their legal right to duty-free meal and rest breaks. For most participants, this was the only formal training they had ever received. PWC also created and distributed a handbook of workers’ rights, sending employers a version as well. This booklet explains that home care workers are protected under California wage and hour laws, and notes that “all California workers, whether or not they are legally authorized to work in the United States, are protected by state laws regulating wages and working conditions” (Pilipino Workers’ Center n.d.a.). According to a grant proposal dated October 2004, PWC distributed more than 250 employer handbooks and 300 workers’ rights handbooks in the twelve preceding months (Pilipino Workers’ Center 2004b). PWC’s newsletter is replete with reminders for members that undocumented workers have legal rights in this country. PWC also worked to enforce the California Labor Code by organizing legal cases against employers who members had reported for labor law violations. PWC’s newsletter features numerous stories of members who won claims against their employers for unpaid wages and lack of rest or meal breaks. A recent AFW pamphlet states that home care workers have won more than seventy-five thousand dollars in total back wages, a figure in line with the cumulative increases recorded in other organizational documents over the years. Yet labor law enforcement has limited results when the law is flawed. California law exempts personal attendants (those who spend more than 80 percent of their time with a single client) from overtime pay. Because many home care workers fall under this exemption, PWC initiated a legislative campaign at the local level, based on the model of the Domestic Workers United (DWU) in New York City. Introduced to DWU through its participation in meetings of worker centers organized by Janice Fine through the Center for Community Change, PWC attempted to replicate DWU’s successful passage of a citywide Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2003 (see Fine 2006, 174–76). After learning that in California, the state (rather than the city or county) had jurisdiction over this matter, PWC joined a statewide coalition that launched a campaign to pass the Household Worker Equity Bill, Assembly

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Bill 2536 (A.B. 2536).17 The bill was sponsored by Assemblywoman Cindy Montañez and sought to undo the exemption of personal attendants from overtime pay requirements and fine employers who withheld wages. PWC used this opportunity to build the leadership skills of several of its members who made numerous trips to Sacramento to lobby for A.B. 2536. In 2006, the bill was passed in both the state assembly and senate. But a lastminute coalition—between the private agencies that would have been affected by this change, and senior and disability rights lobbies protesting the possible increase in cost of care—successfully convinced the governor to veto the bill. Governor Schwarzenegger justified the veto in a letter to the assembly stating that “I cannot support subjecting seniors and the disabled to additional liability” (Schwarzenegger 2006). Although the legislative component of the home care campaign was stymied, PWC’s dedication to serving Filipino immigrants did not prove to be detrimental this time as it had with the parking attendants’ unionization drive. In the home care campaign, PWC—although itself an almost exclusively Filipino organization—was a member of a multiethnic coalition that could claim representation of an ethnically diverse industry. The legislative campaign also benefited because it took place in a less hostile arena than the unionization drive: Fine (2005, 156) has argued that low-wage worker organizing increasingly takes the form of public policy campaigns rather than direct labor market interventions because “low-wage workers in American society today have greater political than economic power.” By focusing its own organizing efforts on low-wage immigrant workers of the same ethnicity, PWC was able to address this group’s unique needs, customizing its message to suit their distinct class backgrounds and educating its members about their rights, regardless of immigration status. In two later campaigns, focused on remittances and housing, PWC organizers learned what could be achieved for their members through the worker center’s ethnic niche and its willingness to engage issues beyond the workplace.

Non-Workplace Organizing: For-Profit Allies and Remittances Remittances are a major part of recent Filipino immigrants’ lives, and over time PWC has significantly shifted the way it has grappled with this issue. The AFW members I spoke with had all immigrated recently and continued to support children or other family members in the Philippines through remittances. On this issue, the worker center has transitioned from having a cooperative relationship with Western Union to promoting a boycott of its services and working with a more equitable competitor to provide lower-cost services. While the latter strategy is better aligned with

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the organization’s mission, all of these symbiotic for-profit/nonprofit partnerships are possible because of PWC’s focus on organizing the Filipino immigrant population. The remittances that Filipino immigrants send home are a major pillar of the Filipino economy, yet there is also a substantial emotional cost to those who leave family members behind. Remittances from all foreign Filipino workers amounted to $15 billion in 2006 and are such a sizable portion of the Philippines’ economy that they have earned remitters the title “modern heroes” from President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (DeParle 2007). “Luz,” an active AFW member, is one of these heroes, and her story reveals the lived experience that makes these remittances possible. As a widow and single mother, Luz secured a tourist visa and left her six children behind so that she could support them with steady and relatively high wages from the United States. But she experienced anxiety and depression during the two years that it took her to petition for two of her youngest children to join her, which she described as “like dying a slow death.” Luz is now married to an American citizen, and she recalls the sense of helplessness he felt in watching her cry for hours because she missed her children. However, she has stayed in close contact with them and believes that they recognize her hard work and will take care of her when she is older. Luz’s story is a glimpse into the human experience that accumulates along with the large sums of money collected from remittance fees (see also Parreñas 2001, chap. 5). The large corporate profits in the remittance industry reflect both the sheer scope of this activity and the high fees that companies charge for it. Western Union—the main player in this industry—has developed marketing relationships with immigration organizations like PWC to promote its services. But in 2006 PWC joined with several other organizations in a coalition called TIGRA (Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action) to challenge the company’s rates and investment practices. A recent PWC pamphlet states that Western Union has more than ten times as many branches in the world as McDonald’s. PWC and other organizations in TIGRA have demanded that Western Union lower its fees and enter a transnational community benefits agreement (CBA) investing one dollar on each transaction back into the communities it serves. As Soriano-Versoza explains, a CBA would at least ensure that Western Union would not make investments that are detrimental to its customers. Turning away from the small support it received from Western Union, PWC recently began a mutually beneficial relationship with a new—and fairer—player in the remittance industry, Recharge Plus. PWC was introduced to this idea through a project Janice Fine organized with the Center for Community Change (CCC). Following her critique of worker centers for

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their overreliance on foundation funding and for their disinterest in incomegenerating practices such as collecting member dues or through provision of financial services, Fine (2006, 97, 254–55) set out to help worker centers identify new sources of funding.18 PWC signed on with ten other worker centers and—to address the more pressing need of PWC members—chose a corporate partner that supplied remittance rather than banking services. CCC worked with another organization to search for providers and matched PWC with Recharge Plus, a company that was seeking to expand its remittance service in the Philippines. PWC’s alliance with Recharge Plus offers members significant savings and also creates a major funding source for the worker center, while furthering the organization’s mission. To remit the same amount of money that would cost $10–$15 with Western Union, or $9 with the Philippines National Bank, Recharge Plus charges $1.50. The company also invests a portion of its earnings into communities in the Philippines. By brokering these concrete benefits, PWC leaders hope to gain the trust of more low-wage Filipino workers and encourage them to participate in other campaigns. PWC also stands to gain from Recharge Plus’ success. In June 2007, the company offered PWC a $100,000 budget to recruit thousands of members at the Festival of Pilipino Arts and Culture (FPAC), an annual festival held in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles. While PWC set more modest recruitment goals and requested a smaller initial budget from Recharge Plus, PWC has begun actively recruiting people for the remittance service at this and other events, often adding to AFW membership as well. Information about Recharge Plus is always accompanied by information about PWC, and the Recharge Plus card members receive includes PWC’s logo. Here PWC’s Filipino membership and interest in matters beyond the workplace helped it create an alliance with a for-profit company that the center hopes will increase its visibility in the Filipino community, give members concrete benefits, encourage greater member participation, and help it access a large source of funding.

Non-Workplace Organizing: Nonprofit Allies and Affordable Housing PWC’s offices are located in Los Angeles’ Historic Filipinotown, a neighborhood that is home to approximately 7 percent of L.A.’s Filipino population according to the 2000 Census. The neighborhood is in the midst of gentrifying: the occasional rooster still announces the arrival of dawn, but many of the local garment factories are shutting down and will likely soon be converted to apartments for young, middle-class, white residents. In 2005, at one of the regular meetings of an antigentrification task force, PWC’s executive director Soriano-Versoza met the representatives of the

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Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC), a nonprofit interested in working with PWC to secure affordable housing for Filipinos. Foundations are PWC’s main source of support, and its Filipino membership has attracted a wide range of funders whose goals ranged from Catholic outreach, immigrant rights, and low-wage organizing to the elimination of tobacco use among Asian/Pacific Islanders. The unique mix of private and public funding LTSC raised for this project illustrate how PWC’s ethnic composition can both attract and alarm funders. LTSC is a community-based organization that for the past three decades has been creating service programs and coordinating community development projects to serve Asian and Pacific Islanders in Los Angeles who struggle with “language or cultural gaps, financial need, or physical disabilities.”19 PWC’s Filipino members, as part of the larger category of Asian/ Pacific Islanders, attracted the attention of LTSC in 2005. The organization proposed to help PWC secure enough capital to build a forty-eight-unit affordable housing complex. LTSC helped PWC design the financial package, which includes affordable housing funds (from the L.A. Housing Department), tax credits that can be sold to companies, and private loans.20 The rent money will be used to pay off low-interest loans on the land. The building will be located on PWC’s current property and will include space for PWC offices located on the ground floor. PWC, LTSC, and another partner that is a nonprofit developer will share the developer’s fees, and ownership of the property will ultimately rest with PWC. In May 2007, I sat with Soriano-Versoza and the public artists who would help make the building “strikingly Filipino.” They discussed the list of potential names, several of them in Tagalog. We looked at the architect’s renditions, and Soriano-Versoza explained how they had studied and incorporated aspects of Filipino designs into the building’s color and design. Given all of this planning, I was surprised to learn that PWC would not have a say in who would be awarded units in the building. This determination would instead be made by an independent management company that would follow federal guidelines. These guidelines prohibit any ethnic or racial criteria to allocate housing, as this would constitute a denial of service based on race or ethnicity. Why would LTSC and PWC work to secure federal funding to build affordable housing that they would be barred from offering to the ethnic groups they serve? In this case, a law designed to prevent discrimination against minorities inhibits an organization from serving a particular minority population. Yet while PWC cannot allocate units exclusively to its members, the organization is nevertheless able to increase their chances of securing this housing within the bounds of the law. Applying an idea borrowed from another

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group in its network, PWC will guide members on how to navigate the bureaucratic hurdles of the application process, thus significantly increasing these applicants’ chances of admission. PWC’s ability to increase its members’ access to this public good illustrates what Tilly (1998, 148) has called “opportunity hoarding.” This is a common practice within immigrant networks, especially in the labor market: people share information about jobs with family and friends and therefore channel the flow of their acquaintances to create ethnic niches (Waldinger and Lichter 2003). In this case, PWC is serving its members by providing them with information about how to navigate the bureaucracy of public funding. But the organization has also altered the eligibility criteria for this funding, thereby increasing access to this resource for its members and other undocumented workers. The management company initially wanted to request Social Security numbers from applicants in order to check their credit ratings and search for criminal records. Recognizing that this would disadvantage undocumented immigrants—who often lack valid Social Security numbers—PWC and LTSC successfully convinced the company to request an alternative proof of identity, thus enabling the same background check while not excluding undocumented applicants. Thus in addition to helping steer members through bureaucratic hoops, PWC and LTSC also successfully helped lower the hoops for all. PWC expects that the receipt of these immediate benefits—affordable housing and discounted remittance services—will encourage members to become more engaged in long-term projects. It is too soon to tell whether this approach will have its desired effect, or whether the organization’s campaigns will remain largely staff driven. Meanwhile, PWC’s strategy of building its membership through the provision of services, rather than strictly adhering to anti-imperialist advocacy, has received its share of criticism. The organization has weathered strong disapproval and charges of being too reformist from more radical organizations that were once close allies. But the organization remains confident that by creating tangible benefits, it can recultivate the sense of bayanihan, demonstrating to these and other members the value of working together to solve shared problems.

Conclusion PWC’s exclusive focus on organizing Filipinos has influenced its ability to help its members address both workplace and non-workplace issues. A closer look at PWC’s experience offers important insights for other groups considering organizing along ethnic lines. For activists building a worker center, advancing the efforts of an already organized immigrant social

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group, or leading a labor union with a significant immigrant membership, the PWC case demonstrates some of the strategic pitfalls—as well as the potential opportunities—of organizing immigrant workers along ethnic lines. The ethnic focus has had mixed results in PWC’s workplace campaigns. Its Filipino-only identity hindered an early effort to unionize a multiethnic— though heavily Filipino—group of parking attendants. PWC’s first workplace campaign thus revealed that monoethnic organizations can be handicapped in multiethnic unionization drives. The defeat of this effort to create an independent union led the organization to cast a wider net to attract Filipino membership spanning several occupations and industries. Discovering that a large number of its members were home care workers, PWC was able to engage in occupation-specific organizing customized to the cultural needs and expectations of the Filipino immigrant population. Although the home care worker coalition was unsuccessful in passing legislation that would have secured additional rights for this occupational group, PWC did educate many workers about their rights and made some headway in reminding employers of the existing labor laws, while demonstrating that flagrant violators would be pursued. Thus PWC’s second workplace campaign showed that organizing one ethnic group in a diverse industry can facilitate admission into a multiethnic coalition, which can then press for changes in the broader industry. Some of PWC’s most creative and successful organizing and servicedelivery projects have involved issues beyond the workplace and have been enabled by the ethnic characteristics of its membership. PWC was able to create two symbiotic relationships with for-profit and nonprofit organizations seeking access to its members. PWC’s relationship with Recharge Plus gave the company direct contact with remitting Filipinos, reimbursing the worker center and allowing it to offer a more competitive rate to members while steering them away from the detrimental business practices of Western Union. Similarly, the ethnic identity of PWC’s membership helped the organization work jointly with the Little Tokyo Service Center, an organization channeling private and public funds to help match Asian/Pacific Islanders with affordable housing. In this case, PWC’s ethnic composition helped establish the organizational connection that launched the project. This effort faced real obstacles, but ultimately they proved surmountable. The tangible benefits created by these alliances reflect and contribute to PWC’s success in building a membership of low-wage Filipino immigrants, a population that previously had little representation among Filipino organizations in Los Angeles and had been largely overlooked in the broader immigrant organizing in the region.

3 Alliance-Building and Organizing for Immigrant Rights THE CASE OF THE COALITION FOR HUMANE IMMIGRANT RIGHTS OF LOS ANGELES

Caitlin C. Patler

A typical week for an organizer on the staff of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) goes something like this: on Monday she arrives at the office by 7:00 a.m. for a conference call with representatives of unions and civil rights organizations around the country to coordinate plans for nonpartisan lobbying in Washington, D.C., on immigrant rights legislation. On Tuesday, the organizer goes to two local coalition meetings: in one she commits staff and rank-and-file members to a march supporting a local union organizing campaign; in the other she helps plan a wage claim training workshop for day laborers. On Wednesday, she meets with CHIRLA’s state policy coordinator to discuss proposed state legislation that threatens to cut public services for immigrant families. She also develops educational pamphlets, in English and Spanish, for distribution to rank-and-file members. On Thursday and Friday, the organizer accompanies CHIRLA’s executive director to a meeting in Washington, D.C. While they are away, other organizers and rank-and-file members meet in Los Angeles to discuss campaign strategy and participate in a protest against an immigration raid at a local factory. This is what it takes to be an organizer for CHIRLA, a community-based organization committed to promoting immigrant rights. Immigrant organizations have a long history in the United States, helping newcomers adjust to their new surroundings, build community, find work, access services, and challenge prejudice and discrimination. Today such organizations are as necessary as they were in earlier periods of mass 71

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immigration to the United States. However, today’s immigrants are different from their predecessors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in several important ways. Not only have the national origin, racial, and ethnic demographics of immigrant and refugee communities changed, but today’s foreign-born population includes vast numbers of undocumented persons (Fortuny, Capps and Passel 2007; Ngai 2004). This new category, one that hardly existed in the immigrant population a century ago, has galvanized the movement for immigrant rights over the past few decades, and especially since the last major overhaul of U.S. immigration policy—the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA).1 This chapter analyzes the development of CHIRLA.2 Founded in 1986 in the wake of IRCA, CHIRLA’s history has followed the arc of the growth of the larger immigrant rights movement. Since its inception, CHIRLA has evolved along three key dimensions. First, it moved from a focus on service provision for immigrants to incorporate leadership development, organizing, and mobilization of rank-and-file immigrants, particularly low-wage workers and the undocumented. Second, in addition to focusing on its own committees and programs, CHIRLA began to incubate and spin off several other organizations. Finally, CHIRLA transitioned from an almost exclusively local focus to include statewide and eventually national work. This evolution gradually led CHIRLA to redirect its efforts toward transforming policies instead of simply reacting to them. As a result, CHIRLA has successfully challenged local laws limiting workers’ rights, helped pass new state laws to benefit immigrants and their families, worked with federal legislators to draft policy proposals, and helped coordinate a national campaign for comprehensive immigration reform. Today CHIRLA works with organizations around the country with the explicit goal of building national power and influence to sway the future direction of federal legislation. However, this evolution has not always been smooth, and CHIRLA has faced many failures and challenges. Along with the increasingly restrictionist immigration policies over the past fifteen years, CHIRLA has had to confront the difficult task of balancing a broad range of activities with limited resources, as a local nonprofit with an annual budget of less than $2 million. In this chapter, I describe CHIRLA’s formation and initial programs. I then analyze its evolution during the 1990s and 2000s, largely a reaction to the changing political reality for immigrants (particularly the undocumented) and the lack of representation for immigrant communities in debates affecting their well-being. Finally, I explore and analyze the results of this evolution, focusing particularly on such challenges as limited resources, overextended staff, and a scarcity of policy victories. Nevertheless, CHIRLA

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has been able to play a leadership role both in building the national immigrant rights movement and in campaigns for federal policy change.

CHIRLA’s Origins One of Los Angeles’ oldest immigrant rights organizations, CHIRLA has sought to meet the needs of the region’s enormous immigrant community since its inception. In 1986, the Ford Foundation funded initiatives in immigrant-receiving cities around the United States, including Los Angeles, to address rising anti-immigrant public sentiment and to educate immigrants about IRCA and its provisions, particularly employer sanctions.3 The foundation’s goal was to establish and strengthen multiethnic coalitions to ensure “fair and effective implementation” of IRCA (see Ford Foundation 1987, 1990). CHIRLA received Ford funding to guide undocumented immigrants through the legalization process and to inform immigrant workers of their legal rights in the workplace (Acosta 1987, 1991a).4 CHIRLA’s early work was coordinated by a central Steering Committee that included local legal service organizations, voluntary agencies, religious groups, labor organizations, business, and community organizations in Los Angeles, Ventura, and Orange counties (CHIRLA 1988–89). The committee was chaired by Father Luis Olivares of Our Lady Queen of Angels Church.5 For Steering Committee members, CHIRLA offered a place where individuals and organizations from various segments of the immigrant community could come together to serve as many immigrants as possible in Los Angeles. By 1991, CHIRLA had also taken on an advocacy role; its official mission was to “advance the human and civil rights of immigrants and refugees and to foster an environment of positive human and community relations in our society” (CHIRLA 1992). By 1994, CHIRLA had brought together eightytwo coalition members representing different sectors of the immigrant and immigrant-serving community. Because most of the day-to-day work was carried out by the member organizations, CHIRLA had to distinguish itself as a worthwhile investment that could add value to its members’ existing work. In 1991, Frank Acosta, CHIRLA’s first executive director, attempted to ease the concerns of member organizations that the coalition was directly competing with them for limited financial resources: The Coalition is a unique animal in that it is a consortium of mostly nonprofit organizations and service agencies. A dilemma surfaces when we consider that many of the agencies that comprise CHIRLA are often competing for funding from many of the same sources. . . . This situation has

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often made for riveting discussions around funding competition, conflicts of interest, coordination, and perhaps most critical of all, the role of the Coalition in the greater scheme of serving the immigrant and refugee community. . . . CHIRLA’s focus or niche as coordinator/convener seems to be providing community outreach and education, technical assistance, trainings and conferences, media and public relations, legislative and public policy coordination, service coordination, leadership development, and human relations. (Acosta 1991b)

Over the years, CHIRLA gradually evolved from a local, service-based coalition to active engagement in rank-and-file immigrant organizing and a commitment to encouraging the formation of new organizations and networks, all within an expanded geographic scope. This evolution was in part the result of increased funding that allowed the coalition to hire its own staff, and which in turn led it to behave more like an organization (with management and human resources structures) and less like a coalition where work is divided among many autonomous partners. Even more important, a series of policy changes affecting immigrant communities shaped CHIRLA’s development, starting with IRCA itself. IRCA’s employer sanctions provisions established a system of fines against employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers. But sanctions also generated widespread fear among workers and resulted in thousands of firings as well as a range of discriminatory hiring practices against immigrants perceived to be undocumented (U.S. General Accounting Office 1988). Immigrant workers also face increasingly extensive unregulated labor markets that operate far out of the purview of regulatory bodies. As a result, the demand for services and legal representation for immigrant workers grew dramatically, especially in Los Angeles, which had the nation’s largest undocumented population. CHIRLA responded to that need first through service provision, and later through active engagement in rank-and-file immigrant organizing. IRCA’s passage also had the unintended effect of stimulating rapid growth in the undocumented population (Massey, Durand, and Malone 2002), which generated backlash both in public reaction and in local, state, and national policy responses. Most federal immigration legislation passed (and proposed) since 1986, moreover, has involved restrictions on immigrant rights and new legal admissions (Tichenor 2002). The same dynamics generated a wave of state and local policy initiatives seeking to limit immigrant rights. Many of these policy changes spurred CHIRLA to take its work in new directions. In 1994, California voters passed Proposition 187, which would have denied all social services and public benefits—including schooling—to

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undocumented immigrants. Although CHIRLA and its labor and community partners attempted to block the proposition’s passage, these efforts failed. This was a harsh wake-up call for pro-immigrant groups across the United States, and particularly in California. It led CHIRLA to move beyond its initial focus on Los Angeles and begin to build influence at the statewide level. In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), which increased border enforcement, made asylum procedures more difficult, restricted immigrant access to public benefits, required a financial sponsor for new immigrants, and tightened provisions for criminal and undocumented immigrants (Tichenor 2002). The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, also passed in 1996 under the banner of “welfare reform,” limited access to social services for both legal and undocumented immigrants (Chang 2000; Tichenor 2002). This legislation led legal immigrants, especially Latinos, to naturalize in record numbers (Sierra et al. 2000). It also catalyzed a wave of immigrant rights activism, which generated some limited victories in the late 1990s. In 1997, for example, Congress restored Social Security benefits to many immigrants present in the United States before IIRIRA’s passage and also legislated an amnesty program for Central American refugees. In 1998, legal immigrants’ eligibility for food stamps was restored and a U.S. district court struck down California’s Proposition 187 as unconstitutional. However, after September 11, 2001, restrictive efforts gained momentum once again. New legislation mandated closer scrutiny of immigrants in the United States and further restricted entry for many newcomers. In 2003, the Bush administration formed the Department of Homeland Security, which took over immigration and customs enforcement. In 2005, the draconian H.R. 4437 passed by a large margin in the U.S. House of Representatives. Although it never became law, it was the most enduring symbol of a deepening anti-immigrant political climate. Public hostility toward immigrants has also grown over the past two decades, fueled in large part by a perception of uncontrolled borders (Ford Foundation 1986). In the absence of a nationally coordinated movement, pro-immigrant groups lacked the capacity to respond effectively. “The reason we lost welfare reform” and the fight against Proposition 187 in California, recalled CHIRLA’s executive director, Angelica Salas, “was because we had no progressive allies. We hadn’t built anything and so it was important for us to do so.”6 In Los Angeles in the late 1980s and 1990s, various service providers were working in immigrant communities, but they were not yet working together in any systematic way. Faced with this daunting political reality, CHIRLA gradually stepped up its efforts to mobilize immigrants,

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protest attacks on immigrant rights, promote a pro-immigrant policy agenda, and build a more coordinated immigrant rights infrastructure both locally and across the country.

From Service Provision to Organizing and Mobilizing the Immigrant Rank-and-File CHIRLA’s organizing work grew out of its initial service provision to immigrant workers and eventually came to include policy campaigns for immigrant workers, first on the industry level, and then around a broader platform for undocumented immigrant rights. This work has enabled CHIRLA to win several local policy victories around workers rights. However, it has been much more difficult to make gains on federal immigration reform. In the late 1980s, CHIRLA convened membership committees focused on local service provision through outreach, education, and advocacy. Primary services included assisting thousands of immigrants in filling out their applications for amnesty under IRCA and educating immigrant workers about their rights in the wake of IRCA’s employer sanctions provisions. CHIRLA’s education programs were funded by the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.7 Programmatic work was divided among Steering Committee members. In 1990, CHIRLA hired five outreach workers (its first programmatic staff ) to provide education and outreach to immigrants in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties. This work was supported in part by the federal State Legalization Impact Assistance Grants (SLIAG), which reimbursed state and local agencies helping immigrants newly legalized under IRCA gain access to public assistance, healthcare, and educational services (Lin 1991). CHIRLA opened a national hotline and referral service to help link newly legalized immigrants with resources like legal representation, health and welfare services, and education. In addition, CHIRLA launched a public awareness campaign comprised of radio public service announcements. Salas, who would later become CHIRLA’s executive director, recalls that she first heard of CHIRLA through its radio announcements when members of her extended family were applying for amnesty under IRCA.8 At this time, CHIRLA was also engaged in advocacy efforts that grew out of its legal service provision. This work was largely reactive. It included protests and legal challenges of INS raids, deportations, and workplace discrimination against immigrants. CHIRLA members also vocally opposed the deportation of Central Americans whose political

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asylum applications were denied by the U.S. government and supported the Sanctuary Movement in which religious organizations helped to house refugees and asylum seekers who had fled the civil wars in Central America.9 When Temporary Protected Status was established for Central Americans through the 1990 Immigration Act, CHIRLA began helping Central American asylum seekers apply for legal status.10 In 1988, CHIRLA began providing services to household workers through its Immigrant Women’s Taskforce—the organization’s first industryfocused program. Around the same time, the coalition campaigned for the establishment of day laborer hiring sites in the City of Los Angeles, leading to the opening of the Harbor City Job Center in 1989.11 These initiatives led CHIRLA to transform its Committee on the Undocumented into its Workers’ Rights Project in 1991, with a mandate to advocate for low-wage workers in Los Angeles. At this time, the organization’s information and referral hotline was also officially expanded to include workers’ rights information, particularly for day laborers, domestic workers, and street vendors. During its early years, although CHIRLA had provided legal services and referrals to individual immigrants, it had no long-term strategy to incorporate them into the coalition. Later, the development of worker-specific programming included leadership development, organizing, and mobilization of immigrant workers. These shifts were gradual and hotly contested, with some coalition members strongly challenging the idea that CHIRLA should take on any long-term work with rank-and-file immigrants. Organizing, they argued, was beyond CHIRLA’s current financial and staff capacity and should be the responsibility other groups.12 As the Workers Rights Project developed, debate continued within CHIRLA, and several active members left the coalition over this issue. However, in 1997, under the leadership of Executive Director Luke Williams, CHIRLA took on a large subcontract from the City of Los Angeles to operate the day laborer centers it had fought to open in the late 1980s. Because several staff and coalition partners opposed this decision, it was agreed that CHIRLA’s role in the hiring centers would be limited to administrative support. However, eventually CHIRLA took direct responsibility for the centers, at one point hiring nearly twenty staff members to operate them. The city contract for the day laborer centers comprised about a third of CHIRLA’s overall operating budget and significantly affected the organization’s structure and programs. CHIRLA now had staff in many program areas and resembled an autonomous organization, rather than a coalition whose work is carried out by member organizations. There was also a shift in the composition of the staff: most new CHIRLA employees were immigrants themselves. Some had backgrounds in popular education, grassroots

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organizing, and mobilization; indeed several staff members were Salvadoran refugees with years of experience in left-wing movements. Salas, then on staff as an administrator, recalls that this new influx of staff members gave CHIRLA “a different kind of relationship with the immigrant community” because so many staff were immigrants themselves, as opposed to U.S.–born advocates or service providers.13 In 1999, Salas became CHIRLA’s executive director, confirming this “crucial transition moment” for the organization.14 An immigrant from Mexico whose parents had toiled for many years as low-wage workers in the United States, Salas had a deep personal understanding of the issues affecting immigrants, as well as community education and organizing experience. Under her leadership, CHIRLA created popular education programs for day laborers at the hiring centers and sought to involve them directly in CHIRLA’s advocacy campaigns. Similar programs were introduced for household workers (Chang 2000; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2008). These initial leadership development programs for immigrant workers were small and sporadic, but marked a new direction for the organization. Under Salas’s leadership, CHIRLA officially incorporated organizing into its mission during its 2001 strategic planning process. In 2004, the City of Los Angeles denied CHIRLA a renewal of its grant to administer the day laborer hiring centers. This resulted in layoffs of several staff members, and led to self-evaluation and reorganization. Some work with day laborers continued, focused on leadership development and recruiting workers to participate in campaigns. CHIRLA was also experimenting with leadership development programs for household workers in this period, although without any systematic coordination. In 2005, CHIRLA adopted a new focus on undocumented immigrants as a group, shifting away from the earlier industry-specific programs. This allowed the organization to recruit a broader base, and to raise funds and focus resources on national campaigns for immigration reform and advocacy. CHIRLA’s transition to organizing eventually generated legal and policy victories, targeted advocacy efforts, and increased contact with other community-based organizations. For example, CHIRLA and the MexicanAmerican Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) won a precedentsetting legal victory in 2000, when the courts struck down an ordinance limiting day laborers’ right to solicit work on sidewalks. Building directly on its worker organizing and worker center administration efforts, CHIRLA mobilized day laborers to speak out against the ordinance. Along with other organizations, CHIRLA also brought worker support to two successful statewide campaigns to improve labor law enforcement in the garment and car wash industries in 1999 and 2003, respectively (Narro 2008).15 Direct organizing efforts also strengthened CHIRLA’s longstanding relationships with worker centers, liberal churches, and unions. CHIRLA works

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closely with these groups on local campaigns, supporting, for example, the Koreatown Immigrant Workers’ Alliance Assi Market campaign (see Kwon, this volume), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)’s Justice for Janitors campaign, and Clergy and Laity United For Economic Justice’s New Sanctuary Movement. Beyond simply endorsing these groups’ campaigns, CHIRLA participates in strategy discussions and regularly turns out supporters during critical actions. CHIRLA’s Salas also sits on the board of directors of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and was a longtime member of the L.A. County Archdiocese’s Justice and Peace Commission. Such relationships with other organizations allow CHIRLA to more easily garner support for its own local, state, and national campaigns. Its direct engagement with immigrants gives CHIRLA the capacity to mobilize its members and other constituents in the legislative process, even without a broad membership base. For example, in 2005, CHIRLA embarked on a campaign to extend overtime provisions to private household workers, educating a group of about thirty workers about the legislative process and training them to speak publicly about their on-the-job experiences and make suggestions for reforms. CHIRLA formed an alliance with several other organizations across the state, bringing together attorneys, household workers, and advocates to craft a legislative proposal that included several items that came directly from the suggestions of household workers. Assemblywoman Cindy Montañez sponsored a bill incorporating the workers’ proposals, a version of which passed both the assembly and the senate, only to be vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006.16 Grassroots organizing also has other benefits that are much more difficult to quantify. Everyday contact with immigrants “has really focused the organization,” Salas commented. “[Organizing] creates more vibrancy from within the organization” and generates a “sense of accountability” among the organization’s staff.17 Staff members regularly mention that members inspire them to endure low pay and unforgiving schedules.18 Leadership development and organizing also impact the lives of rank-and-file members. For example, although the legislative effort to win increased labor law protections for household workers has yet to succeed, the women involved nevertheless gained a sense of empowerment and developed new skills such as how to conduct a lobby visit or negotiate the legislative process.19 This type of skills-building resonates among many of CHIRLA’s members. “CHIRLA has always encouraged me to take on leadership roles at school,” Myrna Ortiz, a freshman at UCLA, commented. “CHIRLA helped me become more outgoing and determined, and a leader and organizer in different aspects of my life.”20

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At this writing, CHIRLA organizes Day Laborer, Household Worker, and Street Vendor committees. It also convenes a geographically (as opposed to industry) focused immigrant family committee as part of a national campaign for legalization and plans to create ten more such committees in the coming years (Salas et al. 2008). And CHIRLA convenes the first statewide network of undocumented college students as well as ten groups of undocumented L.A. high school students. Finally, CHIRLA continues to recruit new members through service provision; for example, thousands of workers approach CHIRLA through its hotline, seeking advice and help about wage claims and other workplace disputes. CHIRLA organizers handle the wage claims, but in exchange ask workers to attend membership activities and support campaigns.21 CHIRLA’s membership committees meet individually and then join together as an informal nonvoting advisory council to the coalition. Individual members participate in dialogues across gender, age, and industry to discuss CHIRLA’s campaigns. They partake in leadership development activities, including a monthly leadership school, and participate in mobilizations, lobbying, press conferences, nonpartisan electoral activities, and political strategy sessions. Workers are also invited to become individual dues-paying members, although in practice dues collection is inconsistent and no one is turned away for lack of funds. The institutionalization of dues has been a difficult process, with membership criteria and prices changing three times between 2004 and 2009 alone. Like many other immigrant worker organizations (Fine 2006), CHIRLA’s membership base remains small, at around twenty-five hundred as of 2008. Funding for organizing work is not easy to obtain, and most foundation grants range from five thousand to forty thousand dollars, barely enough to pay even one organizer’s salary. CHIRLA manages a broad fundraising portfolio and volunteer base in order to maintain its organizing staff of seven. Nor has the organization resolved the dilemma of how to incorporate members more fully into its leadership structure. The Organizing Team has sought to more formally institutionalize rank-and-file members into decision-making. To this end, CHIRLA’s 2007–11 strategic plan includes creating a rank-and-file membership advisory council, as well as training members to sit on the coalition’s board of directors.

Incubating New Pro-Immigrant Organizations and Networks Since its inception, CHIRLA has convened immigrant rights groups in Los Angeles, connecting them to each other in local campaigns, as well

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as helping to coordinate the national immigrant rights movement. Victor Narro, former CHIRLA Workers’ Rights project director, recalled: “CHIRLA played a major role as a facilitator in the cross-fertilization of many diverse communities throughout Los Angeles” (CHIRLA 2006). Over the years, CHIRLA has also helped to incubate other organizations, worker centers, and advocacy networks with specific immigrant rights foci. One example is the Coalition of Garment Worker Advocates (CGWA), which included representatives from CHIRLA and other legal service providers and worker centers. Its goal was to strategize about how to address labor law violations in the L.A. garment industry, which by the 1990s had lost almost all its union membership, and to provide legal representation for workers who fell victim to such violations. In 1999, with help from CHIRLA and other advocates, CGWA helped to pass Assembly Bill 633, which holds garment manufacturers responsible for ensuring that subcontractors observe minimum wage and overtime compensation laws, and expedites the process under which garment workers can make wage claims before the state labor commissioner (Narro 2008). In 2001, the coalition formed the Garment Worker Center (GWC) as a space for garment workers to come together to improve working conditions.22 Although forming a new organization instead of a programmatic committee was then a new strategy for CHIRLA, Salas recalls the reasoning behind the effort: “No one else [in Los Angeles] was organizing these workers. We had to make a space for them.”23 The GWC would also become an ally in CHIRLA’s ongoing campaigns for workers’ rights and legalization. However, this case also illustrates one of the challenges CHIRLA regularly faces in its role as an incubator: the GWC soon became a direct competitor for local organizing funding. In this context, CHIRLA had to “redefine itself” and its leadership role in Los Angeles.24 CHIRLA also helped to incubate new networks of organizations at the local, state, and federal levels to campaign against the many anti-immigrant policy proposals that emerged in these years. In 1999, for example, representatives from CHIRLA and KIWA began to discuss the idea of a multiethnic organizing network that could jointly engage in local campaigns for immigrant workers’ rights in addition to formalizing a broader local platform for legalization. The Multiethnic Immigrant Worker Organizing Network (MIWON) was born out of these conversations (see Osuji, this volume). MIWON was housed within CHIRLA until 2003, with CHIRLA’s board of directors in charge of its fiscal management. CHIRLA’s staff did much of the initial fundraising, utilizing preexisting relationships with foundations to bring in support for the newly formed network. MIWON now includes four

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steering committee organizations (including CHIRLA) and is responsible for major immigrant rights mobilizations each year as well as an advanced leadership school for immigrant workers. In her comprehensive study of U.S. worker centers, Janice Fine suggests that MIWON could be a model for worker center collaboration in other states (2006, 239). MIWON’s formation was an important accomplishment for CHIRLA, although it once again brought up issues of program autonomy and resource competition. In addition, because CHIRLA became a partner within the new collaborative instead of simply a founder, another challenge was presented: how much staff time to devote to external commitments such as MIWON’s campaigns. Because MIWON addressed issues of workers’ rights, CHIRLA organizers were assigned to participate in its campaigns, although this inevitably took resources away from efforts to meet other, internal goals. Although the tension between external and internal program work has not been fully resolved, CHIRLA staff acknowledge that building power in Los Angeles and beyond requires active participation in collaborations like MIWON, even if it means taking resources away from other endeavors.25 CHIRLA faced similar challenges in helping to establish the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) in 2001, which remained under CHIRLA’s fiscal sponsorship until 2008. This network was originally made up of twelve organizations (including CHIRLA) involved in day laborer organizing. As of this writing, NDLON has thirty-eight member organizations representing workers across the country. NDLON members receive technical assistance, training, and networking opportunities.26 The network’s legal team regularly challenges proposed ordinances to limit the right of day laborers to solicit work on sidewalks, and advocates on behalf of day laborers in the debates over immigration policy reform. As in the case of MIWON, CHIRLA’s leadership has identified NDLON as a critical partnership, yet it too draws on resources and staff time that would otherwise go to internal program work.27 Despite these challenges, CHIRLA continues to play a unique role as a link among pro-immigrant organizations in Los Angeles. Hamid Khan, executive director of the South Asian Network, a long-time partner in CHIRLA’s local policy work, remarked: Given the nature of the assault on the immigrant community, and given how wide the assault is, and given the diversity of the immigrant community, rather than groups going at it alone, it’s really crucial to have a space where a lot of groups working on this issue can converge. CHIRLA offers the opportunity for different groups to bring together their resources, to bring their competencies together so it’s not just dealing with one community. CHIRLA’s knowledge and CHIRLA’s history is available for all immigrant communities. (Cifuentes-Hiss 2005)

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Similarly, Taryn Higashi, former deputy director of the Ford Foundation’s Human Rights Unit, commented, “If it weren’t for the really strong, sensitive and flexible leadership and bridge-building coming out of CHIRLA, there would be a gaping hole. . . . It has been able to change with the times . . . speak to the Spanish-speaking community, deal with divisions in the immigrant rights community in Los Angeles, build strong relationships with labor, connect with [different ethnic] communities, and with the Catholic Church.”28 CHIRLA’s hybrid structure of coalition-building, rank-and-file organizing, and incubation of new organizations and networks has been emulated by other immigrant rights coalitions in the country.

Beyond the Local The geographical scope of CHIRLA’s campaigns has consistently expanded, first to the statewide and later to the national level. This evolution came in reaction to anti-immigrant policy proposals at the state and national levels, which demanded a coordinated response from advocates and from immigrants themselves. As a result, local immigrant rights groups gradually began to collaborate more with one another as well as with national organizations in larger-scale campaigns. CHIRLA first became engaged at the state level in campaigning against Proposition 187 in 1994. Two years later, the impact of welfare reform on immigrant communities spurred CHIRLA and some of its long-term member organizations to form a new partnership to preserve immigrant access to welfare benefits, social services, healthcare, and education in California. The California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative (now the California Immigrant Policy Center, or CIPC) was founded in 1997 by CHIRLA, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, the National Immigration Law Center, and the Northern California Immigrant Rights Coalition.29 Since its formation, CIPC has helped to preserve, enhance, or create programs that serve immigrant families. For example, in 2006, it helped pass bills to permanently fund naturalization outreach and education services and to guarantee health and other services to victims of human trafficking as they await decisions on their cases.30 In addition, CIPC funds a full-time advocate in Sacramento who coordinates press conferences, educational events, and constituent visits with elected officials. CIPC has helped CHIRLA develop relationships statewide, both with other organizations and with elected officials, and at the same time it regularly involves rank-and-file members in CIPC-sponsored advocacy activities. In response to the anti-immigrant backlash that followed September 11, 2001, CHIRLA and some of its long-time partners came together to formalize a nonpartisan immigrant civic engagement program to build electoral

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strength in anticipation of future initiatives. This was the Mobilize the Immigrant Vote (MIV) California Collaborative, formed in 2004 as a multiethnic statewide coalition. At this writing, the MIV California Collaborative includes more than 150 community-based organizations, with CHIRLA as one of six steering committee members. As the MIV anchor for southern California, CHIRLA runs a local nonpartisan electoral program. Between 2004 and 2008 alone, CHIRLA registered nearly seventy-nine thousand new citizen voters in Los Angeles County.31 CHIRLA’s statewide work also grew to include organizing and legislative campaigns for undocumented student access to higher education; today a statewide network of undocumented youth is housed within CHIRLA. Prior to this, as Salas recalls, “Immigrant youth were being completely left out of the conversations around immigration reform and immigrant rights.”32 CHIRLA began its immigrant youth leadership development program, Wise Up, in 1999, with a support group for undocumented high school students, many of whom were the children of CHIRLA’s adult members. CHIRLA also began establishing clubs in L.A. high schools to provide support for undocumented students; as of 2008, CHIRLA hosted ten such clubs. Soon after establishing Wise Up, CHIRLA made an important contribution to the already existing campaign for undocumented student access to in-state tuition at California’s public colleges and universities, by bringing together students, teachers, and administrators. CHIRLA recognized that immigrant students—many of whom had grown up in the United States and spoke fluent English—were ideal advocates and brought them to Sacramento to testify for increased access to higher education. In 2001, CHIRLA was among the groups that worked with Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh to pass A.B. 540, a bill granting access to in-state tuition for nonresident and undocumented students who had lived in California for at least three years and graduated from a California high school. Although thousands of students in California have benefited from A.B. 540, they remain undocumented, and as college students, often feel isolated because of their immigration status and lack of access to financial aid. In response, CHIRLA helped several of its former high school members establish immigrant student networks and clubs on their college campuses. In 2003, CHIRLA formally initiated the California Dream Network to link immigrant student groups and fight for federal legislation that would grant legal status to undocumented students.33 As of 2008, this network included groups from more than twenty-nine college campuses from across the state that share organizing strategy and advocate for immigration reform and access to state benefits such as health care. At least eleven of the Dream Network’s campus clubs are chaired by immigrant youth from Los Angeles

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who were members of CHIRLA Wise Up as high school students. The staff for this network has been fully funded through grant money, reducing the stress on CHIRLA’s resources. During the past ten years, CHIRLA has gradually expanded its work into the arena of national immigration policy, building on its experience at the local and state levels. Although during the early 1990s, the immigrant rights coalitions initially founded by the Ford Foundation met quarterly to share ideas and work together on national initiatives, a nationally coordinated immigrant rights campaign seemed beyond reach at that time.34 Salas recalls the “angst” felt by the local organizations: “We had no say nationally—just no say.”35 Over time, however, CHIRLA and other immigrant rights coalitions began to build stronger alliances. When the Center for Community Change (CCC) formed the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support (NCJIS) in response to the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, CHIRLA and other immigrant rights coalitions convinced NCJIS to include immigrant rights in its program. NCJIS subsequently formed a Subcommittee on Legalization, participation in which gave CHIRLA an important new opportunity for cross-learning. Salas emphasizes the importance of the “confluence of organizing methods” resulting from joining together immigrant groups, labor, and CCC with its decades of experience. Working with and learning from these other groups made “immigrant organizing more powerful,” Salas commented. One of the most critical turning points for national-level immigrant rights work was the AFL-CIO’s 2000 declaration in favor of immigrant legalization and against employer sanctions. This declaration signaled the emergence of a powerful new ally in the fight for immigration reform, making a campaign for legalization appear winnable for the first time since IRCA. Salas recalls meeting with other immigrant rights coalitions just after the AFL-CIO’s declaration, when a colleague remarked: “Everything has changed right now. I hope we all recognize that the labor unions making this big declaration has shifted the dynamic, so we’d better get ourselves together!”36 CHIRLA and other immigrant advocacy groups were determined to capitalize on their new alliance with labor, as well as with other players with national policy experience, in order to win legalization. In 2000, the NCJIS Subcommittee on Legalization formed the Immigrant Organizing Committee (IOC), which went on to establish the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) in 2004. A national collaborative of hundreds of organizations committed to immigrant rights organizing and advocacy, FIRM created a platform for comprehensive immigration reform legislation.37 As part of the forty-member IOC, now FIRM’s governing body, CHIRLA is in contact

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with hundreds of immigrant rights groups around the country on a weekly basis and provides technical assistance on coalition-building and organizing strategy to many of them. CHIRLA also links local L.A. organizations to FIRM’s campaign activities. CHIRLA was also a founding member of the national We Are America Alliance (WAAA), a partnership of national immigrant and workers’ rights organizations established in 2006 to promote electoral organizing and new citizen voter registration and education. WAAA completed an analysis of every congressional district in the United States to determine where immigrants and their allies could make a difference in the 2008 election and devoted more than $10 million to voter registration, education, and mobilization.38 CHIRLA is a member of the WAAA steering committee. In still another effort to develop a coordinated policy campaign for immigration reform, CHIRLA was a founding member of the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR), a national partnership of immigrant rights coalitions, national advocacy groups such as the National Council of La Raza, and unions like SEIU.39 With forty-three member organizations across the country, CCIR’s goal was an overhaul in federal immigration policy that would include legalization for the undocumented, among other reforms. CCIR undertook a campaign for immigration reform in 2007; CHIRLA chaired the coalition’s Strategy Council. During 2006 and 2007, CCIR provided subgrants to key immigrant rights groups across the country—CHIRLA included—to work with their congressional representatives on comprehensive immigration reform. CCIR also provided resources for weekly conference calls, legislative training and toolkits, and regular trips to Washington, D.C., for campaign activities. It tracked individual congress member’s positions on immigration issues, providing information to organizations linked to their local constituencies. Perhaps most important, CCIR became a place where CHIRLA and other groups work together on policy recommendations and discuss them with federal legislators. For example, in June 2006, CCIR organized a conference call between its members and Senator Edward M. Kennedy to discuss the contents of an immigration reform bill that the senator was cosponsoring and to brief him on the coalition’s activities.40 CHIRLA’s Salas continues to participate regularly in briefings with federal legislators on proposed federal legislation, bringing an “on-the-ground” perspective to ensure such policies are “smarter and more informed from not just the legal framework but from an everyday common sense framework.”41 However, such involvement in national work has also posed challenges. On several occasions, disagreements have occurred between national campaign strategists and groups representing local constituencies.

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When Congress failed to enact immigration reform in 2007, CCIR’s campaign ended. However, in mid-2007, FIRM, former members of CCIR, and WAAA came together to launch a national campaign for comprehensive immigration reform. CHIRLA is part of the leadership team of this new effort, which also includes CCC, the National Council of La Raza, the National Immigration Forum, America’s Voice, and SEIU. CHIRLA’s growth from a local organization to one with statewide and national influence has lifted its own profile and highlighted its contribution to the broader immigrant rights movement. That CHIRLA is consistently at the table during the formation of key national collaborations with groups like the ACLU, MALDEF, National Council of La Raza, SEIU, and UNITE HERE reflects and contributes to its reputation. CHIRLA is now able to link its local activities to broader national efforts and participate in the federal policymaking process.

Conclusion CHIRLA has expanded its reach since its founding in 1986, from a local service-oriented group to a major player in the national policy arena. CHIRLA’s evolution has not been without challenges, however. As it transitioned to organizing, CHIRLA had to continually refocus its identity, staffing, and programs. Although incubating and spinning off new organizations and networks has ultimately added value to CHIRLA’s work, it has also generated tension between internal and external work, as well as putting strain on limited staff and funding. Similarly, as CHIRLA broadened the geographic scope of its work, it had to renegotiate its priorities and campaigns. Despite these challenges, CHIRLA’s evolution has yielded positive results. After several successful local and statewide campaigns, CHIRLA’s reputation was solidly established. Over time, it became an integral part of efforts to defeat anti-immigrant policy proposals at the federal level. For example, CHIRLA has worked with members of Congress on a series of comprehensive immigration reform efforts and was a key player in helping to prevent H.R. 4437 from becoming law in 2006.42 Utilizing its longstanding relationships with L.A.’s ethnic media, CHIRLA helped mobilize local and national immigrant rights supporters against the legislation. But what will it take to win pro-immigrant immigration reform and gain the increased power for immigrants that CHIRLA and its allies have worked to build? Will these organizations be able to achieve long-term social change? The most promising possibility is increased partnership, exemplified by the various collaborative campaigns for immigration reform. Although CHIRLA and its allies have yet to gather the political power they

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need to pass comprehensive immigration reform, they have built up a deep infrastructure of thousands of organizations that is poised for continued growth. The potential of such collaboration was most palpable in the spring of 2006, when all these organizations helped turn out millions of people to march in the streets of cities across the country, demanding justice for immigrants. Since then, CHIRLA and its allies have gained visibility and influence at the national level, as well as expanded fundraising capacity. Despite daunting obstacles, the immigrant rights movement has become a powerful force that will play a central role in the ongoing policy debates over immigration reform.

4 Building Power for “Noncitizen Citizenship” A CASE STUDY OF THE MULTI-ETHNIC IMMIGRANT WORKERS ORGANIZING NETWORK

Chinyere Osuji

The traditional literature on immigrant political incorporation concentrates on the formal political process, focusing on voting, running for and holding office, and forming advocacy groups. Political participation of this sort indeed “provides [immigrants] with the tools and skills of citizenship” ( Jones-Correa 2001, 2). However, the nation’s burgeoning population of undocumented immigrants is largely excluded from these traditional forms of political participation. This issue is especially salient in the state of California, with its estimated 2.4 million undocumented immigrants (Passel 2005), more than any other state. Yet, as Jennifer Gordon (2005) has shown, undocumented immigrants can in fact participate politically through what she terms “noncitizen citizenship.” She illustrates this through the example of New York State’s 1997 Unpaid Wages Prohibition Act. Undocumented Latino immigrants visited conservative state senators in their offices and convinced them to support the legislation, largely through “the power of moral suasion that grew

In researching this chapter, I conducted in-depth interviews with eleven executive directors and organizers on the staff of MIWON affiliates between June and October 2007. Thanks to Liz Sun Woo, Victor Narro, Angélica Salas, Xiomara Corpeño, Antonio Bernábe, Aquilina Soriano, Strela Cervas, Mayron Payés, Raúl Añorve, Nelson Motto, and Vy Nguyen for their participation. All of these interviews were transcribed and coded. I also analyzed MIWON’s meeting minutes, grant proposals, and other organizational documents as well as newspaper articles and other secondary accounts. Finally, I conducted participant-observation in the 2006, 2007, and 2008 May 1 marches as well as another MIWON-sponsored protest.

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from [the senators’] identification with the immigrant stories that worker participants presented” (Gordon 2005, 265). Gordon emphasizes that by campaigning for this legislation, undocumented immigrants “brought the problems of immigrant workers into the limelight and reinserted themselves as rights-bearers in a political debate that had sought to eliminate them entirely” (Gordon 2005, 278). She observes: This is the work of citizenship, although it is practiced by those explicitly denied it. . . . While the vote and the right to hold public office are aspects of citizenship that can be granted only by the government, the right to seek social change through the political process—a right at the heart of the meaning of citizenship—can be claimed by people who by virtue of their presence and their work are in fact a part of the political community, although they are not yet officially recognized as such. (Gordon 2005, 278)

In Los Angeles, a network of worker centers has further developed this mode of noncitizen citizenship in recent years. The Multiethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Network (MIWON), formed in 2000, has mobilized undocumented immigrants to participate in a variety of political campaigns and thus to insert themselves as rights-bearers in the public arena. MIWON’s practice of “noncitizen citizenship,” moreover, includes not only Latino immigrants, but also several other ethnic groups. In this chapter, I document MIWON’s origins and organizational structure, highlighting the benefits that the worker centers that constitute it gain through their participation in MIWON. I then turn to analyze the enactment of noncitizen citizenship in three specific MIWON campaigns: the campaign for an Immigrant Rights Platform in Los Angeles, the campaign for a California driver’s license bill, and a series of May 1 immigrants rights marches (culminating in the massive 2006 protests). I explore the ways in which MIWON was able to expand the scope of noncitizen citizenship through the increased brokerage capacity and economies of scale it made available to the worker centers that comprise it. MIWON’s history also demonstrates how worker centers can facilitate noncitizen citizenship that encompasses a wide variety of political activities.

MIWON’s Origins and Structure Four worker centers (three of them the subjects of separate chapters in this volume) comprise MIWON: the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA),1 the Pilipino Workers Center (PWC), and the Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA). The seeds of MIWON

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were planted in 2000 when CHIRLA, KIWA, and PWC met to discuss their varied efforts to organize low-wage workers in Los Angeles. The PWC had opened its doors just two years prior. KIWA was engaged at the time in a restaurant workers’ justice campaign that included a boycott against the Elephant Snack Corner, a restaurant that had withheld wages from eight of its Latino and Korean workers and wrongfully fired them soon after (see Kwon, this volume; Narro 2005–6). As scholars have documented for the case of the civil rights movement, social movement activists and sympathizers are often linked informally before collective action develops and may also have a shared history of collective engagement (McAdam 1982; Morris 1981). This was the case for KIWA, CHIRLA, and PWC prior to MIWON’s creation. The three organizations were allies, often working side by side on short-term coalition campaigns to organize low-wage immigrant workers (Narro 2005–6). Over time, they found themselves pitted against larger and more complex employers, enhancing the appeal of pooling their resources. In 2000, while Victor Narro was working as the Workers’ Rights project director at CHIRLA and Paul Lee was working as organizing director at KIWA, they thought of using May 1, traditionally International Workers’ Day in many of the countries L.A. immigrant workers came from, to mobilize workers affiliated with each of the organizations in a joint march against the Elephant Snack Corner. They formed a Steering Committee along with Jay Mendoza, PWC’s founding executive director, and invited other community organizations to participate as well. Thus the first Los Angeles May 1 march in decades was born, mobilizing close to five hundred workers from the Filipino, Korean, and Latino communities affiliated with each organization. As Narro recalled in an interview: The march we had at Elephant Snack ended up being very multiethnic. There were immigrant workers from different backgrounds. They were marching together that day. And we saw how powerful it was [to see] that image of workers from different backgrounds marching together.

This 2000 May Day march (and subsequent actions on the part of KIWA) aided in the ultimate victory against Elephant Snack, with the employer eventually paying back wages and other compensation to the former workers (Narro 2005–6). This success in turn led to KIWA, PWC, and CHIRLA formalizing their coalition. In 2000, MIWON came into being as a Los Angeles-based network of worker centers, drawing on foundation funding. MIWON’s short-term goal was mutual support for each organization’s campaigns on a continual basis. Through MIWON, each center could access a base of workers from the other worker centers. The long-term goal

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was to pursue comprehensive immigration reform, something that none of the organizations had the capacity to pursue individually. According to Elizabeth (Liz) Sunwoo, MIWON’s director from 2004–7, the individual worker centers were constrained primarily by a lack of resources: All of us had such limited capacity. We weren’t getting tons of funding. We didn’t have huge memberships. . . . And they were low-wage memberships that couldn’t really pay the dues consistently. . . . So I think capacity-wise, all of us are limited to a certain size and . . . geographic area.

The worker centers’ individual efforts were limited, but by combining forces, they could attract more coverage for their campaigns—especially in the ethnic media—and place more pressure on exploitative employers. According to Sunwoo: One thing we noticed was that employers didn’t want you to air out dirty laundry and have it be a citywide thing [so] that everyone knows you’re a bad employer. So I think for us, strategically, it just made sense to use multiple organizations to really attack these employers that are exploiting workers. And one organization—it was very difficult to do it alone.

Two other organizations, the Garment Worker Center (GWC) and IDEPSCA later joined. The GWC became a member of MIWON in 2001, soon after its founding, and IDEPSCA became a member in 2006.2 Initially, MIWON was focused on combating employers who mistreated low-wage immigrant workers. However, after 9/11 the organization became increasingly engaged with immigration reform and civil liberties, in response to the increased infringement on the rights of immigrants that occurred after 9/11. MIWON’s four affiliates—CHIRLA, KIWA, PWC, and IDEPSCA—are all important players in immigrant organizing in Los Angeles, and in the case of CHIRLA, at the national level. MIWON regularly brings together eight to twelve leaders (organizers and executive directors) of the four organizations, who in turn mobilize their members. While top leaders of its affiliates participate in its meetings and activities, MIWON itself has no authority over the individual organizations that make it up; rather, it is a network with a loose federal structure. Initially, CHIRLA staff handled most of MIWON’s administrative tasks, but in 2004, MIWON gained funding for a staff person—the director—who is essentially the network hub. For four years, Sunwoo, formerly a KIWA representative to MIWON, held this position. Bethany Leal succeeded her in 2008. According to MIWON’s “Guiding Documents,” the director handles

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administrative duties, including finances, representing MIWON to outsiders, and attends alliance meetings with non-MIWON organizations, manages endorsements, and organizes trainings (MIWON n.d.a). MIWON’s director, along with the executive directors and organizers of the four organizations, make up the Organizing Council (OC). These leaders meet to discuss MIWON’s own campaigns (both current and future) as well as other local immigrant rights coalitions they may want to join. MIWON also has several allied organizations that it can call on, especially for large events like the May Day marches. These allies include the South Asian Network (SAN); the Community Coalition (CC), an organization devoted to bridging African American and Latino communities; and the GWC, a former MIWON affiliate. According to MIWON’s Guiding Documents, these allied organizations are expected to mobilize their members to turn out for MIWON events (MIWON n.d.a). But formal membership in MIWON is more exclusive, demanding a high threshold of commitment and trust.

The Benefits of Networks in Social Movements Networks are important to social movements on a number of levels. Along with past experiences and other types of socialization, networks can create and reinforce identities (Melucci 1989) and foster political consciousness (Passy 2003). Networks may also facilitate the development of cognitive skills and competencies and provide opportunities for action by circulating information and reducing the practical costs of participation (Diani 2003). The case of MIWON illustrates how worker centers can use networks—both among individuals and especially among organizations—to strengthen immigrant worker identities as well as to provide opportunities for citizenlike political participation to noncitizens. MIWON’s commitment to organizing immigrant workers of diverse ethnic backgrounds is articulated in the Guiding Documents, which state that the affiliated “organizations share a common vision of building solidarity between different ethnic groups” (MIWON n.d.a). My interviews with worker center leaders revealed their shared belief that interethnic cooperation is crucial to meeting this goal. As Mayron Payés, former CHIRLA worker rights coordinator and day laborer organizer, mentioned in reference to the effort to achieve legalization for undocumented immigrants, “We couldn’t do it by ourselves. Only Latino workers? It’s not going to make it. Only Filipino workers? It’s not going to make it.” Several other organizers also mentioned that MIWON’s Multiethnic approach is important, because many people erroneously see

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the issue of legalization as a primarily “Mexican” issue. As Antonio Bernabé, CHIRLA day laborer organizer and worker leader, said: People believe this is just . . . about Latinos and then when we [interact] with the Korean community, with the Filipino community, and with other immigrants from other countries . . . this is something that is empower[ing]. It’s really empowering.

Strela Cervas, former PWC case manager and MIWON representative, agreed: These are issues that are being faced among all of the ethnic groups represented, so immigration isn’t just a Latino issue, but it’s an issue that’s faced all across, and we need to work together on it as a network, and not just, working on it because Latinos need genuine legalization, but because it would be good across all ethnicities.

By working together, the organizations can draw attention to the fact that while the majority of immigrants in Los Angeles are Latino, the community also includes significant populations of other ethnicities that are also undocumented. Multiethnic coalition-building is especially important for the smaller immigrant groups, such as Filipinos. According to Salvador (Dong) Lledo, PWC senior organizer and worker leader: The issue is very big, huge. So we need a bigger organization to deal with that kind of problem. Even [if we were to] organize the whole Filipino [community] here, we [could not] solve the problem [of legalization]. So we believe that together with the Latino[s] and other ethnicit[ies], we can solve the problem.

Collectively, these statements testify to MIWON’s value in promoting a political consciousness of solidarity across ethnic backgrounds. MIWON was also committed from the outset to fostering noncitizen citizenship among the immigrant members of its affiliated organizations, most of whom were undocumented. One example of this effort was MIWON’s School of Education, Empowerment, and Determination (SEED). SEED was meant to provide immigrant workers with an opportunity to build their leadership capabilities, grow into organizers, and become integrated into the MIWON leadership structure. Rather than, as Sunwoo put it, a “Know Your Rights in the Workplace 101,” SEED’s goal was to help build leadership among workers who already had strong organizing skills. As Vy Nguyen, former KIWA lead organizer and MIWON representative explained, SEED was a way to “further develop each organization’s highest-level leaders.”

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Starting in mid-2005, SEED ran monthly workshops with simultaneous translation into Spanish, Korean, and Chinese. The sessions were led by MIWON organizers as well as representatives from other community organizations and several outside experts. SEED’s curriculum was broad, including such topics as “understanding multiple oppressions,” “how the U.S. government works,” globalization, and the systemic roots of immigration. More practical sessions focused on organizing techniques, developing campaigns, and how to balance being an organizer with the rest of one’s life. SEED was not especially successful at integrating rank-and-file immigrant workers into the organizational structure of MIWON. It also suffered from retention problems among the immigrant workers recruited for its yearlong program. Nevertheless, it did increase the cognitive skills and competencies of the leaders who participated. For example, in the eyes of Bernabé—who not only organized part of the curriculum but also attended the workshops— SEED enriched CHIRLA as a worker center, making worker organizers “more solid in their own leadership” as well as more globally aware. SEED helped inculcate specific values in its students—especially understanding their similarity to low-wage workers in other ethnic groups and the value of interethnic organizing. Through interactive discussions with other types of immigrants, SEED helped participants see their shared circumstances: low occupational status, low racial status as “nonwhites,” and lack of formal citizenship rights. According to the 2007 executive summary of MIWON’s long-term strategic plan, participation in the network allows MIWON affiliates to “learn from each other’s struggles of resistance” (MIWON n.d.). Formalizing their previously informal relationships also helped them establish deeper relationships with a higher degree of trust. This facilitated mutual access to information, and particularly to organizing strategies and techniques, that otherwise would be unlikely. One example is KIWA’s emulation of PWC’s tactic of finding buildings that house a large number of ethnic community members—in KIWA’s case, Korean seniors—and providing a service to them (Ghandnoosh, this volume, discusses this aspect of PWC’s work) as a means of building relationships of trust. While PWC had distributed food in buildings housing large numbers of Filipinos, KIWA is planning to have organizers provide a different kind of service, namely sorting their mail. This is useful, Nguyen pointed out: Because people don’t always know what’s important, what’s something from the government or what’s something that they have to do versus what’s junk mail, because they don’t speak or read English. So it’s something that an organizer can help them do, and then at the same time, start building relationships with some of the seniors.

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Thus by borrowing a strategy that PWC had used to gain access to the Filipino community, KIWA was able to gain access to the population of elderly Koreans. The close relationships developed within MIWON makes the process of sharing strategies faster and more direct, as best practices are learned directly from the source. Another way that MIWON has enabled the flow of information involves funding. MIWON, like most worker centers, relies mainly on foundation funding, one weakness of worker centers that Fine (2006) identified. The small pool of foundation resources that all the L.A. worker centers rely on could potentially create competition among them as well as between them and MIWON. Recognizing this, MIWON made an attempt to minimize the problem. As Sunwoo explained, “Organizations that are more established have been known to back out” of funding opportunities, allowing smaller organizations to have priority. In addition, MIWON does not compete for funding that its affiliates are seeking. Hence, participation in the network allows the different organizations to coordinate strategically and minimize competition for foundation funding. Sharing organizing strategies as well as coordinating fundraising efforts are two of the ways in which networks like MIWON “enable worker centers to aggregate their resources and magnify their impact,” as Fine (2006, 240) observes. In addition to sharing among its own affiliates, MIWON has sought to disseminate such information more broadly. For example, in 2003 Liz Sunwoo organized “Worker Exchanges” bringing worker center leaders from across the country to Los Angeles to learn about the strategies of MIWON’s affiliates. In turn, worker leaders from MIWON’s affiliates visited organizations (including worker centers) in other parts of the country to learn from them.

“Noncitizen Citizenship” Before forming MIWON, all of its affiliated worker centers had been keenly interested in the fight for comprehensive immigration reform, but only CHIRLA had been directly involved. PWC and KIWA, like most worker centers, were devoting the bulk of their resources to grassroots immigrant worker organizing and lacked the staffing, funding, and time to engage in the larger battle for comprehensive immigration reform. As articulated by Cervas: We knew that as individual organizations we had . . . an immigration issue and we wanted to push a legalization campaign . . . or anything that had

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to do with immigrant rights, but we knew that we couldn’t do it as an organization alone. . . . So the reason that we got together was to be a more powerful force.

Working through MIWON lowered the costs of participating in the immigrant rights movement for each of the affiliated worker centers, since they could now rely on the network’s staff and other resources. As Nguyen explained, MIWON allows the worker centers that comprise it to “more directly address issues like legalization and immigrant rights” than they otherwise could, given their limited resources. MIWON has been involved in a number of campaigns—some successful, others less so—at the local and state levels to advance the cause of immigrant rights. The L.A. Immigrant Rights Platform, the May 1 marches, and the statewide campaign for a driver’s license bill all illuminate how MIWON has been able to mobilize immigrants in noncitizen citizenship activities while fostering the “leadership development and civic participation of immigrant workers from various ethnic communities” (MIWON 2005).

The L.A. Immigrant Rights Platform Shortly after MIWON’s formation in 2000, it convened a series of focus groups among immigrants drawn from its affiliated worker centers to create what Sunwoo called an “immigrant worker’s bill of human rights.” In the process of crafting this document, MIWON saw an opportunity to bring workers of different backgrounds together and to highlight their commonalities, despite language and cultural differences. The meetings included simultaneous translation into Tagalog, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, and English so that immigrants from all the worker centers could offer input into the document. A total of about six hundred workers participated in the focus groups.3 Then the MIWON leaders wrote an “Immigrant Rights Platform” highlighting the common needs of the different industries and ethnic communities represented, and translated it into multiple languages. In August 2001, they held a Town Hall meeting to present the final document to immigrants, labor leaders, elected officials, and immigrant rights groups. More than four hundred workers and fifteen legislators were in attendance. The platform document highlighted the positive contributions of immigrants to Los Angeles and the abuses that immigrant workers often faced, including working “long hours without overtime pay” and “no access to workers compensation.” It also called for permanent legal status for all immigrants. Prior to 9/11, momentum had been growing for federal immigration legislation to provide the undocumented with an opportunity to legalize their

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status; this effort collapsed when immigration was reframed as an issue of national security (Narro et al. 2007). Immigrant communities now were the recipients of heightened hostility. In the context of this anti-immigrant backlash, MIWON asked the L.A. City Council to support immigrant workers by formally adopting its Immigrant Rights Platform. It did so by resolution on December 18, 2001—declared “International Migrant’s Day” by the United Nations—in a unanimous vote.4 The campaign for the Immigrant Rights Platform embodied MIWON’s signature strategy of bringing together workers from a variety of backgrounds to exchange ideas and experiences. Liz Sunwoo, former MIWON director, recalled: It was just a victory for all these workers to come together, especially folks who had never met, like a Chinese worker or a Latino worker or a Korean worker or a Filipino worker. And we were able to bring everybody together along that platform.

Thus MIWON not only succeeded in winning City Council support for the platform, but also in carrying out its vision of mobilizing noncitizens politically across ethnic boundaries for immigrant rights. Because of MIWON’s efforts, its affiliated organizations were able to continue to carry out their other duties in addition to the campaign for the platform. Coordinating the meetings did not fall on the shoulders of just one worker center; instead many hands made light(er) work. This was especially important since MIWON had not yet acquired a director and all of the work had to be done by the worker center organizers. Furthermore, MIWON was able to devote some of its funding to simultaneous translation, ensuring that all workers could participate in the crafting of the document, regardless of their English language abilities, and without putting any financial strain on its affiliates. Working together as MIWON, the worker centers were able to bring together immigrants of a variety of ethnic backgrounds and industries into the same room to shape the platform. The worker center leaders then framed the formal document and presented it to the L.A. City Council explicitly highlighting the needs of their noncitizen constituencies. Like most resolutions, this one was a symbolic gesture, especially in light of the fact that immigration reform is a federal issue over which the L.A. City Council has no jurisdiction. Nevertheless, in the context of the antiimmigrant backlash that followed the 9/11 attacks, MIWON’s success in persuading local officials to publicly express moral support for Los Angeles’s immigrant population was highly meaningful. Although this achievement fell short of the sweeping social change that MIWON is committed

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to, the process of getting the resolution passed empowered the immigrant workers involved and allowed them to enact noncitizen citizenship.

The Driver’s License Campaign In 2002, MIWON decided to participate in the campaign for driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.5 In 1993, Governor Pete Wilson had signed a bill requiring proof of lawful presence in the United States in order to apply for a California driver’s license. In 1999, State Assemblyman Gil Cedillo introduced the first of several versions of a drivers’ license bill (A.B. 60) that would allow immigrants who were in the process of obtaining lawful immigration status to obtain drivers’ licenses.6 MIWON recognized that the lack of a driver’s license was not simply a Mexican or Latino problem, as it is commonly perceived, but one affecting immigrants from all areas of the world. Here then was another opportunity to become involved in a campaign with multiethnic repercussions. The acquisition of a driver’s license would give immigrants the opportunity to verify their presence in the United States through an official document, a step toward regularizing their legal status. Joining a variety of labor and immigrants’ rights organizations that were participating in the campaign, MIWON became an advocate for S.B. 60, the 2002 version of Cedillo’s (by then a state senator) bill. Many of the workers who were members of MIWON’s affiliated organizations, and particularly day laborers, fervently supported the driver’s license campaign since it would not only identify them and document the time that they had spent in the United States, but would also improve their everyday lives. Although IDEPSCA was not yet a member of MIWON, it too took an active role in the driver’s license campaign. Raúl Añorve of IDEPSCA recalled: The sentiment at that time was, “I need to go to work. You know, I have a car. I have to make ends meet. I need to have a driver’s license, because if I get caught, they’re going to remove my car. They’re going to give me tickets.”

Recognizing the importance of this issue for undocumented workers, MIWON was eager to join the campaign. It also provided an opportunity to train workers to participate in the political process and develop leadership skills. Mayron Payés, formerly of CHIRLA, explained: We needed to have workers speaking for themselves. So in order to do that, we needed to train them so they would be more confident as to how to speak publicly, as to what to say and do about issues that impact them, impact these workers. So we start[ed] meeting, [having] a lot of meetings to develop leadership among these workers who were participating.

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MIWON provided media trainings for several worker leaders in connection with the driver’s license campaign. Not only did this enable these workers to develop leadership skills, it also enabled MIWON to more effectively disseminate information about the campaign to Filipino, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish media outlets. The campaign involved not only media outreach, but also a variety of opportunities for noncitizen citizenship activities. Workers from MIWONaffiliated organizations made weekly trips to Sacramento to attend hearings on the bill—with members from the Latino, Filipino, and Korean communities all represented. The delegations included day laborers, domestic workers, as well as garment, homecare, and janitorial workers. MIWON also organized a series of community meetings and forums in collaboration with other organizations to discuss the bill. MIWON held a thirty-four-hour candlelight vigil in 2002 to pressure the governor to sign the bill. More than two hundred people participated—mostly immigrants from the worker centers, but also labor union members who were supporting the campaign. MIWON and CHIRLA mobilized close to eight hundred workers from Los Angeles in the course of this campaign.7 While facing a recall election in 2003, Governor Gray Davis signed S.B. 60 into law—despite having vetoed two similar bills in the past—presumably to gain Hispanic support. Immediately afterward, however, Davis was voted out of office and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a staunch opponent of the bill, immediately called on the legislature to repeal the law. By December, the bill—which would have gone into effect January 2004 —had been repealed (Sanchez 2003).8 After this reversal, there was a debate within MIWON about whether or not to continue to pursue the drivers’ license issue. Strela Cervas observed: So then what do we do? So then our response was just, “We’re tired.” [Laughs] We’re tired, we don’t want to be mobilizing so much, which is true, it was very, very rigorous . . . especially for small organizations like us that really don’t have the capacity to mobilize that much.

As Cervas’s comments indicate, issues of scale are important when considering the type of campaigns that a small organization, or even a network of small organizations, realistically can take on. MIWON’s participation in the driver’s license campaign required a lot of time and energy and left many of its organizers overwhelmed. Despite the fact that the bill was repealed, many advocates look back at the campaign with a positive assessment. Angélica Salas, CHIRLA’s executive director, argues that it served as an opportunity to educate workers about the effort required to win legalization as well as about the political

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process in general. Similarly, Nelson Motto, former IDEPSCA lead organizer, said, “It educated us on how to organize—how to do legislative business. It gave us a lot of knowledge,” acting as a “school” for the workers and the organizers involved. Although ultimately unsuccessful, as these comments concede, the campaign nevertheless helped undocumented immigrant workers develop leadership skills and practice a form of citizenship in which even native-born citizens rarely engage. In short, like the Immigrant Rights Platform, the driver’s license campaign provided an opportunity for immigrant workers to engage in noncitizen citizenship. MIWON initiated them into the political process through its community meetings and helped them develop as political actors through its media training. Although they were ultimately unsuccessful, participants did have the experience of learning how to influence their representatives in Sacramento to support legislation on their behalf, despite their undocumented status.

The May 1 Marches On May 1, 2006, more than 600,000 people marched through downtown Los Angeles wearing white T-shirts, waving American flags, and holding signs saying “Full Rights for All Immigrants” in honor of May Day. There were similar marches across the nation on that date. May Day demonstrations on behalf of immigrant rights had taken place on a much smaller scale in prior years, organized through local groups in cities around the nation (Higgins 2000; Pina 1995). In Los Angeles, MIWON had established the practice of organizing immigrant rights marches on May Day. As can be seen in table 4.1, even prior to MIWON’s formation, the Elephant Snack campaign May Day 2000 march mentioned above drew five Table 4.1. Los Angeles May Day marches, 2000 –2008 Year

Characteristics

Number of participants

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Prior to MIWON’s formation March downtown March downtown March and sit-in at Gov. Davis’ office Caravan For Justice April 30 Largest marches March with police brutality Two marches (w/ March 25 Coalition)

300–500 4,000 15,000 5–7,000 300 (bus); 800 (protests) 7,000 600,000 30,000 8,000

Sources: Compagnone 2003; Fox, Selee and Bada 2006; Fuentes-Salinas 2003; Victor Narro, personal communication, May 3, 2008; Payés and Salas 2003; Watanabe and Beccera 2006; Watanabe and Var-Orta 2007; Watanabe, Gorman and Bloomekatz 2008.

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hundred workers. The following year, more than three thousand marchers participated in MIWON’s march from downtown Los Angeles to MacArthur Park, calling for immigration reform, protecting the rights of immigrant workers, and supporting the driver’s license bill.9 The 2002 May 1 march took place in the context of the post-9/11 antiimmigrant backlash. Close to fifteen thousand people participated, not only calling for comprehensive immigration reform, but also for an end to the harassment of immigrant communities and the U.S. occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as an end to the U.S. military presence in the sending societies of many of the member organizations’ workers, including South Korea, the Philippines, and Central America. Then in 2003, close to six thousand people participated in MIWON’s May Day march (FuentesSalinas 2003) In 2004, MIWON decided to try a different approach. Instead of bringing thousands of marchers into the streets, MIWON rented vans for a multisite protest that took the workers to picket with the Assi Market, a Koreatown employer (see Kwon, this volume) and Forever 21 workers (see Archer et al., this volume), to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s restaurant in Santa Monica and to the L.A. Federal Building. This “Caravan for Justice,” as it was called, allowed the media to board the buses and talk to individual workers, a tactic used to humanize the situation of low-wage immigrant workers in Los Angeles.10 Close to three hundred participants rode in the caravan with another eight hundred marching in the street. In 2005, seven thousand marchers participated in the International Workers’ Day marches, which took place on April 30—the one year the marches did not take place on May 1.11 The huge turnout at the 2006 march cannot be attributed to MIWON alone. The “Sensenbrenner bill,” which would have criminalized undocumented immigrants and supporters who gave them refuge, had passed the U.S. House of Representatives the previous December (Narro et al. 2007).12 This bill motivated religious leaders, grassroots organizations, community activists, and students to organize and participate in a huge L.A. march on March 25, 2006, as well as in the May Day protest that year.13 Demonstrators were also encouraged to participate by popular L.A. Spanish-language radio disc jockeys like Eduardo “Piolín” Sotelo and Renan “El Cucuy” Almendarez Coello (Navarro 2006). Above all, H.R. 4437 provided the impetus for the marches in Los Angeles, as well as similar marches across the country. Like the black sit-ins that launched the Civil Rights Movement (Morris 1981), the 2006 May 1 marches grew out of preexisting, well-developed networks of immigrant institutions and organizational forms. MIWON, as

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a network of immigrant worker centers and community-based organizations in the city with the nation’s largest undocumented immigrant population, was one of the many organizations that helped plan the L.A. marches. Its previous experience with May Day marches proved important, however: MIWON organizers applied for a police permit, planned the route of the march, and helped coordinate press releases. MIWON also helped facilitate logistical meetings with a wide range of L.A. community-based organizations to increase participation. MIWON was a member of the “We Are America Coalition,” a 125-member alliance of labor, religious, political, and immigrants rights organizations formed to oppose the Sensenbrenner measure (Watanabe and Gorman 2006). In the course of the planning for May 1, a disagreement developed with the March 25 Coalition, which called for a work, school, and consumer spending boycott on May 1. Members of the “We Are America Coalition” did not endorse this call and ultimately organized a separate march that took place in the afternoon, after most people came home from work and from school. Together, the two marches involved an estimated 600,000 participants, the largest May 1 turnout of any U.S. city. In 2007, MIWON organized another May Day march that ended in MacArthur Park. The participants numbered thirty thousand, a much smaller turnout than in 2006, but double the number of participants in the 2002 march, which was the largest prior to 2006. During the rally at the end of the 2007 march, violence erupted when the L.A. police tried to clear the park, giving instructions in English from a helicopter. Soon after, police entered the park in riot gear, throwing tear gas and shooting rubber bullets at the participants. MIWON later filed a successful class-action suit alleging police brutality at the rally (Winton, Gorman, and Glover 2008). In 2008, the March 25 Coalition and MIWON collaborated on planning the May 1 marches, forming a joint steering committee to determine the routes, the demands, and the program of the day’s events. There were two starting places for the marches, but they merged in downtown Los Angeles in a display of solidarity overcoming the conflict over previous marches. More than eight thousand people attended the 2008 march (Watanabe, Gorman, and Bloomekatz 2008). MIWON organizers plan and coordinate each year’s May Day event along with allies from a broad range of local organizations. For example, in 2007, the march’s endorsers included the Korean Youth and Community Center, the Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere (AWARE), and the South Asian Network (SAN). Usually, MIWON organizers provide transportation for the worker center and ally organization members to promote turnout.

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The May 1 marches are MIWON’s signature action. They exemplify the network’s active promotion of noncitizen citizenship and explicitly incorporate the heritage of the various ethnic groups that participate. For instance, PWC brings large, vibrantly colored puppets to the annual marches. Korean drummers and Aztec dancers also perform. Marchers often carry brightly colored banners as well as decorative picket signs in several different languages. The May Day marches are a family affair, including everyone from children in strollers to the elderly with their wheelchairs and walkers. With energizing chants set to percussive beats, rather than ignoring or trying to circumvent ethnicity, MIWON embraces the various cultural heritages of participants, deliberately integrating cultural expression with protest. Although the overwhelming majority of the participants at the 2006, 2007, and 2008 marches was Latino, there was also a significant presence of Asians, African Americans,14 and whites, so that the May Day marches embodied MIWON’s mission of promoting the “civic participation of immigrant workers from various ethnic communities” (MIWON 2005). Through the May Day marches, MIWON makes interethnic cooperation visible in the public arena, if only once a year. Most important, the May Day marches have provided an annual venue for nearly a decade in which undocumented immigrants and their supporters can become political actors by publicly voicing their demands for immigration policy reform. As Angelica Salas of CHIRLA put it: May 1st was a day that we were able to . . . take on physical space . . . it was a common space where people could actually stand together in support of legalization. . . . It was the first time you were seeing immigrants coming together, coming out of the shadows, in a sense, and mobilizing . . . saying this is who we are, and we demand our rights, and we believe that we’re contributing to this country and that we’re here.

These marches have allowed undocumented immigrants, many of whom labor daily in the shadows, an opportunity to become visible and vocalize their rights through a very public form of noncitizen citizenship.

Conclusion Janice Fine’s national study of worker centers found that some of them mobilize immigrant workers on the basis of ethnic identity (Fine 2006, 13; see also Ghandnoosh, this volume). At the same time, one of her critiques of worker centers is that they are often undernetworked. Since labor market niches are often racially and/or ethnically specific, worker centers face the danger of myopia, focusing solely on the issues facing a particular ethnic

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group or industry. However, regardless of ethnicity, nearly all undocumented immigrants are restricted to low-wage, dead-end jobs where they often face intensive exploitation, sometimes even at the hands of their own ethnic group. MIWON’s goal is to capitalize on the similar structural position of lowwage immigrant workers, building bridges among Los Angeles’s ethnic immigrant communities in the common struggle for immigration reform. Its network structure also allows the affiliated worker centers to share resources and strategies in a mutually beneficial manner. By allowing them to remain grounded in their particular ethnic communities while at the same time reaching out to allies in other ethnic groups, MIWON provides a model of a network that multiplies the power of individual worker centers, despite severely limited resources. MIWON’s promotion of multiethnic solidarity among immigrant communities in Los Angeles has challenged the widespread public perception of immigration as an exclusively Latino issue, a particularly important effort in the context of Los Angeles, where Mexicans and Central Americans make up the majority of the foreign-born population. Yet MIWON also faces some real limitations and challenges. Perhaps the most important limitation is the conspicuous absence of African Americans from its organizational structure. Although (as noted above) it does relate to the Community Coalition as an important ally, it has no other ongoing ties to organizations that represent the interests of the local African American community. MIWON has the potential to build bridges between African Americans and immigrants, especially Latinos, and aspires to do so, but has not yet seriously taken on this task. MIWON’s most successful efforts have created opportunities for “noncitizen citizenship.” In the case of the Immigrant Rights Platform and the campaign for the driver’s license bill, MIWON empowered immigrants to influence elected officials at the local and state level despite their undocumented status. And year after year, in the May 1 marches, undocumented immigrants took to the streets, visibly inserting themselves into political discussions from which they might otherwise have been excluded. Although the challenges that lie ahead are formidable, MIWON has contributed significantly to alliance-building across ethnic lines in the local community, and to the education and empowerment of those undocumented immigrants who participate in its activities.

PART II

Occupational and Industry-Focused Organizing Campaigns

5 The Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance JACQUELINE LEAVITT AND GARY BLASI

Taxi drivers are often portrayed as the ultimate entrepreneurs, free of any fixed workplace, able to choose their own hours, and with a toehold in the American middle class. That stereotype may have been accurate in New York City decades ago (Hodges 2007; Mathews 2005), but in contemporary Los Angeles, taxi drivers spend long hours in “sweatshops on wheels,” their pay and working conditions controlled largely by company owners. Less than half of L.A. taxi drivers own their own cabs, and many of those who do have borrowed heavily to purchase them (Blasi and Leavitt 2006, 49). In 2005, L.A. taxi drivers formed the Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance (LATWA) in order to improve working conditions, gain control over their jobs, and earn respect.1 This chapter documents LATWA’s efforts and accomplishments and assesses its future prospects. A critical focus of LATWA’s organizing is the status of the drivers. In the mid-1980s, the L.A. City Council acquiesced to a company owner’s proposal to transform drivers from employees to independent contractors,

Research was funded by the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and the University of California Transportation Center. We thank Dan Clawson for his comments on an earlier draft and all the contributors to this volume for their comments and suggestions. We thank Anna Kim for her research and interviews that she conducted for this paper. We also thank students in both Gary Blasi’s Fact Investigation class and Jacqueline Leavitt’s class on Community Development for their assistance in research and interviewing. We are also grateful to the many taxi workers and their allies who spent hours answering our questions.

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which means that they are no longer covered by minimum wage laws or other labor protections. Subsequently, the city awarded franchises to several taxi “cooperatives”—a misleading term since an insider elite and owners of companies that provide essential services to the cooperatives continue to exercise a great deal of control over the drivers. One driver we interviewed called the industry a “monster,” evoking the imagery of a hydra with nine heads, alluding to the fact that nine companies control all of Los Angeles’s 2,303 cabs, largely through a structure of cooperatives and private corporations few drivers understand. In this chapter we describe the power structure of the L.A. taxi industry, as well as the history of organizing among drivers. LATWA is but the most recent of a series of organizing efforts, although all the previous organizing drives were unsuccessful. We recount the lessons that taxi drivers learned from those past organizing efforts, drawing on in-depth interviews with LATWA leaders and supporters. At four different times—1977, 1981, 1997, and 2005—taxi drivers launched major organizing drives, all in response to efforts to shift customer revenue from drivers to the companies. Over time, the organizing focus has broadened, and the most recent effort—LATWA’s— involves linkages to a wide range of other L.A. social justice organizations and advocates, as well as relations with taxi organizations in other cities. Later in the chapter we explore LATWA’s future options and opportunities, especially those likely to emerge when the entire taxi regulatory structure and company franchises next comes up for renewal.

The Structure of the L.A. Taxi Industry Regulation of the taxi business is, by California statute, delegated to local governments as a public utility (Blake and Tobin 1962).2 While taxis can drop off a passenger anywhere, each of the eighty-eight cities in Los Angeles County, including the City of Los Angeles, has complete authority to regulate all taxicabs that pick up passengers within its boundaries. In practice, in the smaller cities and the county itself, regulation is minimal, involving little more than an annual license fee that taxi operators pay for the privilege of picking up passengers in each jurisdiction. But the City of Los Angeles has a far more elaborate regulatory apparatus for the industry. The city’s five-member Board of Taxicab Commissioners is appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council. The council itself sets regulatory policy, while a Taxicab Administrator within the city’s Department of Transportation (LADOT) oversees day-to-day regulation. In addition, the Los Angeles World Airport (LAWA) controls access to a major source of taxi driver income by regulating access to passengers at the Los Angeles

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International Airport (LAX). LAWA currently delegates this power to a corporation, Authorized Taxicab Supervision, Inc. (ATS) whose board of directors is made up of the presidents and management of Los Angeles’s nine taxicab companies. The City Council sets taxi fares and must approve the franchise agreements that specify the terms under which the taxicab companies operate. Under those terms, all taxis must be part of a fleet that has received a franchise from the city, and each taxicab and each driver also must have separate approval from the city to operate. Each franchisee is required to elect a board of directors and to designate a general manager, who must be approved by the city. All but one of the nine L.A. taxi companies that currently hold franchises are cooperatives, with each cab representing one share in the cooperative.3 Of the taxicabs operated by those eight cooperatives, the largest ownership share is held by one family, the Rouses.4 The family also exercises control over the “cooperatives” indirectly through an entity called the Administrative Services Cooperative (ASC). The largest cooperatives, including Yellow Cab, United Checker Cab (UCC), and several other cooperatives with franchises in other cities, contract with ASC for services like advertising, insurance, and radio dispatching. ASC, in turn, contracts with various private companies owned by the Rouses for office space and radio equipment, as well as fleet management services. Because the taxi business is so heavily regulated by city officials, the taxi companies are extremely active politically. In 2000, for example, taxicab companies paid lobbyists more than a quarter million dollars, and from 1998 to 2006 they contributed nearly $200,000 to local politicians, making the taxi industry among the largest single contributors to local political campaigns (Blasi and Leavitt 2006, 10, 47). The current regulatory structure does little to check the power of ASC and its affiliated companies, or the insiders who control the cooperatives and who set the fees charged to share owners.5 These fees, in turn, determine the lease rates that owners can charge.6 The net income (and indirectly, working hours) of both owner-operators and lease drivers depends on the fees the companies set as well as on the price of fuel—neither of which the drivers are in a position to control. In many contexts, there is little difference in the circumstances of the drivers who own and operate their taxicabs (and who own shares in the cooperatives) and drivers who lease cabs from others, typically for a twelve-hour shift. The median driver is a forty-seven-year-old man who is a legal immigrant and a father of school age children, who works seventy-two hours per week, sometimes putting in eighteen- to twenty-hour days (Blasi and Leavitt 2006). Our 2006 survey found median earnings of $8.39 per hour, with owners making only about twenty cents per hour more

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than lease drivers. Given that fuel prices have risen much faster than fares since we did our study, these numbers are likely to be much lower today. Most drivers have no health insurance, and if their children are insured, it is often only because they are poor enough to qualify for state and federal health insurance. In addition, driving a cab involves serious occupational health and safety hazards. “Taxi drivers’ limp” is a condition caused by long hours behind the wheel using only the right leg. Back problems are extremely common. All this is compounded by Los Angeles’s well-known air pollution and its unusually hazardous roads and freeways. Some drivers experience ethnic discrimination, harassment from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and LAX police, and company retaliation for organizing. LATWA’s recent campaigns have benefited owners as well as lessees, but there are tensions between the two groups. While lease drivers may have hopes of becoming owner-drivers in the future, in the short run they may not be willing to sacrifice time—which is money—to attend a meeting in search of possible long-term gains. Many drivers we interviewed recall entering the taxi industry because of easy requirements, quick access to cash, and on what they thought of as a temporary basis—only to find themselves still driving years later. In contrast to lessees, owner-drivers have a longerterm commitment to the occupation. They feel that they own something, though they are often not entirely sure what belongs to them and what belongs to the company. They pay monthly dues as cooperative shareholders— sometimes as much as twelve hundred dollars a month—and in return they want a voice in the way decisions are made and dues spent. The current organizing takes place in a historical context that continues to echo in the discussions among drivers. Before turning to the current organizing effort, then, in the next section we look at the earlier organizing campaigns among L.A. taxi drivers.

Driver Organizing in 1977 and 1981: Worker Cooperatives and Strikes In 1977, C. Arnholdt Smith’s closure of the Yellow Cab Company sparked a wave of collective action among taxi drivers. At the time, Smith controlled 75 percent of the taxi business in the City of Los Angeles. Amid scandals involving his ties to organized crime and allegations about his own insurance companies charging excessive fees to Yellow Cab drivers, the company declared bankruptcy in November 1977 and closed down. Many drivers were left unpaid for what the company owed them for the preceding two weeks and Los Angeles was essentially without taxi service.

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Eugene Maday, a Las Vegas gambler who also owned Little Caesar’s Casino, stepped into the breach and put in a bid for the Yellow Cab franchise and rolling stock (Kilgore 1977). Maday, like C. Arnholdt Smith, had reputed connections to the Las Vegas mob. In Las Vegas, Maday had bought his first taxi company with assistance from Homer L. (Dutch) Woxberg, a former spokesman for Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters’ notorious Central States Pension Fund (Blake and Tobin 1962). Woxberg and the Teamsters lobbied the L.A. City Council to approve Maday’s application. In turn, Maday promised to recognize the union in Los Angeles and provide fair wages and benefits for drivers (Bernstein 1992). Although those promises would not be kept, the seven-month period between Yellow Cab’s closure and the city’s franchise award to Maday gave drivers an opportunity to organize. Drivers who had been deprived of pay for their last two weeks of work and threatened with the elimination of their livelihoods held vociferous demonstrations. One driver with a background in Democratic politics, David Shapiro, took the lead in developing a proposal for a taxi company structured as a cooperative of individual owner-drivers. Shapiro received encouragement from his contacts in City Hall, then under Mayor Bradley’s administration. The cooperative would manage common activities like dispatching and bargain collectively for services like insurance to reduce costs. Another group of former Yellow Cab drivers separately lobbied the City Council for a change in the law to permit cooperatives of independent owner-drivers.7 In April 1977, the City Council agreed to these demands, approving an ordinance allowing for individual ownership and operation of taxicabs for the first time in forty-two years (Baker 1977). A few months later the City Council broke the Yellow Cab monopoly, granting franchises to operate across Los Angeles to two owner-driver cooperatives—United Independent Taxi Drivers (UITD) and the Independent Taxi Operators Association (ITOA) (Blasi and Leavitt 2006, n. 143).8 The city limited the initial number of taxis to a hundred for each of the cooperatives, required that owner-drivers spend a minimum of forty hours per week in their cab, and mandated that the cooperatives monitor their members’ behavior as well. These cooperatives initially came close to the intended ideal of distributed ownership and internal democracy. But tensions developed between the original founders and newcomers, as well as between those who saw taxi driving as a career and those who saw it as an investment (Russell 1985, 129).9 Eventually, these cooperatives would come to be controlled by a few insiders, but neither would approach the sophistication of the web of cooperatives and private companies constructed by the Rouse family in the 1980s (described below).

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Both ITOA and UITD reached the hundred-cab limit within a year, and the city favorably responded to the cooperatives’ requests to expand. They each grew to two hundred cabs by the end of 1980 (Russell 1985, 111).10 Meanwhile, both cooperatives were concerned about the total number of cabs on the streets of Los Angeles, as the other companies were “selling ‘leases’ to cabbies who then became drivers of owner-operated cabs affiliated with the fleets” (123). After the cooperatives reported this practice to the city, the companies were ordered to stop but coop members “complained that the private companies were continuing to circumvent the regulation by a variety of inventive subterfuges” (124). Drivers in other companies were facing their own difficulties. Maday, by now Los Angeles’s largest taxi industry owner, had thrown the Teamsters out of his Las Vegas cab company and he failed to keep his promise to recognize the union in Los Angeles. In 1981, Yellow Cab drivers went on strike to protest Eugene Maday’s cutting wages and taking away health benefits. Maday claimed that he was losing money and demanded elimination of health insurance and deep cuts in the wages of taxi drivers, who were then making about $150 per week. The city, which had promised to allow Maday to raise fares, voted not to award him a new franchise unless he settled the dispute with his workers (Savage 1989), thus giving drivers a temporary victory. Maday sued, but lost in the lower court—a decision that was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that the city had intruded into the federally preempted area of labor regulation. The city later settled with Maday, the gambler who had paid $500,000 for his interest in the Yellow Cab franchise, for a total of $12.75 million in damages, interest, and attorney’s fees (Blasi and Leavitt 2006, 47).11 Eager to head off bad publicity and trouble during the upcoming 1984 Summer Olympics, the city granted Mitch Rouse a taxi franchise with hopes that he would quell complaints about unsafe taxis, price gouging, and trip refusals. After the Olympics were over, however, Rouse too complained that his company was “in dire financial straits.” He proposed to solve the problem by changing the status of taxi drivers from employees with a guaranteed percentage of the income earned at the end of each day to independent contractors. In response, the city approved an emergency ordinance allowing all of the taxicab companies to reclassify their drivers as independent contractors. Now taxi drivers would start work each day with a negative income, owing the company money and paying for gas out-of-pocket. An added benefit to the companies was that the drivers were no longer employees who could belong to a union, enjoy the protection of wage and hour laws, and receive worker compensation benefits.

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The Rouses, Mitch and his son William, went still further. Although all their drivers were now independent contractors of L.A. Taxi, the Rouses now seized on the idea of creating a cooperative of cooperatives that would, in turn, buy services from their companies. In effect, they could take the franchise granted by the city and repackage it as shares to be sold to individual drivers for thousands of dollars, all the while retaining control over all the things that make a taxicab company other than the vehicles themselves: the name, the radios, the dispatch service, and so on. Bill Rouse incorporated the Los Angeles Taxi Cooperative, Inc. (LATC), the Administrative Services Cooperative (ASC), and the South Bay Cooperative (which operates United Checker Cab) on September 3, 1992. Two months later, on November 3, the L.A. City Council effectively transferred the L.A. Taxi to the L.A. Taxi Cooperative (Blasi and Leavitt 2006, 64–65, 66, 77–78).12 The Rouses’ for-profit cooperatives thus emerged alongside UITD and ITOA. These new entities bore little resemblance to the original vision that had created ITOA and UITD and, in many ways, were cooperatives in name only. Granted a free franchise to operate four hundred taxicabs by the city, Rouse could sell those rights to drivers for $40,000 each, or a total of $16 million. Virtually all of those who bought shares were immigrants, intent on acquiring a piece of the American Dream. But the L.A. taxi driver’s version of that dream falls far short of the ideal. The driver’s workplace is typically a used police car worth about four thousand dollars, now painted yellow and equipped with a leased radio and taxi meter. The market costs of obtaining radios, or taxi meters were not easily determined, because these were supplied by Rouse-controlled companies, through the Administrative Services Cooperative. Many of the owner-drivers we interviewed did not understand what they owned and what they did not, what they could sell, and what they could buy only from a restricted source. Immigrants, many with limited English proficiency, simply did not understand the 138-page contract used to sell a share in the Yellow Cab Cooperative. As one driver told us: He gave me the key. I work so hard because I have illusion that I am going to own my own business, be my own boss. Of course I know I have to pay taxes, take good care of my customers and my car, drive safely, you know. And that’s what I have been doing, but like I said I didn’t know, nobody ever explain to me [any] thing. After the years I found out that there are so many things hiding.13

Under this new arrangement, L.A. taxi drivers soon found that all the critical aspects of their work were under the control of the Rouse companies,

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cooperative insiders, or the city. The city has extensive authority over the taxi business. It was the city that allowed companies to treat drivers as independent contractors and authorized the formation of the cooperatives. The city also regulates what drivers wear, where they can pick up passengers, and how much they can charge. When it comes to relations among the companies, the coops, and the drivers, however, the city takes a “hands off” approach. The companies tell drivers where they must purchase insurance and how much they must pay for the radio dispatch system. The global market determines how much they must pay for gasoline. Moreover, many of these “independent contractor” drivers are now tracked by global positioning systems (GPS) attached to their mandatory taxi meters. Taxi workers are left with only one significant decision: how many hours they work. The cooperative structure may have indirectly curtailed organizing as well, at least for a while. The appeal of “owning” a share, being a “shareholder,” and having “independent” status was considerable, in the abstract. Only when the realities of the situation became clear and when drivers’ repeated requests for accountability from the companies were rebuffed did organizing reemerge.

Two New Worker Organizations In 1997, a group of taxi drivers who had unsuccessfully sought access to company financial records incorporated as The Los Angeles Yellow Cab Owner Drivers Association (LAYCODA). In retrospect, the leaders fully appreciated the methods that Yellow Cab used to defeat them. Ethnic divisions were exploited and drivers from some ethnic groups were favored in hiring for management positions and/or supported for leadership of the cooperative.14 One driver’s comment illustrates the effect of this divide-and-conquer tactic and the trade-off a driver makes in accepting supervisory jobs. There are some other people who are not [going] to talk against management; they are the starters—they are drivers too but they are kind of supervisors. They work specifically at the train station, at Amtrak, and the Greyhound. They are there to see everything works smoothly. They do drive, they work there 8 hours for a shift, and they pay them. They’re not going to talk against management cause management pays them. . . . Not all drivers have this chance.

The companies’ tactics were not subtle. They called the drivers’ efforts “foolishness” and told them to quit LAYCODA—or else. The membership— about 150 belonged by 2000—gradually dwindled. Those who hung on

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turned to a lawyer for advice only to be discouraged when he suggested that it would cost a lot of money to make changes. LAYCODA lasted about three years and as its meetings died out, another organization emerged. This was the Los Angeles Taxi Drivers Association (LATDA), which broadened its membership beyond Yellow Cab and, significantly, included lease drivers as well as driver-owners. At its peak, more than three hundred members belonged, although over time most of the lease drivers dropped out. The companies once again fought back, among other things infiltrating the group’s meetings, according to organizers. One driver we interviewed reflected that the companies did not have to do much more to create a climate of fear. Driver leaders were adding another layer of activity to their already long work week whereas the companies could use people already on their payrolls to dispatch antiorganizing messages. One well-known leader left LATDA and another stayed for half-a-year or so longer before the organization folded. But drivers remained discontented with their incomes and eager to win respect and recognition. In late 2004, their anger boiled over when one driver was told to leave the holding lot at LAX because he had arrived a little early. He was told not to return until hours later, a penalty that would have cost him a significant fraction of his income for the week. When he refused to leave, airport police were called to escort him off. The news spread among drivers at LAX, sparking a short, but effective, strike of drivers who refused to pick up passengers at the airport. This incident precipitated the formation of the Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance in 2005.

LATWA’s Formation and Campaigns The LAX incident sparked a series of informal meetings that led to the formal launch of LATWA in 2005. Ethnically rooted social networks played a critical role in this effort. The driver at the center of the LAX controversy, who was South Asian, sought out another South Asian driver who arranged a meeting with Hamid Kahn, the executive director of the South Asian Network (SAN). SAN had been founded in 1990 as a community-based organization with the mission of “advancing the health, empowerment and solidarity of persons of South Asian origin in Southern California” (South Asian Network n.d.b) and with a particular focus on low-wage workers.15 Using his personal and professional connections to policy advocates and elected officials, Khan called a meeting of lawyers from social justice organizations like the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), who could advise the taxi drivers. Simultaneously, drivers from different ethnic groups, including Latinos and Ethiopians, some of whom had been involved in the

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earlier taxi driver organizing efforts, began meeting around conditions in the industry. About ninety drivers attended a town hall meeting in April 2005 in Inglewood, California. Two lawyers spoke: one on ways to defend against company retaliation; the other on workers’ compensation. A second town hall meeting was held in July 2005 at a meeting space in the MacArthur Park area in downtown Los Angeles. This marked the formal launch of LATWA. The objective was to provide an “organized, cohesive voice” to “industry reform and drastic improvement of working conditions for thousands of taxi workers” (South Asian Network n.d.a). LATWA embarked on a research effort to learn more about the industry and some drivers sought legal help. LATWA aimed to be an umbrella organization for all the different ethnic groups that had begun organizing separately in this period. All this was accomplished without a paid staff. Volunteer work by community allies complemented the dedication of taxi drivers who took time away from earning a living to talk with other drivers, attend meetings, testify at hearings, and build the organization. LATWA representatives reached out to some L.A. City Council members for support, and they eventually appeared before the council. Organizers obtained a copy of the city’s recording of one meeting at which they had testified, with good results, and used that as an informational tool at subsequent meetings with drivers. They also arranged with a local progressive radio station to help publicize LATWA’s campaigns to the wider public. In September 2006, LATWA organized a community meeting with a listening panel that included L.A. City Council member Wendy Gruel, head of the council’s Transportation Committee. Two taxi drivers chaired the meeting and drivers’ and customers’ testimonies were showcased. LATWA issued a white paper on taxi drivers and the authors of this chapter presented their findings to a panel that included a member of the city’s Taxi Commission (LATWA 2006). These events stirred excitement, and LATWA had eight hundred signed support forms by the end of 2006. As of this writing there are closer to thirteen hundred signed support forms. This rapid membership growth reflected the success of three demands LATWA made and won in the summer and fall of 2006—one over uniforms, a second over meter rates, and a third over fares for short rides. The first demand addressed one of the most salient personal burdens for drivers. The Board of Taxicab Commissioners requires that taxi drivers conform to a dress code. Chief among the drivers’ complaints was the requirement that they wear a necktie. Drivers reported instances in which ties had become entangled in luggage when loading the trunk, or had been used to choke them during robberies. More generally, the mandatory white shirt,

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black tie, black pants, and black shoes, a dress code strictly enforced by city inspectors, are a constant reminder to drivers that their freedom and independence is an illusion. The taxi industry perspective was that uniforms reflect a sign of professionalism and was comparable to the more formal style of the limousine drivers with whom taxi drivers compete. This issue came to a head in the sweltering summer of 2006 when L.A. politicians opened neighborhood “cooling-off” centers for public use when temperatures reached 100 degrees. Under these circumstances, the Taxicab Commission agreed to relax the necktie requirements during the summer months. As the price of gasoline rose, an expense for which drivers are wholly responsible, LATWA members testified before the City Council and demanded a twenty cent fare increase to $2.50 per mile. In response, the council approved the increase, which took effect in December 2006, and gave the taxicab commission the authority to review the fares every six months and increase them in relation to the Taxi Cost Index (TCI).16 The third demand also received City Council approval in the fall of 2006. Drivers complained about waiting in long lines for fares at LAX, only to find that some passengers only wanted transportation a short distance (and thus for a very small fare)—sending the driver back to the end of the holding lot line again. The City Council responded by agreeing to a flat fee of $15.00 for short fares to airport hotels and nearby beach cities. In addition to these successes, LATWA has engaged in negotiations with the city regarding conditions at the Authorized Taxicab Supervision (ATS) “holding lot” at LAX. Drivers’ demands include the need for clean bathrooms, benches in shaded areas, a water fountain away from the restroom, as well as ending harassment by the airport police and by management at the holding lot. LATWA met with airport officials and asked that protections for drivers be included in any extension of the ATS contract.17 When LAX officials proved unresponsive, LATWA appealed once again to the City Council, which voted unanimously in March 2006 that: within 60 days, the City Council will require that LAX put an end to the climate of fear created by ATS and adopt protections for taxi workers from ATS abuse, including improvements in conditions at the holding lot, clear written rules and procedures for disciplinary action, due process and respect for taxi drivers. If significant improvements are not made, the Council has requested that the operating agreement with ATS be terminated (South Asian Network n.d.a).

These LATWA wins were widely cited among the drivers we interviewed as sources of hope and interest in ongoing organizing. In all likelihood the wins encouraged another action, one that challenged the power of the

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Rouse family directly and thus met with much more resistance. In early 2007, twelve shareholder drivers at Yellow Cab contacted LATWA with an interest in running reform candidates for the cooperative’s Board of Directors. The election campaign provided a forum for LATWA activists to raise issues of concern to all Yellow Cab coop members. Initially, the workers were exhilarated when the voting results showed that two of their reform candidates won. The company insiders managing the election, however, declared a computer glitch in counting the votes and called for a new election. The winners of the second election did not include the reform candidates.

LATWA Moves Forward LATWA has made significant inroads in improving working conditions and offering drivers a voice in decision making. Thanks to LATWA, city agencies listened to taxi cab drivers’ testimony and took their complaints seriously. LATWA also brought independent empirical research conducted by the authors of this chapter to the City Council, which in turn demanded a response to the findings by the Department of Transportation. Meetings of the Taxicab Commission are no longer the exclusive province of lobbyists and franchise heads. Thousands of taxi drivers have received fact sheets on shareholder rights and updates on LATWA’s advocacy to improve working conditions. Plans are also underway to take action to address drivers’ health conditions.18 LATWA is maturing with the help of small grants to help support a paid coordinator, although additional operating money is needed to increase the organization’s capacity. LATWA has incorporated as a nonprofit corporation and is seeking tax exempt status. Its board is composed entirely of current or former taxi workers, and it has an advisory committee made up of twenty-five to thirty taxi workers and key supporters like Hamid Khan. The Inner City Law Center, which is not subject to the restrictions imposed on federally funded legal services programs, provides legal counsel. Leaders are also taking steps to ensure that all key ethnic groups are represented in LATWA’s committees. Building on their accomplishments to date, LATWA’s leaders are now reaching out to lease drivers as well. While ethnic divisions and tensions between owner-drivers and lessees persist, our research suggests that the larger challenge facing LATWA is the companies’ constant effort to foster an environment of fear. Many drivers told us stories of managerial retaliation, explaining that they need to balance their support for LATWA against the challenges of earning a living to support their families. Organizing increases the pressure on an already stressful job and has led some to leave the industry altogether or find work

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that offers more security, such as driving limousines. Some LATWA leaders want to move out of the city. But others who have survived the companies’ efforts to kill the organization appear less fearful. Drivers continue to come forward and many are hopeful about the future. Some of the leaders are veterans of social movements in their home countries, notably in Pakistan and Ethiopia, and have a long-term commitment to speaking out despite the companies’ scare tactics.

Forging Community-Labor Alliances LATWA’s ability to surmount ethnic and racial divisions is also enhanced by its ties to the South Asian Network and to lawyers with communitybased and labor backgrounds. Organizers encourage eating together at the end of meetings, embracing a sign of hospitality in many of the cultures of the drivers and helping to foster mutual respect across differences in background among drivers or between drivers and lawyers. Early in its development, when LATWA operated more informally and with fluctuating numbers of activists, the taxi workers on the organizing committee were joined by the executive director of the South Asian Network and four volunteer lawyers.19 The relationships between the lawyers and the taxi worker leaders deepened over time into personal friendships. Indeed, perhaps more than in most industries and partly due to the practical requirement that taxi workers speak English, many are highly educated people who were professionals in their home countries before coming to the United States as political or economic refugees. Early on, the lawyers advised the LATWA driver-organizers that there were few if any legal remedies for the problems being experienced by taxi workers, and that collective action would have to be the primary, if not the only, means of redress. However, when some active drivers were subjected to company retaliation for which there was no legal recourse, it became clear that they had not fully grasped these warnings—perhaps because they had come from lawyers in whom they had so much trust. The result was a period of demoralization. However, LATWA’s recent formalization of its organizational structure reduces the risk that such misunderstandings will recur.

Future Prospects LATWA faces some serious challenges in the years ahead. The organization can continue to press for changes at the micro level of the rule books and at the macro level regarding the structure and regulation of the cooperatives and the taxi industry itself. But is this enough? One looming issue is that the

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City Council will soon consider reissuance of the company franchises and, possibly, the entire franchise system. In anticipation of the upcoming review, table 5.1 summarizes three of many possible scenarios.20 (1) The city reissues renewals to the existing companies, leaving LATWA to continue to organize within the existing structure, perhaps with some additional protections against retaliation and discrimination. (2) LATWA proposes, and the city accepts, a proposal for a democratic workers’ cooperative with ideals similar to those that inspired the 1970s cooperatives but with additional protections for members. (3) The city municipalizes all or part of the taxi fleet. Each option has its pros and cons and each would require additional worker protections in order to maintain drivers’ recently improved working conditions. Table 5.1. Three taxi options for the City of Los Angeles

Type

Option 1 Existing system of 8 cooperatives and 1 private sector company

Option 2 Democratic Workers Cooperative

Option 3 Municipalization of taxis

All shareholders

All employees

Current or potential Existing company beneficiaries owners

All drivers

All drivers

Potential problems

Continuing lack of accountability and transparency by company owners; continuing city bias against drivers

Degeneration unless Acceptance by drivers; by-laws include bureaucratization protections, e.g., of agency against resale of taxis, limitation on number of taxis owned, driving a requirement of belonging; lease drivers gain equity

Other types of worker protections

Affiliate with union; Join existing union; Affiliate with union; allies exert political city establishes city establishes a pressure a collective collective bargaining bargaining agent agent to negotiate to negotiate with with company company owners; owners; allies exert allies exert politipolitical pressure cal pressure

Driver status

Owner-drivers; owner-investors; lease drivers

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Option 1. If the city maintains the status quo and renews the franchises, the unequal balance of power that currently exists between drivers, company insiders, and other interests (notably, the Rouse family) will be perpetuated. In this case, various types of worker protections could be explored. The most obvious of these is affiliation with a labor union. Although this idea might be greeted with skepticism among those who recall L.A. taxi workers’ troubled history with the Hoffa-era Teamsters, recent developments in other cities offer more positive models. In 2006, the New York City Taxi Workers Alliance affiliated with the New York City Central Labor Council, with the aim of building a partnership to expose abuses and improve workplace standards (Parks 2006). The Boston Taxi Driver Association (BTDA), an affiliate of the United Steel Workers of America (USWA—which also represents some taxi drivers in Las Vegas), is calling for a Mayor’s Taskforce for Hackney Reform to work with the BTDA and “environmental, labor and community leaders and organizations . . . to create a model-city clean-cab industry in Boston that promotes the economic security of drivers” (Massachusetts Jobs with Justice 2008). Alternatively, building on its regulatory authority, the City of Los Angeles could establish a collective bargaining agent that is similar to the structure the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) helped broker for public sector home health care workers (see Delp and Quan 2002). Option 2. Establishing a democratic worker cooperative also presents problems, as indicated by the history of the worker cooperatives that began in the late 1970s and had degenerated by the mid-1980s. Some protections could be established, such as restricting membership to active drivers or prohibiting ownership of multiple shares by family members.21 Still, this option involves the risk that aggressive insiders could effectively become “the company,” especially if they have powerful allies outside the cooperative. Option 3. The primary obstacle to municipalization is that the great majority of LATWA members are still drawn to the dream of independence, ownership, and entrepreneurship, even as their cabs are fitted with GPSmonitors that track their every move and they remain heavily in debt after purchasing their taxis. Unless the city compensates existing share owners for what they believe to be the value of their shares, few if any will support a transition to employee status.22 Nonetheless, there are some positive reasons to support Options 2 and 3. A democratic worker cooperative based on genuine cooperation, equality, and mutual respect could potentially create better working conditions. In a comparison of two companies, one a conventional hierarchically run taxi business and the other a true cooperative, Elizabeth A. Hoffmann (2003) found radically different organizational cultures and behavior. The

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cooperative members avoided confrontation, “used rights talk and stressed the appropriateness of formal grievance resolution procedures” (692). They held group meetings, elections, and formal debates, and established collectively run hiring procedures. By contrast, the private taxi company experienced individual or group confrontation and threats of resignation; while drivers had to rely on individual relations with the owner to resolve complaints instead of formal procedures. Option 3, municipalization, has the potential to win LATWA broad public support, especially in light of Los Angeles’ worsening traffic.23 Currently, taxis are barely acknowledged in transportation planning. A proposal for a publicly run green taxi fleet service might be favorably received under present conditions of increasing fuel prices, unremitting traffic congestion, and the city’s effort to reduce its carbon footprint. The recent example of the clean trucks program at the Port of Los Angeles illustrates the city’s more active engagement in greening transportation and achieving favorable publicity (City of Los Angeles Environmental Affairs 2008, 2 and 7). Further support might come from seniors in need of alternative transportation for essential activities who are reluctant or unable to drive or use the city’s overcrowded bus system. LATWA faces a formidable challenge in educating the city’s drivers, politicians, and the broader public about these options. Yet, the organization has achieved a great deal in only a few years. Its industrywide organizing strategy goes beyond a focus on any one company and seeks to make the city accountable. It has built a multicultural, cross-ethnic organization and forged alliances with community organizations embracing a larger vision of social change. LATWA’s emphasis on making issues visible in the public realm—attending hearings, demanding documents, offering testimony— is crucial to success when company and governmental decisions and finances are not transparent. Implicitly and sometimes explicitly, LATWA’s efforts raise broader questions about the future shape of Los Angeles, and about the future of not only the city’s taxi workers, but workers generally— both immigrants and U.S. born.

6 From Legal Advocacy to Organizing PROGRESSIVE LAWYERING AND THE LOS ANGELES CAR WASH CAMPAIGN

Susan Garea and Sasha Alexandra Stern

On March 27, 2008, in a room packed with reporters, workers, advocates, organizers, and attorneys, the Community-Labor-Environmental Action Network (CLEAN) campaign was announced to the public. Its goal is to persuade southern California car washes to sign the “CLEAN Car Wash Agreement” to create an industry standard for wages, working conditions, and the right to organize. At the same time, the Car Wash Workers Organizing Committee of the United Steelworkers (USW) is actively organizing workers on the ground, picketing and boycotting car washes that are particularly egregious violators of basic labor laws. The campaign has also successfully directed media attention to the labor conditions in L.A. car washes (Nazario and Smith 2008). The CLEAN campaign did not emerge suddenly in 2008. On the contrary, it was the result of more than a decade of advocacy on behalf of car wash workers, led by progressive attorneys concerned about the proliferation of labor law violations and the inadequacy of traditional state enforcement efforts. The car wash industry is an extreme example of this growing problem in the low-wage labor market. In southern California, which has the nation’s largest concentration of car washes, workers—most of them foreign born and many of them undocumented—are often paid less than the minimum wage, not given legally required meal and rest breaks, and faced with working conditions that violate established health and safety standards. As complaints about these problems began to surface in the 1990s, legal aid attorneys in Los Angeles became increasingly concerned. At first, the 125

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attorneys employed a traditional litigation-based approach focused on individual or group wage claims, in which lawyers—not workers — are the main actors, and in which legal expertise is privileged while clients play a relatively passive role. They filed numerous individual wage claims, but even when the workers prevailed, all too often they could not collect the monies awarded to them, because the employers proved insolvent or the car washes had changed ownership. Many individual workers did successfully collect on their claims, but to the great frustration of the attorneys involved, labor law violations remained pervasive in the region’s car wash industry. This dilemma eventually led to the search for a strategy to address the broader problems of car wash workers in southern California. The attorneys became advocates for legislative efforts to regulate the car wash industry, which would eventually make it possible to organize workers on the ground. This chapter documents the evolution of legal advocacy on behalf of car wash workers, highlighting its achievements and continuing challenges, and exposes the genesis of the CLEAN campaign in the context of ongoing debates about the role of lawyers in fostering social change and empowering low-wage workers.

Background In the 1990s, L.A. area legal aid attorneys began to receive requests for help from car wash workers with complaints of unpaid wages and other labor abuses. The experiences of Mr. Thomas and Mr. Lopez are representative: Mr. Thomas worked in car washes for over 15 years and he now suffers from kidney damage. His doctor told him that it appeared to be due to exposure to toxic chemicals found in car washes. He generally worked 10-hour days and was paid $35 per day. When he asked for a little extra money to pay for the medical expenses, he was fired. Mr. Lopez, a 53-year-old man, worked in a car wash for over 60 hours per week, but was regularly paid for only 17 hours per week. He tried to file a claim on his own behalf, but his claim was dismissed when he named the carwash as the defendant, as opposed to the corporate entity and individual, whose identities he could not have known. (Monroe 2006)1

At first, lawyers took up these cases using traditional litigation-based strategies. In this traditional approach, litigation is privileged over any other strategy, and lawyers’ expertise and knowledge is privileged over the experience of clients (Lopez 1992, 25, 29). Clients have a passive role, and meaningful collaboration between lawyer and client is not a priority. Collaboration with other lawyers or with nonlawyers is undertaken solely on a case-by-case basis to facilitate winning a particular lawsuit.

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In recent years, many legal scholars have criticized this traditional approach as ineffective because it fails to empower clients or stimulate any lasting social change (Cummings and Eagly 2001, 452–60). As Jennifer Gordon argues, “The worker who benefits from the legal action has not learned the skills that she will need to fight back the next time she is exploited; instead, she has learned that she should seek out a lawyer to solve her problems” (2005, 194–95). Another focus in this literature is the inherently unequal power dynamic between lawyers and the low-wage workers they represent. As Ascancio Piomelli argues, “Lawyers’ practices are unwittingly grounded in, and perpetuate, pejorative conceptions of lower-income people as subordinate, dependent, and helpless” (2000, 438–39). The traditional legal approach has also been criticized for its regressive nature: lawsuits are filed to remedy past wrongs, not prevent future wrongdoing. A “victory” in a lawsuit, moreover, is at best a short-term solution to a systemic problem.2 Thus some scholars have argued that lawyers can be far more effective in the struggle for workers’ justice, if they “move away from litigation strategies and instead . . . focus on community-based efforts [that] promot[e] client political agency” (Cummings and Eagly 2001, 446). Understanding the limitations of traditional lawyering, in the late 1990s a group of southern California attorneys sought to address the problems facing car wash workers through a nontraditional approach. This group of local legal service organization attorneys and advocates became known as the Coalition of Low-Wage and Immigrant Worker Advocates (CLIWA).3 CLIWA’s approach combines litigating individual wage claims with other strategies, such as legislative advocacy and organizing to achieve large-scale solutions. Two elements are key to CLIWA’s work: (1) collaboration and constant communication with a wide network of attorneys and other advocates, and (2) a commitment to permanently changing working conditions for car wash workers. This chapter documents the development of the CLIWA lawyering approach through five phases: (1) drafting and passage of the Car Wash Worker Law, (2) monitoring and engagement in the resulting regulative process, (3) reauthorization of the law, (4) addressing the lack of its enforcement and (5) supporting the creation of a union organizing campaign (the CLEAN campaign mentioned above) under USW. But before recounting this history, we turn to a brief overview of the L.A. car wash industry itself and the labor conditions that led to these efforts.

The Car Wash Industry in Los Angeles The car wash industry has more than fourteen thousand establishments in the United States and generates revenues of more than $5 billion.

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The industry is fragmented, with almost 95 percent of the nation’s car wash firms consisting of single establishments (rather than chains or franchises); only thirty-one firms are comprised of ten or more car washes (Parker 2006, 2). In California, there are more than fifteen hundred establishments, with twenty-two thousand employees, that bring in $872 million in revenue annually. There are more than five hundred car washes in the Los Angeles area, with reported annual revenues of more than $250 million (Narro 2007; United Steel Workers 2008). The workforce is predominantly male, Latino immigrants, about 25 percent of whom are undocumented (Milken Institute 2005, 303, 306).4 The car wash industry is extremely labor-intensive; the work is fast-paced and often dangerous (Los Angeles Times 2007; Parker 2006, 15, 18). Car wash workers suffer routine exposure to caustic chemicals and lack of protective equipment, in violation of health and safety regulations. Many are paid less than the legal minimum wage and do not receive legally mandated overtime pay or meal and rest break (Davis 2003).5 The average worker labors for fifty to sixty hours per week during the summer and forty-five to fifty-five hours per week during the winter. In 2002, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the yearly earnings of U.S. car wash workers averaged $12,932 (United Steel Workers 2008). Some car wash workers are not even paid an hourly wage, rather are paid only tips. The L.A. “carwasheros” movement began when, in 1999, sixteen workers from SpeedWay Car Wash walked off the job and went to state senator Tom Hayden’s office, located around the corner from their workplace, to complain about nonpayment of wages and exposure to dangerous working conditions. George Magallanes, Hayden’s field investigator, talked with the workers, and then set up a meeting between the workers, immigrant advocates, and the owner of the car wash. At the meeting SpeedWay’s owner became incensed and threw things across the room, and the issues remained unresolved. Soon afterward, the advocates reported the health and safety violations to the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal/OSHA) and the wage and hour violations to the state labor commissioner, chief of the Department of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE).6 All of the workers, save one, were eventually reinstated with back pay.7 This experience galvanized Senator Hayden to seek legislation to regulate the car wash industry. He sponsored California Senate Bill 1097, modeled after the recently passed Assembly Bill 633, which had sought to address labor law violations in the garment industry by setting up a fund for wage and hour claims and holding both contractors and manufacturers liable for violations. S.B. 1097 passed in 2000, but Governor Davis vetoed it, stating, “I am vetoing this bill because it would impose additional operational costs on the Department of Industrial Relations that are not budgeted in the 2000

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Budget Act. Additionally, I do not believe that the need for car washing and polishing businesses to register with the labor commissioner has been demonstrated” (California Department of Industrial Relations 2000). Organized labor did not pressure Governor Davis to sign S.B. 1097, and indeed, at the time, very few people were aware of the state of labor conditions in the car wash industry.8 By contrast, A.B. 633 had passed shortly after the discovery of seventy-two Thai garment workers who were held captive and forced to work, generating enormous media attention and public outrage (APALC 2005). The plight of car wash workers was far less well known, so that Davis’s veto of S.B. 1097 went largely unnoticed. Over the next few years, however, more and more car wash workers began approaching legal services organizations and immigrant advocacy groups, who filed large numbers of wage and hour claims on their behalf. Even though individual claims were often successful, the overall pattern of violations in the industry persisted. As a result, the advocates concluded that there was a real need for legislation similar to that which Hayden had attempted to pass in 2000. Meanwhile, the advocates themselves were consolidating their resources and organizing in such a way that they would be well-positioned to pursue this effort.

The Rise of CLIWA In 2002, a group of L.A. organizations concerned about labor law violations affecting low-wage workers and immigrant advocates formed a coalition, initially known as the Los Angeles Worker Advocates Coalition (LAWAC). LAWAC was comprised of legal services organizations—including Bet Tzedek, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA), and Neighborhood Legal Services (NLS)—as well as member-based groups—including the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles (CHIRLA), the Garment Worker Center (GWC), and Sweatshop Watch. The Coalition of Low-Wage and Immigrant Worker Advocates (CLIWA) was formed in 2006 as a merger of LAWAC and another coalition group, the Coalition of Immigrant Workers Advocates (CIWA). CIWA was initially L.A. based as well and was made up of worker centers and advocacy groups, many of which were also part of LAWAC. Lilia Garcia, of the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund (MCTF), was the driving force behind CIWA, which under her leadership had expanded to include various northern California groups. In 2006, Betty Hung, an attorney at LAFLA, who thought it was illogical to have two local coalitions with so many of the same organizational members, broached the idea of a merger.9 While our focus here is on CLIWA’s work with car wash workers, it also works on a variety of other issues affecting

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low-wage workers in California. At this writing, CLIWA is a statewide coalition of twenty-eight organizations.10 CLIWA grew out of informal collaboration among advocates serving low-wage workers in the L.A. area. LAFLA, NLS, and Bet Tzedek ensured that the group met each month, but there was no mission statement, membership requirement, or formal structure.11 In the early days, only five or six people attended meetings, but currently CLIWA meets monthly—at least ten to twelve representatives of L.A. organizations meet in person and they teleconference with members in northern California. The coalition has no office space or staff, so the L.A. legal service organizations rotate responsibility for hosting the meeting, arranging the conference call, and taking notes. CLIWA also has a list-serve to help coordinate its efforts and share information. The group initially was formed with two goals: to share ideas and advocacy strategies and to work toward legislation and policy reform to benefit low-wage immigrant workers. From the start CLIWA adopted a multipronged approach, including not only legislative advocacy but also direct support for grassroots organizing—in effect, embracing a nontraditional model of lawyering.

Drafting and Passage of the Car Wash Worker Law (A.B. 1688) In 2002, LAWAC began drafting a bill that would address the injustices in the car wash industry.12 Anel Flores, a legal intern with LAFLA at the time and now an attorney there, wrote the initial version of the bill, drawing on Senator Hayden’s failed bill, the more successful A.B. 633, and a study of the car wash industry done by UCLA students.13 This effort, which became A.B. 1688, proved more successful than the Hayden bill two years earlier, in part because of the growing collaboration among low-wage worker advocates and attorneys that would later culminate in the formation of CLIWA. Legal advocates were hopeful that the problem of employer insolvency in the car wash industry—which often made it impossible for workers to collect funds awarded to them under the established process for adjudicating violations of wage and hour laws— would be compelling for legislative intervention. LAFLA, NLS, and Bet Tzedek all ran weekly workers’ clinics where they saw the same patterns of employer insolvency in the car wash industry. A.B. 1688 included five key provisions: (1) registration requirements,14 (2) collection of registration fees,15 (3) a requirement that employers post a surety bond, ensuring that there is a source of money to pay judgments,16

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(4) the Car Wash Worker Restitution Fund and the Car Wash Worker Fund,17 and (5) a successorship provision.18 To address the problem of car wash insolvency, the bill included two important funding mechanisms: a Car Wash Worker’s Restitution Fund and the surety bond. These two sources make money available to pay judgments. Thus, even if the employer claims insolvency, workers who win wage and hour claims had two new resources on which to draw. Apart from the insolvency problem, car wash workers often were not able to collect their awards after winning judgments on wage and hour claims because the car washes had changed ownership. A common employer strategy was to transfer ownership, sometimes to family members, to avoid having to pay judgments. The law’s successorship provision addressed this problem by holding successor employers liable for wages and penalties owed by the former employer if the successor is essentially running the same business.19 Another means of ensuring compliance with labor standards is A.B. 1688’s requirement that each car wash register annually with the labor commissioner.20 Under this provision, it is illegal to operate without proper registration and failure to register is punishable by fines of one hundred dollars per day.21 This registration requirement can also be leveraged in the wage claim process. Employers with outstanding judgments against them are not able to register, or renew their registration,22 and may be at risk of having their current registration revoked.23 The registration provision, in addition to providing a mechanism to compel payment of judgments and general adherence to the labor code, also makes the bill revenue-neutral. The registration fee of $250 a year is designed to fund the Labor Commissioner’s enforcement of the Car Wash Worker Law, so that, in effect, the bill pays for itself. This addressed Governor Davis’s veto statement’s concern regarding funding of Hayden’s earlier bill, S.B. 1097, and ensured that the overstretched California budget would not be impacted. The attorneys and other advocates were not only crucial in the process of drafting the legislation, but also in the passage of the law. The first step was to garner political support by securing a sponsor for the bill in assembly member Jackie Goldberg.24 Nancy Cervantes of NLS had previously worked with Goldberg, which facilitated the process.25 Advocates also sought to bolster political support by negotiating with the car wash industry itself, which led them to initially agree to a three-year sunset provision in the bill; however, the industry withdrew its support because of its opposition to the registration fee. The registration fee was critical, because the coalition assessed that during a time of budgetary constraint,

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a bill without its own funding would not pass. But the sunset provision was retained as well in an effort to show that the advocates had addressed the concerns of the employers and to appease Governor Davis. The California Labor Federation also supported the bill, providing invaluable lobbying, contacts, and knowledge on navigating the legislative process.26 Thanks to a 2002 study by a group of UCLA students with sponsorship from the UCLA Downtown Labor Center, the advocates also had newly collected data to support the allegations of widespread labor law violations in the car wash industry. Advocates distributed the study to every member of the legislature.27 Thanks to all these efforts, A.B. 1688 (“The Car Wash Worker Law”) was passed by the legislature, signed into law by Governor Davis on October 10, 2003, and set to take effect January 1, 2004.

CLIWA’s Role in the Regulatory Process A short time afterward, however, Governor Davis was recalled, so that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was in office when the Car Wash Worker Law was set to take effect in January 2004. Schwarzenegger declared A.B. 1688 overly vague and called on the state’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency to issue regulations for its implementation.28 Since the law would sunset in January 2007, a lengthy process of development for the regulations threatened to undermine the law’s effectiveness. The advocates initially argued that the regulations were unnecessary (Monroe 2005a), but when that effort failed they decided to participate actively in the public comment process, which offered an opportunity to educate the public on the plight of car wash workers. They also wrote an op-ed for the Los Angeles Daily Journal (Kamin and Monroe 2005) and did interviews with local news media, including Spanish language news outlets (Bet Tzedek 2005). After the regulations were issued, the attorneys provided comments based on their interaction with car wash workers in their legal clinics. At this point the legal advocates came together as a team, as advocate Betty Hung of LAFLA recalled, “Everyone analyzed the reg[ulation]s—each group really analyzed—pored over [them]. We’d have conference calls to discuss and strategize and analyze the pros and cons of the proposed reg[ulation]s. We testified and added comments.”29 The advocates systematically divided up the work to increase the efficiency and quality of the analysis. The Western Car Wash Association (WCA), a trade association of car wash operators in the western states, also participated in the public comment process.30 They had opposed A.B. 1688 from the outset and now sought to make the regulations as weak as possible. In the May/June 2005 edition of their newsletter they implored their members to attend the hearing, stating,

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“The WCA worked tirelessly to prevent AB 1688 from becoming law in California. . . . From this point forward, we must try to shape the implementing regulations so that they are as palatable as possible and prevent AB 1688 from being re-enacted or extended.” (Shea 2005). The process of regulation development took more than two years. A.B. 1688 was set to sunset January 1, 2007; and the regulations were not approved until December 22, 2005.31 With only one year left before the sunset provision, the law would be in effect for only one-third of the intended time. Further, the regulations created a staggered registration schedule, which meant car washes in some counties would not have to register for 210 days, or until July 20, 2006.32 Thus by the time all car washes had registered, the law would have been in effect for only 164 days.

The Push for Reauthorization At this juncture the attorneys recognized the need for reauthorizing legislation. They realized that the law could be a part of a long-term strategy, and so they launched a campaign to extend A.B. 1688 for another three years. Governor Schwarzenegger indicated that he would be willing to sign a three-year extension on the strict condition that absolutely no substantive changes were made to the law.33 The first task was to find a sponsor for the reauthorization bill. Because it would benefit undocumented workers, many legislators were wary. However, Richard Alarcon agreed to be the sponsor, and his strong leadership helped push the reauthorization bill (S.B. 1468) through the state senate.34 Wendy Notsinneh, chief of staff to Jackie Goldberg, who had sponsored A.B. 1688, provided critical assistance as well. Attorneys Betty Hung, acting in her own capacity as a citizen rather than as a legal representative, and Becky Monroe traveled to Sacramento several times to lobby for this reauthorization bill. They gathered worker testimony, visited, distributed information to, and spoke to legislators. They also participated in the committee hearings. It was difficult to convince workers to testify directly, especially the undocumented, since they feared deportation or retaliation from their employers. Thus advocates like Monroe and Hung included the real life stories of their clients in their testimony. For example, Monroe testified that: Mr. and Mrs. Rivera washed, dried, and vacuumed cars at the same car wash for approximately four years. Neither ever received the overtime rate for their overtime hours, and they were regularly working 60-hour weeks without rest breaks. Mrs. Rivera suffers from chronic back pain after years of working at the vacuum. The car wash owed the couple almost $36,000 in back wages. The couple needed this money to support their three daughters.

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Mr. and Mrs. Rivera, like most claimants, were deterred from filing claims for fear of retaliation in the industry and because they believed it would be futile. Again, the regulatory requirements, including the posting of any claims filed against a car wash, and the existence of a car wash worker restitution fund . . . would encourage workers like Mr. and Mrs. River to bring claims to finally get the money that they earned through hours of long, hard labor. (Monroe 2006)

Advocates from organizations in northern California who would soon become part of CLIWA, also played a key role, capitalizing on their contacts with Bay Area legislators to win support for the bill. Advocates tailored their arguments to distinct audiences. Addressing business interests, they argued that the reauthorization was vital to provide a level playing field for all businesses and ensure fair competition. Car washes that paid below-market wages, they argued, can charge less for their services and thereby compete unfairly. The industry rejected this argument, however, and strenuously opposed the bill. Alarcon’s office reached out to all of the Chambers of Commerce in the L.A. area and only the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce was willing to support reauthorization. The WCA vehemently opposed reauthorization. Randy Cressall, the organization’s president, argued that there were already adequate laws on the books, which simply needed to be better enforced and that reauthorizing the Car Wash Worker Law would “not accomplish anything except increase the cost of doing business which [would] also probably lead to a reduced workforce.” Cressall warned Alarcon that “if this program continues for three years, you are misleading workers who believe you are looking out for their health, safety and welfare” (Cressall 2006). The WCA hired the firm Robinson and Associates to lobby against the bill. They attempted to convince Democrats to vote against the bill by claiming that the provisions were not strong enough and that further reforms were necessary. They attempted to appear sympathetic to the needs of workers, while in effect undermining any chances of the bill’s passage by advocating amendments that could never pass. Moreover, Schwarzenegger had said he would sign the bill only if it made no changes to the original law, so that stronger provisions would certainly result in a veto. The California Labor Federation played a key role in the reauthorization fight, as a counter to the resources that WCA was deploying. The federation lobbied on behalf of the bill itself and also provided guidance to the CLIWA advocates as to which legislators to focus on and how to gain access to them. CLIWA’s member organizations throughout the state launched a letter-writing campaign in support of the reauthorization as well. The cooperation of members in northern California provided valuable contacts with legislators. In order to convince

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legislators outside southern California that the plight of the car wash workers was a statewide issue, representation from constituencies throughout the state was necessary. The bill passed the Senate on May 25, 2006, but then lost by six votes in an initial assembly vote on August 10, 2006. However, the advocates were able to convince assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez to call for a reconsideration vote ten days later.35 A.B. 1468 passed the assembly on August 22, 2006, and the governor kept his promise and signed it on September 26, 2006. The new law extended the Car Wash Worker Law for three years until January 1, 2010.36

The Challenge of Enforcement While the passage of the law and its reauthorization were major victories, the advocates soon realized that they also would have to fight to ensure that the new law was enforced. The DLSE was taking no steps to create the bond procedure or to set up the fund. No car washes had actually registered— despite the fact that it was now illegal for them to operate without registering. Meanwhile, attorneys continued to see car wash workers come into their offices suffering from wage, hour, and health and safety violations (Monroe 2005b). Because of CLIWA’s meetings and list serve, attorneys quickly became aware of the lack of enforcement efforts. As one CLIWA attorney recalled, “If this group of attorneys wasn’t monitoring, no one would have noticed [that the car wash law was not being followed], it would have gone under the radar.”37 Any one of CLIWA’s member organizations might have seen a few isolated cases, but without the coalition it would have taken much longer to recognize the widespread lack of enforcement of the law. CLIWA advocates met with the regional manager of the DLSE as well as with individual deputies to try to promote enforcement. On behalf on the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates, a CLIWA affiliate, attorney Tim Kolesnikow filed a writ of mandate—an action brought to compel a government officer to perform a statutorily mandated duty. The writ was an effort to compel the DLSE to carry out the mandate of the Car Wash Worker Law. Then advocates entered into negotiations with the labor commissioner’s office to urge them to enforce the law. Despite extensive meetings between Kolesnikow and senior management at the DLSE, these yielded no positive results. CLIWA attorneys sought to address the lack of enforcement by meeting directly with the regional manager of the DLSE and with individual deputies to try to improve enforcement. Many of CLIWA’s member organizations had ongoing relationships with the labor commissioner’s office, with which

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they constantly interacted in the course of their everyday professional roles as legal advocates.38 Their tireless work eventually paid off. The enforcement of labor codes at car washes has increased, even if it is not yet comprehensive. In September 2007, for example, the labor commissioner’s office conducted a two-day enforcement sweep of car washes in six southern California counties, issuing more than 150 citations totaling over $1 million for various violations, including failure to register. State labor commissioner Angela Bradstreet declared, “It’s our job to ensure that car wash owners are legally registered, that their employees are paid proper wages and that their rights and protections are safeguarded,” and she went on to promise that “we will conduct detailed payroll audits and will seek additional back wages and penalties on top of the $1 million plus in citations we assessed in the two-day enforcement action” (California Department of Industrial Relations 2007).

The Limits of Legislative Remedies Law is at best an imperfect tool for social change. The Car Wash Worker Law is essentially a mechanism to allow workers to bring claims in front of the labor commissioner and to collect judgments. Although in theory the process is accessible to any worker, in practice unrepresented workers or non-English speakers, who are disproportionately undocumented workers, encounter serious obstacles to access. One legal advocate, who works regularly on wage and hour claims, reports that translation is often not available at the labor commissioner’s office. The undocumented may even lack access to the office itself, as security guards routinely ask for identification at the building entrance, and some deputies mistreat workers who bring claims without representation by a legal advocate.39 Moreover, undocumented car wash workers, even those who meet the low-income requirements, are not eligible for representation by NLS or LAFLA.40 Bet Tzedek is able to directly represent all workers, regardless of documentation status, but it does not have sufficient resources to represent all of those in need. Without direct representation, undocumented workers are not truly aided by the law, because they cannot successfully collect judgments for labor violations. Another danger is retaliation by employers against workers who file wage claims or organize. Such retaliation is illegal, but employers retaliate on a regular basis.41 Fear of retaliation is a serious obstacle to workers asserting their rights. The legal recourse for retaliation is to sue the employer for reinstatement and lost wages, a lengthy and difficult process. For undocumented workers, the problems are even more severe. Although they are protected against retaliation for filing a wage claim or organizing by

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the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the only remedy is a fine, they may not get back pay or reinstatement if they are not legally present in the United States.42 Further, if an employer retaliates against undocumented workers by reporting them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the government has complete discretion over their fate.43

CLIWA and the Car Wash Worker Organizing Campaign Thus far the main actors in the effort to improve the situation of car wash workers—apart from the workers’ initial complaint to Hayden’s office— were lawyers and other full-time advocates, not workers themselves. CLIWA affiliates went beyond the traditional model of litigation to engage in lobbying and to seek legislative remedies, but workers themselves were only peripherally involved. To be sure, the new law called worker’s attention to their rights and expanded those rights. That in itself, some organizers believe, serves to reinforce workers’ sense of legitimacy in the political sphere. As Carolos Pantoja, a union organizer currently working with the car wash workers, explained in an interview, when workers learned about the law, and their rights under it, they were more enthusiastic about fighting for fair treatment.44 In addition, the law meant they were more likely to see positive results from their efforts to vindicate their rights, both individually and collectively. The Car Wash Worker Law explicitly provides mechanisms for bringing collective wage and hour claims. And with the added security of the surety bond and the restitution fund, even a large group can be assured that there is a pool of resources for them to collect from, whether or not the employer is solvent. Collective wage claims of this kind, moreover, can be a powerful tool in organizing. The law also provides other types of leverage for organizing. Organizers can exert pressure on car washes that are not registered or are not eligible for registration renewal by threatening to report them to the labor commissioner’s office.45 It was not clear at the start that the DLSE would rigorously enforce the registration requirement, but starting in 2007, they indeed began to issue citations for failure to register, at least in part thanks to CLIWA’s efforts. Although it remains to be seen whether or not registration will be withheld from car washes with outstanding judgments for labor code violations and from those with multiple labor code violations, DLSE enforcement of the registration requirement and other aspects of the car wash law not only benefits individual workers but also enhances the value of the law as a leveraging tool for organizers. In November 2006, Victor Narro was invited by Stewart Acuff, the organizing director of the AFL-CIO, to make a presentation to a group of

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AFL-CIO union representatives on the car wash industry and its workers.46 The USW, an AFL-CIO affiliate, then decided to explore the potential for organizing car wash workers. In response to the precipitous decline of the steel industry over recent decades, the USW was interested in diversifying its membership base. And all of organized labor’s attention was riveted by the spectacle of the massive spring 2006 immigrant rights protests, which took place just a few months before Narro’s presentation to the AFL-CIO. Mike Yoffee, the organizing director of the USW, was particularly intrigued. In discussions with Narro about nontraditional approaches to organizing immigrants, the USW came up with a plan for organizing the car wash workers. The goal was to create a Car Wash Worker’s Committee that would be empowered to win fair treatment of car wash workers, with unionization a possibility at a later stage. Before the USW campaign officially began, CLIWA held a “carne asada” for car wash workers.47 More than two hundred workers attended. The USW provided significant resources for the effort, including the hiring of four full-time Spanish-speaking organizers. The union also funded a worker hot line to receive complaints about violations, which is staffed by CLIWA attorneys. In September 2007, Narro traveled to Chicago and made another presentation to AFL-CIO and USW leaders, which led the USW to commit to a longerterm campaign. The union agreed to hire a campaign director, Paul Lee, formerly of KIWA. They further agreed to provide resources to hire more organizers and access to the services of the union’s research department. When Narro (2007) made his presentations to the USW, he highlighted the importance of the Car Wash Worker Law, and he believes that its passage played an important role in convincing the union to take on the campaign. Yoffee agreed, stating that, “AB 1688 is an excellent organizing tool, because if it is enforced, a non-compliant car wash . . . can lose its right to do business in the state. From a campaign standpoint, the fact that there is special legislation aimed at labor standards in this industry shows that there are obvious problems that need to be remedied.”48 Apart from the law itself, CLIWA’s work inspired the union to get involved. As Narro explains, “CLIWA is a great story. There is something compelling here, The AFL-CIO has been impressed by what we’re doing without any resources.”49 That CLIWA itself was committed to a multipronged approach to developing worker power from the outset meant that it enthusiastically supported the union’s efforts by providing outreach and education, as well as legal services. CLIWA attorneys were already engaging in extra-legal actions, such as outreach and community education. As Yoffee explained, one of the main factors that influenced the USW to become involved was “the

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support system that would be available in the L.A. area to help achieve those improvements [in labor conditions].” He specifically cited the “vibrant labor movement; community support; [and] legal support.”50 CLIWA’s involvement in the carne asada palpably demonstrated to the USW that attorneys were willing to do more than just file individual wage and hour claims or fight for new legislation. The attorneys showed that they had a relationship with the workers themselves that the union could build on. Yoffee noted that “the level of support from the legal advocates was extraordinary.”51 Today, the CLEAN campaign is focused on setting industry standards for wages, working conditions, and the right to organize. The campaign also has taken up environmental concerns, recognizing that car washes can have an adverse impact on the environment. According to the California Environmental Protection Agency, car wash wastewater often includes chemicals such as hydrogen fluoride, ammonium bi-fluoride, nitrates, benzene, and chromium (United Steel Workers 2008). If wastewater is not properly managed, these chemicals can potentially flow into groundwater sources. Yoffee and Narro saw an opportunity to build on the already existing relationship between the USW and the Sierra Club, who in 2006 had formed the “Blue-Green Alliance.” The alliance was created to pursue a joint public policy agenda aimed toward “good jobs, a clean environment and a safer world” (Sierra Club 2006). Organizers believed that because of the environmental danger posed by poorly run car washes, the campaign was a good opportunity to partner with environmental groups like the Sierra Club.52 Accordingly, the CLEAN campaign is investigating the regulations related to the underground tanks used in car washes where wastewater is filtered and then recycled. The campaign has uncovered problems involving the enforcement of environmental regulations, and workers have testified that employers instruct them to dump chemicals from the storage tanks into sewage runoffs or trash bins. Leaders of the campaign are meeting with the L.A. County Public Works department to address violations. Leaders have also met with environmental groups, who are eager to lend their support.53

Conclusion CLIWA does extensive work with car wash workers, but its efforts have not been worker centered. In that respect the car wash campaign shares the fundamental weakness of the traditional lawyering model: namely that lawyers make the strategic decisions, leaving client/workers in a passive role. For example, in developing the Car Wash Worker Law, the attorneys

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did not provide opportunities for the workers to comment on—much less draft—the content of the bill. The only source of worker input was indirect, through the attorneys’ contact with car wash workers in their legal clinics. They saw a window of opportunity to pass helpful legislation and decided to proceed even without active worker consensus, with the hope that the legislation would form a foundation for future car wash worker organizing. Additionally, drafting legislation requires legal expertise, experience, and training, making it difficult for workers to take the lead. Workers were not very involved in the process of developing regulations for the bill either. Many feared submitting comments because of their undocumented status and were also reluctant to forego income by missing work. Thus the attorneys testified on their behalf. While CLIWA attorneys drew on their direct experiences with worker claims in their testimony, the attorneys selected which stories to put forth and how to present them—far from a workercentered process. CLIWA’s progressive model of lawyering stands in contrast to the traditional model. Its goal is systemic change rather than a discrete settlement of a legal dispute. CLIWA utilized whatever strategies—litigation, legislation, organizing, individual advocacy, and education—fit the situation at any given point in time. CLIWA engaged in a long fight for legislation while continuing to represent individual car wash workers in the wage claims process, and eventually, working directly with organizers to build a grassroots campaign. CLIWA’s approach also involved a high level of collaboration among different stakeholders. Its work was not worker-centered, and this may have had some negative consequences, such as pursuing a legislative strategy that did not address the threat of retaliation. However, CLIWA achieved real victories for car wash workers at a time when no one else was interested in the car wash industry, at first by improving legislation and enforcement of the laws and later by helping to attract union involvement.

7 NDLON and the History of Day Labor Organizing in Los Angeles Maria Dziembowska

On August 9, 2006, a few months after massive immigrant rights demonstrations took place in Los Angeles and cities across the United States, the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest union federation, and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), a network of community-based day laborer worker centers, signed a historic agreement to work together to improve wages and working conditions for immigrant day laborers (AFL-CIO Executive Council 2006; Hiatt 2006; Maher 2006; Selvin 2006). Day laborers had struggled for decades against employer abuses and harassment from residents in areas where they seek work. Immigrant rights organizations, many of them now members of NDLON, have been involved in these struggles since the 1980s. They have assisted day laborers by setting up job centers, advocating for minimum wage standards at street corners, filing wage claims in cases of labor law violations, and organizing public protests against abusive employers. These activities and the organizational infrastructure they established in the day labor community were crucial to the formation of NDLON, which later won support from both the AFL-CIO and the other large U.S. labor union federation, Change to Win.1 The development of a national network of day labor organizations and the historic partnership between NDLON and the labor federations were the result of more than twenty years of efforts by immigrant rights advocates around the country to advance the rights of day laborers. The fact that NDLON is headquartered in Los Angeles reflects the significant contributions of local immigrant rights organizations there to develop a model of advocating on 141

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behalf of day laborers. Two L.A. community-based organizations, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA, see Patler, this volume) and the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA), led the early advocacy for the rights of day laborers, along with individual local advocates. The fact that Los Angeles had the largest population of day laborers in the United States also gave these organizations an edge in developing a successful model of advocacy and conflict resolution. L.A. immigrant day laborer advocates developed two key organizing strategies. The main purpose of the first strategy was to encourage self-organization among day laborers. This was accomplished through leadership development based on the principles of popular education as elaborated by Paulo Freire (1970). The second strategy aimed to minimize community conflict between day laborers and residents and merchants who complained about them. This was achieved through a stakeholder-focused conflict resolution approach (sometimes referred to by advocates as a “human relations” approach), which sought to engage city officials, local businesses, and residents in a process that would protect day laborers’ right to seek work. CHIRLA and IDEPSCA secured considerable financial resources to propagate this model of conflict resolution, which expanded their capacity and impact. Both these strategies contributed to advocates’ effort to defend the right of day laborers to seek work in public places under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, based on the argument that they had no alternative means to advertise their availability for work. Lawsuits to this effect forced the City of Los Angeles to reconsider the use of antisolicitation ordinances that had been instituted in response to complaints about the burgeoning presence of day laborers in public spaces. Framing the day labor issue in terms of the First Amendment also created a basis for negotiation and conflict resolution between day laborers and residents who routinely complained about them. In this chapter, I begin by analyzing the origins of day labor organizing in Los Angeles. I explain how popular education was used in IDEPSCA’s early efforts to develop leadership among day laborers in Pasadena and how the stakeholder-focused conflict resolution approach came to prominence in CHIRLA’s efforts in Ladera Heights. I then show how the two key strategies were brought together into an organizing model that was popularized in the southern California region and later helped stimulate the development of a national network of day labor advocates, NDLON.

The Roots of Day Labor Organizing in Los Angeles Day laborers, mostly immigrant Latino men, seek work on hundreds of street corners and job centers throughout the country. Although day labor

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is a common point of entry into the U.S. labor market for new immigrants, many continue in this occupation long after they arrive in the United States. Day labor is the main source of income for many of these workers. Day laborers are difficult to organize along traditional union lines. They are hired for one job at a time, usually short-term, with no guarantee that more work will be available in the future. They are exposed to workplace abuses ubiquitous in the informal economy. The informal and unregulated nature of the work combined with the vulnerable legal status of many of these workers allows employers to avoid paying wages, deny breaks, food and water, and even engage in physical violence (Valenzuela 2003, 2002).

IDEPSCA: The Popular Education Model IDEPSCA, which incorporated as a nonprofit educational organization in 1991, first learned of day labor abuses in the 1980s, when a core group of volunteer instructors began to teach English and Spanish literacy to Latino immigrants in Pasadena. Literacy training continues to be a core area of IDEPSCA’s work to this day. However, IDEPSCA also administers day labor job centers and conducts outreach on numerous street corners throughout the L.A. region. IDEPSCA also promotes economic development in the Latino immigrant community by supporting business ventures, such as Magic Cleaners, a cleaning services cooperative.2 The literacy classes offered by IDEPSCA were based on popular education. Raul Añorve, executive director of IDEPSCA and Pablo Alvarado, now executive director of NDLON, were part of the volunteer staff teaching literacy to immigrant student and parents in Pasadena. Both had become familiar with popular education during their work in El Salvador, where Alvarado was a literacy circle organizer and where Añorve had taught reading and writing (Bacon 1998; Gorman 2006).3 When they arrived in Los Angeles, they applied a similar approach to their literacy teaching with day laborers and other immigrant workers (Theodore and Valenzuela 2006). Popular education, as originally conceived by Paulo Freire, the Brazilian teacher and activist, considers education to be a participatory process that helps participants become aware of the link between their personal experiences and broader societal problems and work to change them. Popular education rejects the role of the teacher as the expert, which for Freire reinforces people’s sense of powerlessness and dependency. Instead, its method is designed to help people develop knowledge through their daily experiences. They can draw on these experiences to figure out how to solve problems they currently face. The participatory nature of the IDEPSCA classes allowed volunteers like Añorve and Alvarado to learn firsthand about the lives of day laborers.

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Alvarado recalls, “People were talking about police coming, ticketing or arresting, employers not paying them.”4 When workers asked for assistance in responding to police harassment, Alvarado and Añorve organized three leadership development workshops, using materials that reflected the social and cultural reality of Latino immigrants. These workshops were intended to help workers understand the relationship between the social context and their personal experiences so that they could begin to collectively determine what to do about the situation. The key objective was to have workers collectively assess their problems and develop a plan of action. IDEPSCA considered popular education to be not only an educational technique but also an organizing tool to empower people who are socially, politically, culturally, and economically marginalized. According to Raul Añorve, its participatory nature, along with the fact that it was rooted firmly in the participants’ concerns rather than imposed from the outside and that it encouraged action, makes popular education a powerful organizing tool.5 One outcome of the IDEPSCA leadership development workshops was the decision to form an association—the Association of Day Laborers of Pasadena. According to Raul Añorve, this was “a historical moment because no one had tried to organize day laborers before.” The Pasadena Association served as a mediator between day laborers, the city of Pasadena, police, and residents. It also became a model for the formation of the Los Angeles Day Labor Association, or Sindicato, discussed below.6

CHIRLA: Creating Stakeholder Support Whereas IDEPSCA became involved in day labor struggles through its literacy classes, CHIRLA became involved when it undertook an effort to assist immigrants in navigating the amnesty application process following the 1986 passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). CHIRLA spoke out against what many saw as a confusing bureaucratic process that all too often led immigrants to file incomplete applications, which resulted in denial of amnesty. CHIRLA also took issue with IRCA’s “employer sanctions” provision, which for the first time penalized employers who hired illegal immigrants. A study conducted for CHIRLA suggested that employer sanctions led to hiring discrimination against documented immigrants (Hernandez 1989). As more and more day laborers sought CHIRLA’s assistance with their amnesty applications, the organization began to turn its attention toward day labor street corners. At the time, CHIRLA did not have sufficient staff and financial resources to reach the more than two hundred street corners spread across Los Angeles County. In 1989, CHIRLA staff developed the Adopt-A-Corner program, which relied on volunteers to visit day labor

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corners (Tactaquin 1997; Tobar 1989). They met regularly with day laborers to investigate conditions, and as appropriate, informed workers about their legal rights. The volunteers also met regularly with CHIRLA staff to share information and explore possible solutions to police and residential harassment of day laborers. These early efforts to educate day laborers about their rights paved the way for CHIRLA’s role as an advocate for day laborers and a facilitator between them and other community stakeholders. When the L.A. City Council proposed an antisolicitation ordinance in 1989, CHIRLA mobilized workers to protest, which led to the decision to forgo the ordinance in favor of a resolution to open job centers where workers could look for work.7 CHIRLA also provided assistance when the city’s Day Labor Program opened the first two job centers, one in Harbor City in 1989 and another in North Hollywood in 1990.8

Empowering Day Laborers and Resolving Community Conflict in Ladera Heights: The Genesis of an Organizing Model The two key elements of advancing the rights of day laborers—leadership development through popular education and conflict resolution through stakeholder relations—began to coalesce in an effort to resolve conflict in Ladera Heights, an affluent neighborhood in an unincorporated area of L.A. County east of Culver City. In 1993, under pressure from the Ladera Heights Civic Association, a neighborhood association, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors proposed an antisolicitation ordinance that sought to ban day laborers from seeking work in all unincorporated areas of Los Angeles. The proposed ordinance would have prohibited employment solicitation in public streets and sidewalks within 500 feet of a church, park, school, or residence (Burke 1994). The proposal was in response to complaints that day laborers were loitering, obstructing traffic, whistling at women, drinking, and even engaging in theft. CHIRLA sent their staff to talk with the workers and found that the bulk of the complaints were false or applied to only a few individuals. CHIRLA attempted to diffuse community conflict through mediation. The goal was to reach a solution without having to pass the antisolicitation ordinance. MALDEF’s president and general counsel, Antonia Hernandez, sent a letter to L.A. county supervisor Yvonne Burke, who agreed to mediation. However, this effort eventually failed, in part because of growing anti-immigrant sentiment. In a letter to the Los Angeles Times, Ronnie Cooper, the president of the Ladera Heights Civic Association publicly rebuked the county’s attempts at mediation and endorsed the ordinance as the only

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viable solution to the day labor dilemma. “This is an issue of a community having its safety, property and peace violated, and it has a right, even an obligation, to seek protection for its residents,” Cooper stated. She noted that the opening of a job center had been considered, but that “the single most effective remedy to the problems caused by the day laborers in residential areas was the passing of these ordinances” (Cooper 1994). In March 1994, faced with the failure of the mediation effort, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors approved the proposed antisolicitation ordinance. It permitted day laborers to continue to seek work on commercial parking lots, but banned them from sidewalks and streets. Despite the fact that the ordinance passed and the formal mediation attempts did not succeed, CHIRLA and MALDEF developed positive relationships with some of the key stakeholders in the community and set up the Ladera Heights Task Force, whose goal was to create a space where day laborers could congregate without obstructing traffic. The monthly meetings of the task force advanced CHIRLA’s mission of fostering positive human relations through its stakeholder conflict resolution strategy. “Knowing the stakeholders is a key to successful organizing,” Victor Narro, a MALDEF attorney at the time, pointed out.9 In addition to engaging key stakeholders to resolve tensions and establish designated sites where day laborers could congregate, advocates had to win the support of workers. As long as day laborers were not committed to the designated areas, they would continue to seek work outside them. The benefits of the job center—coffee, ESL classes, a minimum wage, a system of job distribution and employer monitoring—had to be weighed against the costs, especially the risk that workers would lose work if employers did not agree to the job center’s set minimum wage. For many workers the potential of securing a job, even if below the minimum wage and at the risk of maltreatment from employers, was a risk they were willing to accept. In 1995, CHIRLA decided to hire a full-time employee dedicated exclusively to the Ladera Heights area. As Narro recalled, “CHIRLA was more about outreach and education back then. They needed an organizer.”10 Alvarado was hired as CHIRLA’s lead organizer in Ladera Heights. A key goal was to strengthen the capacity of the workers to participate in resolving the conflict. “Not all communities can pay for a job center, so it’s good to develop a model of a designated organized corner . . . my job was to make sure day laborers would participate in the negotiations, that they would have the skills needed to actually participate and have a meaningful participation,” recalled Alvarado.11 The strategy was to win the support of key stakeholders and facilitate direct communication between the workers and other community members.12

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These organizing efforts also expressed the popular education principles developed by IDEPSCA. The goal was “that workers understand that they can do something, they can defend their rights, and that people can’t come and simply exploit them.”13 Soccer turned out to be another important tool for building solidarity among day laborers and creating a sense of shared interests. “It’s easy to mobilize people when moments of tension took place, but when things were calm, people say, ‘Why organize?’. . . so we had to do a lot of work, little by little,” said Alvarado. The idea of soccer matches seemed like a natural choice given the sport’s popularity among Latino immigrants. “It was beautiful to see the dynamics of friendship . . . a lot of people never had the opportunity to relate in a different setting . . . on a corner you’re my contender . . . but on the soccer field you’re a friend.”14 Soccer facilitated camaraderie and provided workers with an opportunity to relate outside the competitive environment of the job market. In short, CHIRLA and IDEPSCA engaged key stakeholders in an effort to gain community support for day laborers. They employed popular education to develop leadership and help workers gain the skills to respond to problems on their own. As a consequence of these efforts in Ladera Heights, complaints about traffic, harassment, drugs, and loitering gradually dissipated.

The Emergence of Regional and National Day Labor Advocacy When the City of Los Angeles awarded CHIRLA and IDEPSCA the right to administer the North Hollywood and Harbor City job centers in 1996, they adapted the conflict resolution and advocacy model developed in Ladera Heights.15 The two centers had previously been run by the City of Los Angeles with a budget of approximately ninety thousand dollars per center. When they were run by the city, the centers each employed two bilingual city workers, and provided workers with toilet facilities, trash cans, benches, morning coffee, legal advice, information on social services, and classes in ESL (Mydans 1989). They did not undertake legal action to obtain unpaid wages from unscrupulous employers or advocate for immigrant and worker rights (Fine 2007, 2006). According to the L.A. City Community Development Department Day Labor Program website: The Day Laborer Program in the City of Los Angeles is a public safety program, which allows persons seeking casual labor work to safely congregate and be matched with employers seeking temporary workers. The main

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objective of the program is to reduce the number of day laborers who congregate in the various corners within the community, instead having them congregate at fixed sites located in select areas of the City. The Day Laborer program provides the supervision of the site and community outreach. It does not intervene in the employment transaction between the day laborer and employer.16

As the above statement demonstrates, the primary objective of the city-run centers was to move workers off the streets. As Tony Bernabe, a longtime day labor organizer suggested, at that time the city was not interested in incorporating day laborers into the larger community, but instead aimed to “ghettoize” them.17 Whether or not segregation was the true intention of city officials, the city’s approach differed significantly from the model endorsed by immigrant rights advocates. IDEPSCA’s Añorve explained the difference: They [city administrators] used to even carry pepper spray and turn their heads the other way when workers complained of wage theft and health and safety violations or when there was gambling or drinking. It was bad for the workers; bad for the city. . . . We took a different approach. We really looked at centers as more community centers. . . . One of our slogans has always been that we want to co-exist [with other community members]. If you’re persistent, if you’re patient you can achieve some of those goals of carving out a site for workers to congregate, to have a more humane way to look for a job, have trainings, ESL and literacy classes.18

CHIRLA and IDEPSCA’s expertise on day laborers’ legal rights and their track record of minimizing community conflicts qualified them to take over the city’s Day Labor Program.

Organizing across Greater Los Angeles and Beyond On March 16, 1997, day laborers from all over L.A. County gathered at the first of many Encuentros Interesquinales (intercorner conferences). According to Narro, involving workers in decision-making processes and engendering a culture of participation were key principles applied in these conferences.19 CHIRLA and IDEPSCA representatives participated in the conferences as facilitators. Workers made detailed drawings to describe the corner locations and explain the situation at each corner they frequented, including specific problems, such as police abuse or tensions with residents, they faced (IDEPSCA and CHIRLA 1997). Workers also discussed solutions to the various problems, such as challenging commonly held misconceptions about day laborers by policing illicit behavior at the corners and connecting the corners through an association (IDEPSCA AND CHIRLA 1997, 6). The first intercorner conference concluded with the recognition that workers need to organize.20

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The proceedings from the April 20, 1997, intercorner conference suggest the idea of self-organization was the primary topic under consideration at the second gathering. Workers brainstormed what kind of an organization they would form and proceeded to try to define what was meant by each of these forms of organization.21 Discussions about the internal and external structure of the organization continued in the gatherings that followed. The intercorner conferences were complemented by the Escuela de Cuadros, a leadership school to teach day laborers how to facilitate meetings, create agendas, and use computers. The school used a popular education-based curriculum designed to develop critical thinking skills and teach workers how to engage in political analysis. As a consequence of the intercorner conferences and popular education workshops, day laborers decided to form the Asociación (also referred to as the Sindicato). Out of these efforts, the idea of forming a national network of day labor organizations eventually arose. The idea of an independent organization of day laborers was conceived in discussions between IDEPSCA and CHIRLA. The organizations were bidding to take over the administration of the city’s Day Laborer Program. The original plan was that as day laborers gained leadership skills by participating in IDEPSCA’s Popular Education Leadership School, they would take over the administration of the job centers and gradually replace the staff. Organizers encouraged an independent association of day laborers as a means of developing similar capacity among day laborers at street corners and centers with limited resources. The Asociación was formally established at a general assembly convened at an intercorner gathering on March 22, 1998. Approximately 150 day laborers from various street corners and centers in L.A. County voted together to create the organization. The Asociación was composed of a Coordinadora (a Coordinating Committee) with seventeen day laborers elected from the general assembly. A general secretary, two subsecretaries, and other secretaries representing committees such as Cultural, Publicity, and Internal Organizing committees led the Coordinadora. Day Laborers could become members of the Asociación by registering their names and by participating in the leadership school that met twice a month (Asociación de Jornaleros 2000, 1998). IDEPSCA was the fiscal sponsor of the Asociación, but much of the administration support came from CHIRLA’s Day Labor Project, then headed by Alvarado; Mayron Payés, CHIRLA day laborer organizer; Mario Lopez, IDEPSCA organizer employed by CHIRLA under the city contract; John Arvizu and Narro.22 According to a programmatic statement of the Asociación: The mission of the Los Angeles County Day Laborer Association is to build an autonomous, democratic organization of day laborers that can defend

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the human and civil rights of all day laborers, respond to the needs and problems of day laborers, influence public policy and attitudes that affect day laborers as workers and immigrants, and promote the rights of day laborers to participate fully in all aspects of our society . . . our work is aimed at addressing the root causes of poverty in communities of color, specifically communities of poor Latino immigrants. We believe that only through involving people directly in resolving their own problems and organizing their own communities can we create a more humane and democratic society. We concentrate our work on issues of racial and economic justice, and immigrant and worker rights. (IDEPSCA 2000, 1999)

The Asociación was supposed to take over the responsibility of running the centers and organizing street corners, with CHIRLA and IDEPSCA playing supportive and secondary roles.23 At some point during the intercorner conferences, however, the vision of a broader day labor movement, a political movement with a legal strategy, emerged. As an independent organization, the Asociación lasted just over two years, dissolving in 2000. According to Añorve, two factors explain the demise of the day labor association: We weren’t prepared. We didn’t have the structure, the resources to represent day laborers all over L.A. County . . . by resources I mean not enough lawyers, not enough people to respond to all the calls for assistance that came to the union from all over the county . . . if we had the money, we could have hired 2–3 full time people from the community to represent us . . . the second problem is the internal structure. . . . Once you set up a structure you limit participation. Even if the structure is designed to be as democratic as possible, you still have to deal with whom and how to make decisions. It has to do with power and how you want to share the power. Moreover (and unfortunately), those elected to be leaders bring an authoritarian model and want to make decisions accordingly; so if you have a more or less democratic structure but with an authoritarian leadership, you’re bound to have conflict.24

According to Alvarado, the fact that the day labor union dissolved was not a sign of failure but a lesson learned. His view was that such a union is not viable for a highly mobile workforce and one with tens of thousands of employers spanning multiple industries. “I don’t remember anyone saying let’s dissolve the Sindicato. Exchanges continued. Organizations continued administering the centers. The same workers that were involved continued to be involved.”25 In his view, the dissolution of the association reflected the fact that workers’ first priority was finding work. The next step was to explore the potential of a network of day laborer organizations.

From the Local Exchanges to a National Network The national network emerged out of informal exchanges between the L.A. day laborer organizations and others around the country. For instance,

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Casa Latina from Seattle and Casa de Maryland visited Los Angeles in October 1999 to observe the job center programs and participate in the intercorner conferences. These early exchanges led to the recognition that day laborers throughout the United States faced similar problems and consequently that organizations could benefit from exchanging information via a network. Executive directors from day labor organization across the country conducted a series of telephone conferences to secure funding and prepare the first national convention of day labor organizations. The first meeting of NDLON convened on July 26, 2001, at California State University, Northridge, with delegates from CHIRLA and IDEPSCA, day laborers from Los Angeles, and representatives of thirteen community-based immigrant organizations from other parts of the country. A few months later, the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon brought the effort to achieve comprehensive immigration reform, one of the key goals of NDLON’s strategic agenda, to a standstill. Anti-immigrant sentiment surged and Minutemen protests were staged at job centers and street corners.26 Minutemen and other such groups also began to lobby city officials in support of anti–day labor solicitation ordinances. Meanwhile, NDLON was engaged in discussions about how it would function and organize its governance structure. The second convention, in 2002 in Washington D.C., continued these efforts, but also included legislative visits. “We wanted to have the second one [convention] in D.C. because we introduced the day labor bill. We wanted to raise consciousness about day labor issues,” explained Alvarado.27 During this three-day convention, day laborers and their advocates visited legislators to promote the federal Day Labor Fairness and Protection (DLFP) Act, sponsored by Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Chicago), and inform politicians about issues facing day laborers.28 The 2002 convention also marked the start of discussions between NDLON and representatives of the Laborers International Union of North American (LIUNA). Although a formal agreement was not reached until 2006, this was a turning point in the involvement of the labor movement in day labor issues. At the 2002 convention, the network developed a unified agenda that included three key goals: (1) protecting the rights of workers by defeating antisolicitation ordinances, wage claims, and other campaigns; (2) comprehensive immigration reform; and (3) expanding worker centers and organized street corners.29 The network was successful as a space for the exchange of ideas, “but that’s not enough,” explained Alvarado. “We needed a political agenda . . . otherwise why would you want another organization, a national group that only has conference calls. . . . We needed to have a common political agenda to provide representation and voice to day laborers at

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the national level, as an organized community.”30 To be meaningful to its members, the national network had to develop the capacity to stay abreast of developments throughout the country and be able to intervene at the local level as well. The post-9/11 surge of anti-immigrant sentiment culminated in the “Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005,” also known as the Sensenbrenner bill or H.R. 4437. The bill would have made undocumented entry into the United States an aggravated felony and criminalized the work of social service agencies and church groups that offered services or sanctuary to undocumented immigrants.31 As NDLON and other immigrant rights organizations mobilized to oppose H.R. 4437, the AFL-CIO also spoke out against the bill. The spring was marked by massive street protests against the proposed legislation. Discussions between NDLON and the AFL-CIO began shortly thereafter. NDLON created a steering committee of representatives from its member organizations. The steering committee focused on educating NDLON members about U.S. labor unions and collecting input from the affiliated organizations around the country. Day laborers and organizers had considerable concerns. Many had had bad experiences with local unions.32 The NDLON steering committee engaged in internal education regarding the history of the AFL-CIO and eventually became convinced that partnering with the AFL-CIO would pave the way for minimizing conflict at the local level. After NDLON members empowered the steering committee to negotiate with the AFL-CIO, on August 9, 2006, a formal agreement was signed. The agreement permitted members of NDLON to affiliate with the AFL-CIO and receive support from local and statewide Central Labor Councils to pursue minimum wage campaigns and fight antisolicitation ordinances (Maher 2006). NDLON also developed a separate partnership with the Laborers International Union of North American (LIUNA) to organize the residential construction sector, which attracts large numbers of day laborers ( Jordan 2006).

Conclusion Day laborers are a particularly visible segment of the nation’s growing informal sector. The absence of unions and lax enforcement of labor laws had led many employers to assume that day laborers will remain subservient rather than risk dismissal and/or deportation. However, in the past two decades, day laborers have had considerable success in organizing to advance their labor and civil rights. Thorough the efforts of immigrant rights advocates, worker centers have been established around the country that offer

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thousands of day laborers access to ESL classes, job training, legal advice, and hiring services. In Los Angeles, where the day laborer movement began, CHIRLA and IDEPSCA played a crucial role as “sisters in the struggle to defend day laborers’ rights.”33 They originally became involved in day laborer advocacy independently, providing unique strengths and different areas of expertise—popular education in IDEPSCA’s case and an effective conflictresolution model in CHIRLA’s. Together, they helped bring order and organization to street corner hiring spots when they assumed a formal role in administering the city’s job centers. Their work, along with that of other immigrant rights advocates, shaped a model of day laborer organizing that was widely replicated around the country. Building on this foundation, day laborers eventually established their own organizations, first through the L.A. intercorner conferences and the Sindicato, and later on a national basis in the form of NDLON. NDLON’s new partnerships with the organized labor movement hold the potential of still further progress for day laborers in the years to come.

8 The Garment Worker Center and the “Forever 21” Campaign Nicole A. Archer, Ana Luz Gonzalez, Kimi Lee, Simmi Gandhi, and Delia Herrera

The garment industry in the United States today is well known for its low wages, long hours, and poor working conditions. This has not always been the case, however. For half a century, starting in the 1910s, extensive unionization and government regulation considerably ameliorated the industry’s labor conditions and helped to control “the evils of unbridled and uncontrolled competition” (Wolfson 1950, 33). The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), the United Garment Workers, and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, all succeeded in organizing garment workers and on that basis engaged in collective bargaining with employers starting in the 1910s and 1920s.1 Progressive-era labor legislation at the state level, and later such federal legislation as the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, also helped to regulate labor conditions in the industry.2 Although in this era the U.S. garment industry was centered in New York City, the unions’ reach extended to many other regions of the United States as well, including Los Angeles. By 1950, the ILGWU represented more than twelve thousand garment workers in Los Angeles, just under a third of those employed in the industry. However, that proved to be the peak of garment union membership in Los Angeles, which declined to just over nine thousand by 1959, or 22 percent of the L.A. garment industry workforce. By 1980 the number had fallen to just 3,700, only 5 percent of the growing number of garment workers in Los Angeles (Milkman 2006, 89; see also Laslett and Tyler 1989, 119).

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The deunionization process continued to the point that, by the end of the twentieth century, virtually all garment workers in Los Angeles lacked union representation. But starting in the mid-1970s, apparel employment in southern California grew rapidly, and by the 1990s, Los Angeles had become the largest center of garment production in the United States, replacing New York (Bonacich and Appelbaum 2000, 16–18). The industry’s growth in the region, however, was on an entirely nonunion basis. In this same period, apparel employment in the United States as a whole declined sharply, as restrictions on apparel imports to the United States were loosened and as the costs of transportation and communication fell. Such outsourcing was not an entirely new phenomenon; earlier in the twentieth century, garment production had been relocated from New York to the South in search of reduced costs. But, as Katie Quan (2003, 31) points out: When production shifted to the American South, the union “followed the work” and organized the workers. However, as manufacturers subsequently pushed farther into countries with lower labor costs in the 1960s, the union stopped following the work, did not organize the workers, and lost control of the market. The result was the re-emergence of . . . sweatshops abroad and the loss of jobs and wage standards domestically.

The process of relocating production to countries with labor costs dramatically lower than those in the United States3 was facilitated by the steady erosion of tariffs and quotas under a series of free trade agreements,4 and most important for the garment industry, the 2005 expiration of the Multifiber Agreement (MFA).5 Due in part to these agreements, the number of garment manufacturing jobs in Los Angeles, which had grown during most of the 1980s and 1990s, finally leveled off and began to decline (L.A. County Economic Development Corp. 2008). Still, Los Angeles has more apparel manufacturing jobs than any other part of the United States, and even if there is some further erosion in the level of employment, the industry is likely to retain a substantial L.A. presence in the years to come. Spot garment production has to be located in the United States so that retailers can respond rapidly to spikes in demand for “knock-off” items that are suddenly in style—and just as suddenly fade. “Styles are so unpredictable and change so rapidly,” economist Michael Piore (1997, 138) explains. “Garments with a high fashion content are difficult to produce at a distance from the market because by the time the goods arrive, the season is likely to be over.” But this was true long before the recent revival of sweatshop practices in the industry. As Piore puts it, “Sweatshops might not exist without fashion, but they are hardly its inevitable

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byproduct” (1997, 142). Rather, it is the absence of a union presence that has facilitated the revival of sweatshop practices, along with the decline of government regulation, with limited enforcement and weak penalties for violations, in Los Angeles, the new capital of the U.S. garment industry. If we define sweatshops as producers that violate the labor standards enshrined in U.S. law generations ago, there is extensive evidence that they are widespread in the contemporary Los Angeles garment industry. Periodic inspections by government agencies repeatedly documented labor law violations during the 1990s (see Ross 2004, 31–32; Silverstein 1994; U.S. General Accounting Office 1994). In 2008, investigators from the state of California’s Economic and Employment Enforcement Coalition inspected twenty-one garment factories in L.A. County and found that all of them had occupational safety hazards and eighteen of the twenty-one had labor law violations.6 The safety hazards included exposure to moving machine parts and unguarded machines, locked or blocked exit doors, and electrical panel boxes with live wires exposed; labor law violations included lack of required workers’ compensation insurance, inaccurate record keeping, and lack of registration with the state (Business Wire 2008). Pay levels that are below the legal minimum wage are also standard practice in the industry; at times, workers are not paid at all when factories close without notice after deferring wage payments (Bonacich and Appelbaum 2000, 182; Soldatenko 1992, 271–74). Although immigrants have long been a significant part of the garment industry workforce, as recently as 1970, 24 percent of L.A. garment workers were U.S.–born whites. As conditions deteriorated in the years that followed, that figure fell steadily to only 6 percent in 2000; in that year 83 percent of L.A. garment workers were immigrants from Latin America or Asia (Milkman 2006, 108). Although there are no precise figures available, by all accounts a substantial proportion of these workers are undocumented. There were periodic press reports about the low wages, poor working conditions, and labor law violations in the L.A. garment industry during the 1980s and early 1990s. But public concern rose dramatically when, in 1995, a group of seventy-two Thai garment workers were discovered in an El Monte, California, apartment building, not far from downtown Los Angeles, who had been held as slaves for years making clothing for wellknown retailers and manufacturers. The building in which they were forced to live and work was surrounded by barbed wire and supervised by armed guards (Su 1997). Galvanized by this discovery, and in response to the vacuum left by the deunionization of the L.A. garment industry some years earlier, communitybased organizations began to explore alternative approaches to representing

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workers in the garment industry. This chapter focuses on their work, and specifically on the efforts of the Garment Worker Center (GWC), which since 2000 has promoted garment workers’ rights and worked to improve conditions in the industry. We examine the organizational structure, growth, and organizing strategies of the GWC with a particular focus on the GWC’s largest single campaign, which focused on Forever 21, a popular women’s clothing line, and drew national attention to the conditions in the L.A. garment industry more broadly as well.

Formation of the GWC When the enslaved Thai garment workers were discovered in 1995, several community organizations came forward to offer support for the workers, including social services and legal assistance to secure their release from detention by U.S. immigration authorities. Sweatshop Watch, a coalition that included the Thai Community Development Center, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles (CHIRLA) (see Patler, this volume), and the Korean Immigrant Worker Advocates (KIWA) (see Kwon, this volume), called for the workers’ release from detention and filed a lawsuit on their behalf (Su 1997). Sweatshop Watch had formerly been known as the Coalition to Eliminate Sweatshop Conditions. In 1990, the ILGWU had brought the coalition together to lobby for a state “joint employer” bill in the California state legislature, under which manufacturers could be held liable for legal violations committed by their subcontractors. The legislature passed the bill several times in the early 1990s; however, it was vetoed by governors Deukmejian and Wilson (Cummings 2008, 15). The lawsuit over the Thai slave case also pursued the issue of joint liability, and by 1999 succeeded in winning settlements totaling more than $4 million from the manufacturers and retailers who had subcontracted work to the El Monte shop (24). Also in 1999, thanks in part to the public outcry over the El Monte case, the longstanding efforts of organized labor and other garment worker advocates to win joint employer legislation finally succeeded. Assembly Bill 633, which was signed into law by Governor Gray Davis in September 1999, holds manufacturers and retailers responsible for minimum wage and overtime violations by their subcontractors. It also strengthened record-keeping and contractor registration requirement and provided for an expedited process to recover unpaid wages, as well as a special fund from which such payments could be drawn (Cummings 2008). In the same year that the El Monte slave shop was exposed, the ILGWU and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU)

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merged into the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). The ILGWU had just launched an organizing campaign targeting designer jeans manufacturer GUESS, which ended with the company’s decision to move the bulk of its production to Mexico in 1997. Although UNITE did later win a financial settlement after filing a lawsuit against the company, the defeat of the organizing drive marked the union’s decision that they were no longer in a position to effectively organize garment workers in Los Angeles (Milkman 2006; Cummings 2008). In 1999, the union closed its Los Angeles Garment Workers’ Justice Center, which had opened in 1990 to provide free legal advice and support to nonunion garment workers (Bonacich 2000). After the El Monte legal victory and the passage of A.B. 633, Sweatshop Watch and its coalition partners began to discuss the creation of an independent community organization dedicated to organizing garment workers in Los Angeles, filling the void left by UNITE’s departure from the scene. With Sweatshop Watch acting as a fiscal sponsor, they opened the Garment Worker Center (GWC). With funding from the Liberty Hill Foundation, GWC’s first staff person, Kimi Lee, was hired in 2000, with two others hired soon after. A Formation Committee provided advice and logistical support;7 Sweatshop Watch helped to provide the administrative and fundraising infrastructure; CHIRLA and KIWA lent their expertise in organizing low-wage immigrant workers and in building interethnic alliances. APALC served as a legal resource, providing advice to the GWC as it pursued labor law violation cases. Neither GWC nor the Formation Committee identified the unionization of the local garment industry as an immediate goal. They did have discussions with UNITE about their plans, but the union had by then shifted its focus away from organizing garment manufacturing workers and showed little interest in involvement with the GWC. However, UNITE was on the board of Sweatshop Watch and thus monitored the creation and development of the GWC from a distance. The Formation Committee and GWC staff did see unionization as a long-term goal, but the center’s initial focus was simply to build workers’ trust in a community organization and begin to build relationships with each other, across ethnic lines. In 2002, the GWC held its first retreat, with eighteen Latino/a and eleven Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin speaking) workers in attendance. This was an opportunity for workers to give extensive feedback on the GWC’s initial efforts and to discuss future directions. This led to the creation of formal membership criteria and to the establishment of a governing board. By the end of 2002, GWC members had elected a Workers’ Board of Chinese and Latino/a workers to guide the center’s work, although Sweatshop

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Watch remained its fiscal sponsor, and oversaw personnel and budgetary matters. To address ongoing wage and hour violations in the industry, the GWC also created a wage claim process using KIWA and CHIRLA’s model of “case management,” which was an organizing tool as well as a form of legal assistance. A worker that came to GWC for help in obtaining back wages was asked to join a committee and share his or her experiences with other members. The GWC would then support the worker’s claim, first by creating a demand letter to the employer, having a staff person visit the factory to present the letter with the worker in question, and then attempting to negotiate directly with the employer. If that did not work, the next stage of action included sending demand letters to the manufacturers and retailers involved in the case and filing a formal wage claim with the state labor commissioner’s office. The GWC staff assisted with the necessary wage calculations, formally investigated the companies named by the workers, conducted factory visits, and helped to translate and file all the necessary paperwork. The GWC also recruited volunteers and legal advocates to staff “wage clinics” where workers could obtain information about labor laws and trained volunteers were available to help workers file wage claims against their employers. Sweatshop Watch created a comic book and small handbook that explained the wage and hour laws, the wage claim process, and guided workers on how to track their work hours and calculate overtime and break periods. These materials were translated into Chinese, Spanish, Thai, and Vietnamese. Due to limited capacity, the GWC chose to focus its work primarily on Chinese- and Spanish-speaking workers. These groups were chosen strategically (with possible future struggles in mind), as they were the ethnic groups that made up the largest proportion of the industry’s workforce. Providing these services helped to build trust and attract other workers into the organization. As word spread in the community through ethnic media and word of mouth, the GWC began to receive calls and visits from dozens of workers each week. Within the first year, the center received more than two hundred calls and visits from garment workers seeking support. About fifty workers became involved with the wage claim committee and more than one hundred workers attended workshops. By addressing workers’ immediate needs through these services, GWC staff and volunteers gradually won their trust. This work came to be seen as a core service provided by GWC. But the organization’s goal was to go beyond simply providing services and to empower workers to seek long-term social change. The GWC added

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political and community issues to its workshop offerings, with topics such as globalization and the history of immigration and labor. In addition, it aimed to educate workers about the garment industry itself, using the well-known “pyramid” that is frequently used to illustrate the overall structure of the industry.8 The pyramid has four levels: the base is made up of garment production workers, the second level includes contractors and subcontractors, the third is comprised of manufacturers, and finally at the pinnacle of the pyramid are the retailers. GWC workshops stressed that while workers are at the bottom of the pyramid, they are also the foundation of the whole structure.

The Fight against Forever 21 As these efforts developed, GWC members began to explore the idea of launching a campaign against a local private label retailer, and soon settled on Forever 21, a popular L.A.-based women’s wear retailer as an initial target.9 Soon after GWC had opened its doors, it had begun receiving complaints from workers employed in six different factories that manufactured clothing for Forever 21. They reported poor working conditions, subminimum wages, and dangerous health violations. Forever 21 produces most of its clothes locally, because it caters to teenaged and other young women and must catch the latest fashion trends very quickly. This made it an ideal target for GWC. The center’s staff believed that if they were able to win improved working conditions in Forever 21’s factories, thousands of local workers would benefit, and they hoped that this also would set an example for other retailers and manufacturers. GWC staff held meetings with several workers to discuss the campaign and to decide on the initial strategy. They decided, first, to bring their complaints to the owner of Forever 21 in hopes that the company would be willing to negotiate and commit to changing the working conditions in the factories with which they contracted. However, Forever 21 ignored their requests. After a few months of writing letters and having unproductive meetings with contract-shop owners, GWC filed a lawsuit against the retailer, its manufacturers, and its contractors. At the same time they announced a boycott against Forever 21 and began picketing the company’s retail stores throughout the L.A. area on Saturdays (Cummings 2008; Narro 2008; Narro 2005–6). The Forever 21 campaign went on for four years. The GWC hired additional organizers to help staff it. Staff and workers traveled around the country holding actions in front of retail stores, speaking at college campuses, churches, and community events. They distributed thousands of

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fliers all over the country; volunteers collected thousands of postcards and petitions in support of the Forever 21 garment workers in Los Angeles. The GWC was able to garner a great deal of support from consumers and also was extremely successful in getting media attention for the campaign. NBC News did an expose of L.A. sweatshops and Glamour magazine featured an article on the GWC (Grover 2004; Weiler 2005). The campaign also helped GWC to connect with dozens of other advocacy organizations across the county and worldwide. One result of these new relationships was that the center hosted a worker exchange program and participated in solidarity actions with workers from other countries. In addition, workers and organizers from several other low-wage worker centers from Los Angeles, Florida, and New York met to discuss strategy, program work, and leadership development through another exchange program that GWC coordinated in 2003 and 2004.10 In December 2004, the Forever 21 boycott ended with a confidential settlement agreement (see Garment Worker Center 2004). In many respects, it was a success. By targeting a highly visible retailer, the campaign made the links between retail products and the workers’ pay and conditions accessible to consumers and the larger communities. Yet, as GWC staff and members reflected on the campaign, they came to believe that the organization had devoted too many resources to the Forever 21 effort. Reaching “outward” from the garment industry, rather than “inward” toward other garment workers, the campaign had done relatively little to provide meaningful opportunities for participation to workers in other parts of the vast L.A. garment industry. In retrospect, GWC came to the view that the Forever 21 effort had become more of a community organizing campaign than a worker organizing campaign. In the early stages of the campaign, the GWC had made an effort to reach out directly to Forever 21 workers. Worker-members were given fliers and encouraged to reach out to other workers while at work or on the bus. However, in the end, only forty-four workers who had sewn for Forever 21 in twenty different shops actually participated in the campaign. Due to the emphasis on the community organizing, most of GWC’s energy was spent preparing and planning the boycott actions that were held each Saturday. As a result, Forever 21 consumers were being reached more effectively than Forever 21 sewers. There were thousands of workers sewing for Forever 21, but only a small percentage of them became engaged in the campaign. In addition, the middle-class consumers that were reached by the boycott all too often saw the Forever 21 brand as the campaign’s sole target, not “the fashion system” at large.

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The legal dimension of the campaign was also problematic in some respects. The original intention of the 2001 lawsuit was to have an impact on the L.A. garment industry as a whole and to help improve working conditions in hundreds of factories, as well as to put pressure on Forever 21 itself. The company owner chose to respond by countersuing, however. This did help draw national attention to the campaign, but it also demanded extensive attention from GWC members and staff. The attorneys did attempt to have workers participate in the legal strategy development through meetings and discussions, but as long periods of time elapsed between court decisions and legal filings, the legal effort proved difficult to coordinate with the boycott and direct action plans. The attorneys asked organizers and the workers to schedule and sometimes cancel actions depending on court dates. And when initial court decisions did not favor the workers, the attorneys asked the GWC to cancel several protests and change some of their campaign tactics. Thus instead of workers making the decisions about the campaign, the campaign began to increasingly accommodate the legal strategy. Prioritizing the lawsuit made it difficult for the workers to have full decision making power and led to a focus on sustaining positive public attention on the boycott, and the GWC’s focus then shifted from developing leaders to garnering community support to pressure the retailer. The settlement satisfied the workers involved in the lawsuit, but fell short of the original goal of having an impact on the working conditions of any part of the garment industry. At the end of the Forever 21 campaign, member retention was low. Workers were still coming to the GWC to seek help with wage claims, but after their cases were settled, most did not return. Many of them perceived the center solely as a service provider. In addition, the Worker Board (mentioned above) which had initially worked as an advisory board, during the last years of the Forever 21 campaign was trained to take on the responsibilities of a legal board. This shift toward technical skills, the weak development of strategic focus beyond Forever 21, and assumptions that workers would “naturally” make long-term commitments to other workers, created problems. Despite their best intentions, the Worker Board members became disconnected from other workers and became engulfed in interpersonal arguments. GWC came to the view that their organizational strategies had ultimately been too “top-down.”

A New Direction Faced with these challenges, the GWC spent eight months in 2005 rethinking its past work and engaging in an intensive strategic planning process.

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A central goal was to create a new approach to worker-centered development and growth. Recalling the effectiveness of the “Pyramid of Power” in educating workers early in the GWC’s development, staff members explored the idea of expanding this facet of the center’s programs and building a more complicated understanding of empowerment. Through this process, the organization adopted a new approach to leadership. Leaders are not “spokespeople,” but instead are those who share their skills and experiences with others. Rather than seeking-out individuals among the members who were naturally good speakers, for example, the GWC committed itself to providing all members with training in public speaking. The Worker Board was replaced with new structures comprised of multiple worker committees with different (but coordinated) approaches to engaging other worker members and reaching out to the garment industry as a whole. Also, GWC developed the goal of moving toward an all-volunteer staff. Even when paid staff were former garment workers, their presence had made it difficult for members to engage in the hard work of recruiting other workers and building the organization. The GWC thus reduced the number of paid staff and flattened its salary structure, which has led to increased participation by both garment workers and volunteers.11 The hope is that this will set the precedent for greater growth of volunteer worker-organizers who will eventually have the capacity to organize in many workplaces simultaneously—a necessity, if sweatshop conditions are to be purged from the industry. For the same reasons, the GWC also has changed the methodology it uses in wage claims, making workers coadvocates, instead of “peer counselors.” Whereas, previously, workers helped each other fill out forms, now, workers go with teams of five to ten co-workers to negotiate for lost wages directly with factory owners, and help each other in legal proceedings. The center’s current efforts aim at building worker-to-worker networks by engaging in smaller actions that focus on factory clusters within walking distance of one another. One example is the 2007 Baños Limpios (Clean Bathrooms) campaign, which sought to raise awareness about workers’ rights to clean bathrooms. It targeted a large building in downtown Los Angeles that housed more than two hundred independent factories with thousands of workers. Even though the workers were from different factories, they all supported the demand to improve the bathrooms in the building and were able to successfully persuade the building owners to fix and clean the bathrooms within a few months. As a result, in addition to gaining a healthier work environment, workers from the building have created a network that has potential for future organizing efforts.

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Conclusion The GWC has become an important resource for garment workers in Los Angeles, despite its growing pains. Its history includes important achievements and at the same time highlights the enormous difficulties involved in organizing garment workers. Allies will continue to play an important role in the future as garment workers strive to make changes in their workplaces. The antisweatshop movement, in particular, has been essential in raising consumer consciousness and fighting for improved legal protections. The immigrant rights movement also has been vital in organizing and politicizing the communities of which the GWC’s worker members are a part. GWC chooses to put its primary focus on those who should be central to the struggle of changing the garment industry—the workers themselves. The GWC’s long-term goal is an industrywide participatory democratic organization for the tens of thousands of garment workers in Los Angeles.

PART III

Unions and Low-Wage Worker Organizing

9 Ally to Win BLACK COMMUNITY LEADERS AND SEIU’S L.A. SECURITY UNIONIZATION CAMPAIGN

Joshua Bloom

In January 2008, more than four thousand security officers in Los Angeles ratified a union contract providing for a 40 percent pay raise over five years, as well as health benefits and job security (SEIU SOULA 2008). This was a milestone in the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) national campaign to organize the security industry. SEIU cultivated support for security unionization in Los Angeles by building relationships with independently powerful black community leaders who had their own institutional interest in the high-profile mobilization of black workers.1 I argue that, as part of a comprehensive campaign strategy, this power-sharing alliance with black community leaders provided the SEIU with a crucial source of leverage to win union recognition and a first contract for Los Angeles’s predominantly black office building security Thanks to Trish Albert, Lola Smallwood Cuevas, Faith Culbreath, Norman Johnson, Eric Lee, Lewis Logan, Terence Long, Jayson Pope, Jono Shaffer, Donna Smith-Moseley, and Bahar Tolou for sharing their reflections and documents on the campaign, and to Ruth Milkman and Kent Wong for sharing recordings of a series of interviews conducted in 2003. Thanks to Nurullah Ardic, Dan Clawson, Lola Smallwood Cuevas, Wesley Hiers, Darnell Hunt, Rob Jansen, Hazem Khandil, Jayson Pope, William Roy, Jono Shaffer, Kristin Surak, Julia Tomasetti, Kent Wong, and Maurice Zeitlin for their comments. Thanks to Victor Narro for his advice, and especially to Ruth Milkman, Karina Muñiz, Forrest Stuart, and the rest of the authors of this volume, each of whom read closely and commented in detail on multiple drafts of this paper. Thanks to the Labor and Employment Research Fund (LERF) and the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) for funding this research. Thanks to Elizabeth and Hana for everything else.

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officers. This chapter analyzes the trajectory of the multiyear campaign and explores its broader implications, with a particular focus on how nonwork (in this case, race-based) identities can provide vital leverage for organizing low-wage service sector workers.2 Like the janitorial industry, which SEIU successfully organized in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the 1980s and 1990s, the security industry relies on subcontractors from whom building owners purchase services. As in its earlier janitorial organizing campaigns, the union targeted key real estate interests as well as the security firms themselves, recognizing that the building owners would be the real decision-makers regarding unionization. Indeed, that the union already had long-established relationships with those building owners in Los Angeles through its janitorial work was a potential advantage in the later effort to organize the security officers. But when SEIU first launched its L.A. security campaign in 2002, the employers were far from receptive. Workers who wore a union button, or who attended a union meeting, were regularly threatened or transferred. Some contractors gave workers preemptive raises, while others invited independent security officers’ unions to approach their workers in an effort to circumvent the SEIU drive.3 Moreover, there were some striking differences between janitors and security officers that posed special challenges for the security organizing effort. Jono Shaffer, the SEIU staffer who led both the L.A. Justice for Janitors (JfJ) campaign and the subsequent security officers drive, explained that when the JfJ effort began in the late 1980s, the union had a core group of already unionized janitors on which to draw. “Most of our work on the janitorial side involved uniting relatively small, strategic numbers of non-union workers with large numbers of union members in a common industry-wide fight,” he recalled. “We couldn’t do that on the security campaign, because we didn’t have union members to surround the security officers with. And if we pulled the janitors out, they didn’t look like security officers.”4 According to a 2006 study commissioned by SEIU, most security officers employed in L.A.’s major office buildings had little training and, prior to unionization, were paid an average of $8.50/hour. Turnover rates were high, with median job tenure of less than a year. Almost 70 percent of the workers in these buildings were black (LAANE 2006).5 And because security is a 24/7 industry with rolling shifts and no large physical concentrations of workers, union organizing is especially challenging. Security officers are under constant surveillance and therefore easy for antiunion supervisors to monitor; they typically work in isolation—stationed far apart, and assigned breaks at different times—with little opportunity for on-the-job interaction.

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To meet these challenges, SEIU deployed its signature comprehensive campaign approach perfected in previous organizing drives. As in the earlier JfJ organizing, SEIU adopted an industrywide strategy, simultaneously targeting the five security contractors that comprised 80 percent of the market in large commercial L.A. real estate (Securitas; Allied Barton; Guard Systems; Universal Protective Services; and American Commercial Security Services). All of these firms except the L.A.–based Guard Systems were already unionized with SEIU in northern California. Early on, these five contractors all signed prerecognition agreements pledging to recognize the union if the other contractors and the building owners agreed. The security campaign relied on the close coordination of strategic research, community alliance building, public relations, and worker organizing to gain leverage on the building owners. The research uncovered building owners’ vulnerabilities, the community allies attacked those vulnerabilities, the union’s public relations staff secured news coverage, security officers participated in actions, and thousands of them signed unionization cards. As Shaffer explained: In order for workers to win improvements we have to understand . . . “What do they [the building owners] care about?” not “What do we care about?” And that’s a paradigm shift for most of us because we spend our time listening to workers and what they care about, probably not what’s going to get the attention of the other side. So what the research team does is know that, find that out, live inside their heads. And then that helps us choose what to do. And operationally, we’ve always, as part of our approach, had research, community, and communications run as a very integrated team. . . . It’s not like research is off in a separate place, doing its corporate campaign by itself. . . . There’s a steer and drive separation, which is some people pull the string back and let the arrow go, and the other people figure out where it should be aimed.6

Given the composition of the security workforce, SEIU believed that building an alliance with black community leaders could prove pivotal to this multifaceted organizing effort. But this presented a challenge in its own right, thanks in part to longstanding mistrust of the SEIU janitors’ union in the black community, which was rooted in the history of ethnic succession in the building services industry. As black community leaders often pointed out, until the 1970s, most L.A. janitors had been black. In those days many were also SEIU members, earning good pay and benefits. But as the building service industry was restructured in the 1970s and 1980s, the union lost power and black workers were replaced by a low-wage nonunion immigrant workforce. In the 1990s, SEIU’s JfJ campaign restored unionism to the janitorial sector, but by then the workforce was largely Latino. In the

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union’s ranks, recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America, many of them undocumented, had replaced black janitors. Many black leaders were troubled by this history. For example, Reverend Norman S. Johnson, pastor of the First New Christian Church, and former executive director of the L.A. Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), who played a key role in the security campaign, recalled in an interview: I’ve heard stories over and over again of, at one time, being a janitor was a good paying job with benefits, protections, and so forth. I understand that [Supervisor] Yvonne Braithwaite Burke’s father, he was a janitor, worked as a janitor, and was able to feed his family, educate his children, and all of that. But that was undermined with the influx of Latino workers. And so . . . African Americans pretty much felt that they had been pushed to the periphery in the labor movement.7

This was not only a statement about the past but a concern about the future. Would SEIU prove to be a trustworthy partner? Some community leaders blamed the deunionization of black janitors on employers but still blamed the union for failing to defend black jobs. Reverend Eric Lee, who succeeded Johnson as head of the L.A. SCLC, put it this way: It was fundamentally the corporate strategy of undermining working class people by bringing in another [group of ] low-wage working class people to break the union. And the union got caught with their pants down on that. They did not respond effectively with that.8

This time around, many community leaders asked, would SEIU do what was required to protect the interests of black workers? Beyond these historically rooted tensions, to win the support of black community leaders for the security organizing drive, the SEIU needed to persuade them that the fruits of a successful campaign would be genuinely shared, rather than simply being reaped by the union. The SEIU stood to gain a new membership base, accompanied by new dues revenue as well as increased economic and political clout. But what would black community leaders get in exchange for their support for the security organizing drive? Finding a way to offer them some tangible institutional advantage was critical, especially in view of the chronic resource shortages black community institutions face.

Forging the Alliance From the inception of the L.A. security campaign, SEIU aimed to draw deep and sustained participation from black community leaders. In the initial

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campaign proposal he developed in 1996, Jono Shaffer suggested that the union seek to “create a community identity” for the unionization campaign. He wrote: [Security] is the only private sector growth industry in Los Angeles which employs a large percentage of African American workers. The campaign will provide SEIU . . . the opportunity of opening untapped areas of community and political support. . . . We have often backed into this piece as an afterthought. I think that we need to build it in as a core component from the outset this time. (Shaffer 1996)

In early 2002, the union hired Lola Smallwood Cuevas to conduct preliminary research for the campaign. A black woman with roots in Oakland, and a former journalist at the Chicago Tribune, Smallwood Cuevas returned to California looking for a more activist role in the community. After a stint in campaign research, she was put in charge of community and political outreach. Drawing on SEIU Local 1877’s existing relationships in South Los Angeles, she talked with people at Action for Grassroots Empowerment and Neighborhood Development Alternatives (AGENDA), Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), and the Community Coalition about how to build support for the security unionization campaign in the black community. All three of these organizations had a long history of engagement in grassroots organizing and direct action, have strong ties to labor, and were ready to help fight the building owners from the start. Drawing on these initial discussions, the union held a town hall meeting in the summer of 2002 to launch the campaign in the black community, with the goal of involving black elected officials and getting broader input on strategy. There wasn’t much community turnout for that first meeting at Ward AME Church, but the field organizers for the campaign had already identified several black and Latino security officers who could speak eloquently about their problems in the workplace. The many prominent black elected officials who were represented at the meeting all endorsed the campaign and promised to support any legislative initiatives the union thought might be helpful.9 Building on this foundation, the union worked to build broader interest and support in the black community. A key breakthrough came when Smallwood Cuevas met Reverend Norman S. Johnson, at that time executive director of the L.A. SCLC. It soon became clear that Johnson had the stature and influence in the black community that the union sought. Crucially, the interest was mutual. Not only did Johnson personally have a history of supporting the 2002 L.A. school bus drivers’ strike and other labor struggles. But in 2002 the SCLC of Los Angeles was lacking a direct action program, and Johnson—its newly appointed executive director—was

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seeking ways to strengthen the organization in keeping with the legacy of its founder, Martin Luther King, Jr. There was a direct labor movement connection here: King had died in Memphis supporting a black sanitation workers strike, and Reverend James Lawson who organized that historic campaign, was the president of the L.A. SCLC Board that had hired Johnson.10 The SEIU campaign to organize black security officers in Los Angeles offered a perfect vehicle for Johnson to advance SCLC’s social justice agenda. As Johnson got more involved, the reputation of the union campaign in the black community improved. “Lola’s relationship with Norman Johnson” was crucial, Jayson Pope, then an SEIU security campaign organizer, recalled.11 “Norman could say ‘trust them on this thing.’ ”12 Pastors of the large black churches in South LA have great stature and visibility as black community leaders. Through their congregations, they influence grassroots conversation in the community, and when they take a political stand, their positions are widely reported in the newspapers and noticed by politicians. Reverend Johnson soon recruited other influential black pastors to the security campaign, including Reverend “Chip” Murray, pastor of the fivethousand-member First AME Church, Pastor Norman Copeland of Ward AME, as well as the community action liaison at Ward—Reverend Joe Oliver. Ministers of dozens of other black churches also endorsed the campaign and encouraged their congregations to get involved. The SCLC also helped move the campaign forward politically. For example, in the middle of a discussion with Smallwood Cuevas, Jim Franklin, Norman Johnson’s assistant director at SCLC, called U.S. congresswoman Maxine Waters’s cell phone and on the spot set up a meeting with her for the union. In January 2003, the union cosponsored SCLC’s annual “King Week” and jointly organized a series of actions to advance security officer unionization in celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday. The week’s event’s emphasized that most of the security officers were black—with more than half living in South Los Angeles—and framed the plight of security officers as an issue that affected the entire black community. Several black security officers spoke at these events about their plight, and the week culminated in the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Dinner at the downtown L.A. Biltmore Hotel, with Cornell West as the keynote speaker. Reverend Johnson later recalled SCLC’s decision to make the security campaign the central focus of this main annual event: This is the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and in my mind, we were doing what Dr. King would do. . . . This is not just about security officers. When you look at the fact that an overwhelming majority of them are African American, these are the working poor, they live in our communities. These are the folk that have children, that go to these schools, they are in

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these neighborhoods. What it is doing . . . is impoverishing . . . South LA. And so we have a community interest in this.13

The King Week activities received wide coverage in the L.A. black press (Los Angeles Bay Observer 2003; Pleasant 2003). Following King Week, with SCLC support, the campaign held clergy breakfasts with key pastors in South Los Angeles and organized their next big action—Security Sunday—for May 15, 2003. That day involved simultaneous events at twenty large black churches in South Los Angeles, at each of which rank-and-file security officers spoke to their congregations about working conditions in the industry. Their personal stories helped draw new community support. Jono Shaffer cites the example of Larry Walker, a black security officer in his sixties, dignified, with graying hair, and always dressed sharply. There is Larry Walker, speaking to a group of pastors, describing how until this campaign came along, he did not have self respect. He felt invisible. And this campaign helped him stand up straight in his post, feel good about who he was. I remember Joe Oliver, one of the pastors from the early days of the campaign, taking his glasses off and wiping his eyes.14

On Security Sunday, fifteen hundred parishioners from the twenty churches, almost all black, signed petitions addressed to the owners of the buildings where the security officers worked demanding that they recognize the union and sit down to negotiate with the workers. Around this time, Reverend Johnson began conversations with Miguel Contreras, then head of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, about how to reshape the black community’s relationship with organized labor. “Miguel did not want the labor movement of Southern California to be a Latino movement. He wanted it to be a people movement,” Johnson recalls. “He was sensitive that it was important that you had African American leadership, that you focused on African American issues within the labor movement.”15 A number of black ministers, including reverends Johnson, Lawson, Murray, and Copeland, already had lent their support to organized labor when called on, participating in the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, and a variety of other efforts. But there was no attempt to consistently coordinate black community involvement with labor until the ministers brought together by the security campaign formed a group called the Clergy Labor Coalition, whose purpose was to coordinate the interests of the black community with the interests of organized labor in Los Angeles. As the campaign progressed, security officer Larry Walker became ill and died. He had no health insurance and virtually no money. Many clergy as

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well as members of the black community remembered seeing Walker speak on behalf of unionization, and his death made the purpose of the campaign real for many people. Here was a security officer who had lost his life, and who might well have lived longer if the wealthy owners of the building he protected had provided their workers with health insurance. In early 2003, shortly after King Week, Smallwood Cuevas and Pope had a lunch meeting with Reverend James Lawson. The meeting had a tremendous impact on them and helped shape the overall strategy for the security officers’ campaign. Lawson was a civil rights legend. After going to prison as a conscientious objector during the Korean War, he had traveled to India to study Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence. He was later recruited by Martin Luther King to help organize the Civil Rights movement in Memphis, where he recruited and trained many of the future leaders of the movement, wrote the founding statement for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), helped lead the shift of black activists toward labor rights, and helped organize the sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis where King gave his famous “Mountaintop” speech and then was assassinated (Hargrove 2000). As Pope recalled, “Lawson was the granddaddy who is mentoring two younger African American folks about how to do this. So it wasn’t really a business meeting that we were having. It was, you know, ‘Shed some wisdom upon us!’ ”16 Lawson argued that denying the predominantly black security officers the right to unionize was not only a violation of their civil rights, as the union had already claimed, but that it was a racist act, and should be named as such. From the beginning, Shaffer had argued that the security campaign had the potential to attract widespread support from the black community. But Smallwood Cuevas, working as the union’s community liaison, was more skeptical. She doubted black community leaders would ever see unionization as their own issue. After the meeting with Lawson, however, her opinion changed. Lawson provided a new perspective on the struggle: it was not simply a unionization campaign but addressed the larger historical oppression of blacks. It was not just about workers being treated unfairly but addressed the legacy of slavery and discrimination against black workers.

Plantation Capitalism On December 10, 2003, the campaign held its first street action. A thousand protestors marched from the union offices through downtown Los Angeles. Leading the march, reverends Jesse Jackson and James Lawson, along with U.S. congresswoman Maxine Waters, soon-to-be mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, SEIU local 1877 president Mike Garcia, City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, and several state assembly members carried a banner

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emblazoned “Security Officers United: Good Jobs for L.A.” They were followed by representatives of AGENDA, Community Coalition, ACORN, SAY Yes to Children Network, the NAACP, SCLC, the Bus Riders Union, several churches including Ward AME and ASCENSION Lutheran Church, and janitors from SEIU local 1877, all in high spirits (Nguyen 2003; SEIU 2003). The march was a turning point in the campaign, which now focused public attention on key building owners. The press release for the march identified Arden Realty, C.B. Richard Ellis, Cushman and Wakefield, Douglas Emmett, and Maguire Properties as targets and quoted Reverend Lawson saying, “By continuing to pay poverty wages and provide few benefits, these companies are disrespecting and exploiting a workforce that is largely African-American. . . . These companies are perpetuating a cycle of economic violence against the African American community in Los Angeles” (SEIU Security 2003). When the marchers arrived at the offices of Maguire Properties, several of the top executives came out into the street, including Senior Vice President Dan Gifford. Lawson then asked Gifford why Maguire Properties was trying to prevent security officers from unionizing, and Gifford replied that they were not doing so. Lawson said that he would follow up and arrange a meeting. Afterward, Smallwood Cuevas helped Lawson draft a letter to Robert Maguire, chairman and CEO of Maguire Properties, mentioning his conversation with Gifford, and expressing concern about the company’s treatment of security officers, and his interference with the unionization effort. Several months passed before Maguire replied to Lawson in a lengthy letter dated May 24, 2004. He defended his position as a liberal supporter of workers’ rights, recalling his past support for the janitors’ union. Maguire also noted that he had recently raised the pay of the security officers in his employ to a level 30 percent above that of other downtown office buildings, providing full individual health benefits as well. He stated that, as a result, turnover among security officers in his buildings was very low. However, the letter also made clear that Maguire strongly opposed the unionization of the security officers by SEIU. He argued that, especially in the post-9/11 era, having janitors and security officers in the same union was a threat to security. And he cited the National Labor Relations Act’s section 9(b)(3), noting: The law recognizes that there is a conflict of interest when a union represents both guard employees and non-guard employees. It has been the national labor law for over 50 years that the National Labor Relations Board will not conduct an election or certify a union in a guard unit if it also represents non-guard employees. SEIU already represents our janitorial employees.

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They know that they have no right to represent both janitorial and guard employees.17 (Maguire 2004; see also Kaplan 2004)

It was true that Maguire had a record of supporting worker rights. In particular, he had supported L.A. janitors’ efforts to win family health insurance and wage increases. In Los Angeles County, Maguire was the only building owner never to hire nonunion janitors. Maguire even attended SEIU’s contract ratification vote at the end of the 2000 janitorial strike, personally congratulating the workers on their ability to stay united and win a dramatic victory. He was the only building owner to attend. In fact, SEIU initially held back from focusing on Maguire, hopeful that he would support unionization. But when Maguire explicitly opposed the security campaign, the rest of the real estate industry followed, and SEIU and the community leaders agreed they had to fight back. Mike Garcia, president of SEIU Local 1877, rallied the janitors, most of them Latino, to the defense of the mostly black security officers. The union put its relationship with Maguire on the line, making it clear that just because Maguire had been a “friend” of the janitors, they would not sit idly by while he opposed security unionization. The campaign turned all guns on Maguire. On June 3, 2004, SEIU activists and their community allies staged a rally at the downtown Biltmore hotel outside a Maguire shareholders meeting. Spokesperson Peggy Moretti reiterated Maguire’s position that the company “does not oppose unions or the unionization of security officers. Our issue is we believe it is a conflict to have guard employees and non-guard employees governed by one union.” The union and its allies countered that this was a violation of civil rights. Why couldn’t the predominantly black security officers choose which union they wanted to belong to? Thus Reverend Louis Chase of Hamilton United Methodist Church said, “Security officers have spoken, and they want to join SEIU. Maguire Properties is trying to deny them their human and civil rights to join the union of their choice. . . . Maguire Properties is turning its back on these working people from our communities” (City News Service 2004). Meanwhile, Lawson was working on a response to the letter he received from Maguire. In his August 4, 2004, reply, he first articulated the “plantation capitalism” argument that would later become an important frame for the union’s larger campaign. He charged that Maguire was denying the civil rights of the officers to join the union of their choice and thus perpetuating racism: While we have much respect and admiration for Maguire Properties’ contribution to the struggle of janitors, we are deeply disturbed that you now choose to oppose the efforts of private security officers, a largely African

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American workforce. You may not realize this, but by denying security officers their rights, you are continuing to support an economic system that is a vestige of 250 years of slavery in this country, which we call plantation capitalism. (Lawson et al. 2004)

Lawson explained that by allowing engineers, janitors, and other nonblack workers in his buildings to join the union of their choice while denying predominantly black security officers that right, Maguire was perpetuating the black economic marginalization. Lawson acknowledged the wage and benefit improvements that security officers in Maguire’s buildings had received, but pointed out that these improvements had come only after the unionization campaign was in motion. Further, the letter noted that notwithstanding Section 9(b)(3), SEIU already represented more than twenty-two thousand security officers nationwide—more than any other union—and that none had used NLRB election processes. Along with Lawson, three other prominent L.A. black clergy—Reverend Cecil Murray of First AME Church, Reverend William M. Campbell of Mt. Gilead Baptist Church, and Reverend Norman D. Copeland of Ward AME—signed the letter.

The New Guard Even as the union began to focus its campaign strategy more explicitly on the issue of racism, the campaign’s staffing was in flux. In the fall of 2004, after helping Lawson draft his August 4 “plantation capitalism” letter to Maguire, Smallwood Cuevas left the SEIU. Shortly afterward, Norman Johnson left the SCLC to return to full-time pastoral work, and the Clergy Labor Coalition ceased to function. The fledgling institutional alliance had lost two of its pillars. Despite these losses, the union did its best to keep the pressure on Maguire, turning for assistance to the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE). Two new members of the black clergy were enlisted (with financial support from SEIU) to assist the security drive at this juncture: Reverend William Smart through LAANE, and Reverend Jarvis Johnson through CLUE. Both were committed to advancing the union cause and provided a visible black presence to the campaign, but they were far less effective than Johnson and the SCLC had been. The union staged a series of actions targeting Maguire in late 2004 and early 2005, but these were modest in scale and received little media coverage (SEIU Local 1877 2005a, 2004a, 2004b). Then the union appointed Jayson Pope to take over the community liaison position Smallwood Cuevas had previously held. Pope, a former student activist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, had been recruited to the campaign as an organizer, had proved himself in the field, and already

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had relationships with Reverend Lawson and many other key community leaders. Pope had a strong commitment to the black community and was received well. Reverend Lee later recalled: Jayson was great because Jayson, although he represented the union, he really had a heart for the community. . . . It was more than a job to Jayson. . . . The union has to find people who are committed to the community first, and then through the union and the resources of the union, leverage that commitment for advancing the cause of the union with the community.18

SEIU Local 1877 President Mike Garcia personally met with key black community allies to assure them that the union was genuinely committed to addressing their concerns and that Pope would be charged with following up. Pope recalls that with this endorsement, It was easy for me to walk in because . . . they had cleared it with Mike, and then I walked in, and they liked me. And quickly I became family. I was giving them information about how to do this effectively, about how to build some power with SEIU to make sure that the community was respected. . . . Those folks had to believe that not on paper, not in theory, but that they were truly being respected. . . . That there was a long-term commitment from labor to participate in community events, irregardless of if it helped the union. That’s what ultimately built this trust. . . . There has to be the look in each others’ eyes and say, “Are you serious about this?”19

At the same time, in a fortuitous turn of events, a younger “New Guard” of black community leaders stepped forward to support the campaign. One key player was Pastor Lewis Logan II, of AME Bethel Church in South Central Los Angeles. Logan grew up in an activist family in Baltimore, listening not only to the speeches of Martin Luther King, but also the revolutionary visions of black liberation propounded by Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and Huey P. Newton. His mother was a minister and he himself had entered the ministry at age seventeen. As a student and minister in training, he had been involved in community organizing, antiapartheid work, and the black liberation movement. Soon after he became lead pastor at the old and influential Bethel AME in 2005, the church began to emerge as a vibrant new community center for South Los Angeles.20 Logan was eager to establish his church as a nexus for social justice organizing in the black community, and the security unionization campaign provided a perfect vehicle. When Jarvis Johnson left Los Angeles a few months later, Logan was recruited by CLUE to take his place. Logan’s church soon became a key hub for the security campaign, and the union began holding regular community strategy sessions there.21

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Reverend Eric Lee, who replaced Johnson as the head of L.A. SCLC in April 2005, also became involved in the campaign during this period. Lee had a B.A. in economics and political science from UC Berkeley and had worked for more than twenty years in the finance industry, notably as the founding manager of the U.S. Bank branch in L.A.’s Crenshaw district, and branch manager for the black-owned OneUnited Bank. Strongly committed to the union cause, Lee continued SCLC’s involvement in the security campaign.22

Targeting Maguire (and Thomas) On the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death, April 4, 2005, Lawson led a rally and civil disobedience action involving black clergy, union representatives, security officers, and other activists held on the steps of Maguire’s company headquarters. The action targeted Maguire as well as Thomas Properties, a smaller company that had endorsed Maguire’s opposition to “mixed” unions of janitors and security officers and also had a building nearby. The protest was endorsed by the National Executive Board of the NAACP, which stated that it would “stand with officers who are fighting for a better life for themselves and their families,” adding that “if security companies provided officers with raises and benefits, hundreds of millions of dollars would flow into our nation’s communities of color and poor neighborhoods” (SEIU 2005b). Carrying pictures of security officers on placards, the protestors marched to the corner of Fifth and Flower streets, and proceeded into the intersection between Maguire’s largest building and Thomas’s building and sat down, completely blocking traffic. Police reinforcements arrived and the police ordered protestors to disperse. When they refused, the police physically removed black clergy and community members from the intersection, arresting thirteen protesters (City News Source 2005; SEIU 2005b). Days later, the campaign had its first real breakthrough. Thomas Properties had not initially been a major target of the campaign—it owned only two buildings. But when James A. Thomas wrote to SCLC in June 2004 stating that, like Maguire, he opposed having security officers in a mixed union with the janitors in his buildings, the union began to target his company along with Maguire. The key point of leverage with Thomas was California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), which had invested approximately $270 million in a joint venture with Thomas Properties to purchase Arco Towers, a prime 2.7 million square foot, fifty-two-story office complex in downtown Los Angeles.23 CalSTRS was a union pension fund with a responsible contractor policy (originally developed partly due to SEIU efforts) that called for union neutrality.

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A few days after the civil disobedience and arrests of black community leaders, drawing on SEIU’s longstanding relationships with key CalSTRS trustees, Shaffer arranged for a delegation of union representatives and black community allies to speak at the CalSTRS board meeting in Sacramento. Terence Long, the security campaign’s communications director, equipped CalSTRS staff with documentation of the economic injustices Thomas was imposing on security officers and the black community generally, and why he was not a responsible investment manager. The day before the board meeting, CalSTRS’s CEO Jack Ehnes spoke with Thomas to discuss the matter. Late that night, Thomas became the first downtown building owner to formally agree to neutrality in the SEIU bid to unionize security officers. Just hours before the community and union delegation was scheduled to speak to the CalSTRS board, Thomas faxed Ehnes a letter agreeing to follow the CalSTRS fund policy and stating that his company “is neutral on whether the guards organize or not” (Chan 2005). This was an important victory for the campaign, demonstrating the efficacy of applying intense focused pressure on one target at a time. As Terence Long recalled, “The Thomas victory . . . made folks realize that there is a way to get to these guys.”24 Energized by this breakthrough, the campaign intensified its mobilization against Maguire. On June 7, 2005, a coalition of black organizations, including the NAACP and the SCLC, announced their support for the security officers’ effort to join SEIU, and explicitly charged Maguire with racism. The SEIU press release quoted Reverend James Lawson as follows: Maguire Properties is in effect practicing a policy of institutionalized racism by denying security officers their civil rights and freedom to form a union of their choice with SEIU. The mostly-Latino janitors that do work for Maguire Properties have the union of their choice. The predominately Anglo operating engineers that do work for Maguire Properties have the union of their choice. Only the disproportionately African American private security officers that protect Maguire Properties are still struggling to raise standards by forming a union of their choice. (SEIU 2005a)

Reverend “Chip” Murray, pastor of the influential First AME Church, led a protest outside Maguire’s shareholders’ meeting, and security officers Willie Hunter, Troy Hammond, and Joe Matthews wore white tape over their mouths and carried signs reading “Maguire Properties: Stop Silencing Security Officers” (SEIU Security 2005). The spirited participation of black community leaders and the explicit charge of racism lent powerful moral authority to the campaign. But in addition to moral authority, as the Thomas victory had shown, direct pressure was essential to force individual owners to agree to neutrality. As the

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union’s research team scanned Maguire’s vulnerabilities, they discovered an opportunity in Australia. It turned out that in the spring of 2005, as part of an effort to raise capital for his investments in downtown Los Angeles, Maguire was in discussions with some Australian investment managers over a possible partnership. SEIU researcher Bahar Tolou recalled: “We knew they were going to look for a [joint venture] partner and we knew they were starting to look at Australia. So we figured this is their highest priority. . . . This is where we should focus all our energy.”25 As part of its national security organizing campaign, SEIU was in the process of establishing relationships with unions around the world that represent or are seeking to organize the multinational contractors that dominate the global security industry. In Australia, the Liquor, Hospitality, and Miscellaneous Union (LHMU) was partnering with SEIU to organize security officers who work for Securicor Wackenhut. Thus LHMU had a vested interest in supporting the L.A. security organizing campaign. Its communications director, Andrew Casey, became very involved in planning the Australia actions. In June 2005, the union put together a report targeted to potential investors in Maguire Properties entitled “Risks for Maguire Properties Inc. Investors.” It called attention to the labor situation in Los Angeles, quoting Lawson’s threat that “we will escalate our attempts until we bring your business to a grinding halt.” The union withheld the report for a while, taking out ads in both Australian newspapers and in the L.A. Business Journal announcing that the report was coming out in the hopes that this might lead Maguire to discuss the possibility of neutrality. But he did not call. By midJuly, Maguire had signed confidentiality agreements with seven possible investment groups and was expected to close a deal in three weeks. So on July 13, SEIU posted the report (Capital Stewardship Program 2005) online and placed a full page ad in the Australian Financial Review listing the web address. When Maguire still didn’t call, Andrew Casey approached Australian journalist Paddy Manning. Manning was a business writer, but had progressive sympathies and also thought that the Australian public was interested in understanding the growth of Australian investment in the United States. Manning interviewed James Lawson, and wrote an article for the financial section of Australian—a major newspaper—that took up the civil rights frame of the SEIU campaign. The headline ran “US trust’s ‘slave’ fight snarls MacBank, Deutsche.” The article began: A former colleague of the revered civil rights leader Martin Luther King has attacked US developer Maguire Properties for violating the human rights

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of mostly black security guards at its office buildings, just as the developer negotiates a $US1.1 billion ($1.45 billion [Australian]) deal with two Australian property trust rivals. The attack escalates a long-running labour dispute into a race issue, and could jeopardize Maguire’s proposed sale of the office portfolio into a joint venture with one of two rival Australian property trusts, Macquarie Office Trust and DB RREEF Trust. Executives from Macquarie Bank and Deutsche Bank, who run the two trusts, will be visiting the US this week to research the deal which was expected to be closed within weeks. Civil rights leader Reverend James Lawson, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles— an organization co-founded by King—said Maguire was perpetuating “the economic ideology of slavery” by denying hundreds of security guards their right to freedom of speech and to make a living wage. “The company refuses to allow the workers to have freedom of speech in the workplace— the freedom to talk about their situation and how they can improve it” said Mr Lawson. Mr Lawson said the guards were mostly black men and “as a pastor, and colleague of the late Dr King, it makes me suspicious.” . . . SCLC and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have passed identical resolutions supporting the SEIU campaign. (Manning 2005c, 27)

When the article came out, Australian elected officials began calling Maguire and his potential investors to express concern. Soon, Lawson was being interviewed on Australian talk radio about Maguire’s racism. Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, black community leaders and security officers were holding protests outside Maguire’s offices timed to coincide with visits from potential Australian investors. The protestors held signs saying “Stop Racist Policies.” Maguire’s “race problem” in California seemed to give his Australian investors pause. Faced with this pressure, Maguire finally called SEIU to discuss security unionization. In the latter half of 2005, as the discussions with Maguire proceeded, black community leaders and the union continued small-scale mobilizations to keep the pressure on (Bihm 2005; Herrera 2005; SEIU Local 1877 2005b). But on January 6, 2006, Maguire closed its joint venture deal with the Australian Macquarie Office Trust, and then discussions with the union slowed down (Business Wire 2006). In response, the union and its community allies again turned up the heat. On February 28, 2006, they staged a large march and protest outside Maguire’s headquarters. A delegation of black clergy entered Maguire’s offices to deliver a letter (Griffin 2006; Lindo 2006). Peggy Moretti, Maguire public relations officer, met with the clergy members, indicating that Maguire Properties did support the security officers’ right to organize. The clergy asked her to put it in writing. She said that she would, but first they would have to talk with Maguire, and that he was on a plane at the moment. The delegation

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said that they were not leaving until they got a public affirmation from her, and then asked her to come outside and tell the crowd rallying outside that Maguire Properties supported the security officers’ right to organize. Reverend Logan later recalled: We are going to come extending the olive branch first, and then next is the sickle. . . . I think we must have in some way, by the grace of God, appealed to [Peggy Moretti]. . . . She excused herself for a moment. I believe she probably did some type of preliminary checking around to make sure it would be ok to make the statement.26

Moretti returned and accompanied the clergy downstairs to address the crowd. She took the megaphone and announced, “We’re not the problem. We encourage our security officers to organize with whatever union they want to.” Nevertheless, Maguire continued to drag his feet. The black community leaders and the union, frustrated, laid plans for a large rally against Maguire for April 4, 2006, the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, and the one-year anniversary of the sit-in led by Reverend Lawson that helped precipitate the neutrality agreement from Thomas. Los Angeles mayor Villaraigosa became involved, calling Maguire to try to work out a neutrality agreement for the security officers. The mayor asked the community leaders and the union to hold off on the protest, so instead of targeting Maguire’s building, the campaign relocated the event to Grand Avenue downtown, where protesters blocked traffic in the pouring rain in another act of civil disobedience. Almost twenty were arrested (George 2006). A few days later, the Los Angeles Times carried a human interest story on the plight of security officers by columnist Steve Lopez (2006). Finally, on April 11, 2006, Maguire and SEIU held a press conference with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, announcing that they had reached an agreement to allow security officers to unionize. Maguire hugged security officers, shook hands with black community leaders Reverend Logan, Chimbuko Tembo, and Tim Wolf, among others, and pledged to support neutrality. In a face-saving gesture, the deal included a provision that the security officers in SEIU would be in a separate local from the janitors.27 Maguire Properties and SEIU also announced that they would split the $250,000 annual cost to launch a three-year training program for Maguire’s three hundred security officers (Marroquin 2006; Orlov 2006). Mayor Villaraigosa called on other building owners to follow Maguire’s example: “We’re calling on our city’s real estate industry to join us in our effort to upgrade security in buildings across the city and improve working conditions for our city’s hard working private security officers” (SEIU Security 2006).

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The Road to Recognition The union and its community partners hoped that the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA), the main building owners’ trade group, would follow Maguire in agreeing to neutrality. But this proved overly optimistic. Eric Lee recalls: “We thought that after Maguire things would come a little bit quicker, but they were holding out. BOMA, God, they were holding out tooth and nail. They were not giving ground on this thing.”28 So the campaign once again escalated. On June 19, 2006, the union launched a card-signing “blitz” to intensify pressure on BOMA. By bringing in outside staff from around the country, SEIU hoped to expand the organizing drive to six hundred commercial real estate buildings guarded by approximately six thousand security officers. Visiting organizers were sent by unions and community allies (especially ACORN) in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, and around the country. SEIU International president Andy Stern also flew into LA to participate (Mathews 2006b). The idea was to get as many cards signed as possible. At the same time, the publicity for the blitz reiterated the racial framing of the campaign. The SEIU’s press release quoted Reverend Logan: “Freedom can’t wait. We need good jobs for black workers, not wealthy corporate landlords throwing crumbs to our community. With the full force and commitment from the black community and labor working together, we can turn these jobs around” (SEIU 2006). The blitz’s official launch was held at Bethel AME Church, where Pastor Logan and Reverend Lee spoke, emphasizing that the unionization campaign was a continuation of Martin Luther King’s legacy. At the end of the week, community groups from South Los Angeles, including the NAACP, SCLC, elected leaders, and hundreds of black security officers, marched to BOMA headquarters (Stand for Security 2006b). The reverends Lee and Logan attempted to deliver a letter to BOMA’s executive director, which was eventually accepted by a BOMA staffer. At this event, Lee stated that the building management companies were “robbing millions of dollars from the communities of South Los Angeles every year, and that must end right now.” He continued, “Ten thousand officers throughout Los Angeles County are paid approximately $6 an hour less than janitors. When you add that up, the 10,000 officers times $6 an hour times eight hours a day, you’re talking about $500,000 a day being pulled out of our community” (Mikulan 2006). After Maguire signed the neutrality agreement, the union was confident of victory, and campaign participants began talking about who would head the new local union. This soon became a point of heated conflict between

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the union and its community allies over the course of the campaign, reflecting their distinct institutional interests. Whereas SEIU wanted the union headed by a leader with sufficient experience and loyalty to fluidly integrate the future security officers’ local into the International, black community leaders wanted it to be someone they could count on to address the broader concerns of black workers. Minimally, they insisted that the union appoint a black person as interim president. The matter came to a head in a conversation between Shaffer and Eric Lee, when Lee told Shaffer “the community is not going to accept anyone other than an African American to lead this union.” According to Lee, Shaffer responded, “We don’t have anybody qualified.”29 According to Shaffer, “finding leadership which reflected the membership” was always an explicit priority for the union and his comment to Lee was misconstrued.30 In any event, Lee took immediate offense and followed up with other black community leaders participating in the campaign. They quickly developed a consensus that the union would have to agree to hire a black interim president of the union, and with their input, or they would all pull out of the campaign. As Pastor Logan recalled: We insisted that . . . no reflection on Jono, great guy, but you cannot lead this union. And you cannot be the puppet master. Because it would certainly de-legitimate this whole process . . . I would not have been able to stay with the effort. And Minister Tony wouldn’t have been able to stay with it. Reverend Eric Lee wouldn’t have been able to stay with it. With us pulling back, we would not have had any real support from . . . the African American faith community. It would have been an abandonment of that whole effort.31

To address this crisis, Stephen Lerner, then director of SEIU’s Property Services Division, flew out to join Shaffer for a meeting with the community allies at the SCLC offices in South Los Angeles. When the union officials arrived, the allies charged Shaffer with racism and threatened to withdraw their support from the campaign if the union did not agree to include them in the process of hiring the interim president, negotiating the contract, and overseeing the new local. Even in the heat of this conflict, Reverend Lee and Pastor Logan continued to passionately support the security campaign. But when it did not appear that the union was taking their concerns seriously, they did not hesitate to air their doubts publicly. At this point their longstanding mistrust of SEIU, rooted in the history of ethnic succession in the janitorial industry, resurfaced. As Lee told the Washington Post, “Some say, ‘Why should we do this?’ because of what happened to the hotel workers and the janitors.”

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And Logan added, “Our group is planning to come together once a quarter after there is a union to make sure the same percentage of African American security officers who were part of the union at the beginning are still there later” (Geis 2006). The crisis was resolved, however, when the union and the black community leaders developed an agreement establishing formal principles for “a positive, strategic, long-lasting and efficient alliance.” The agreement noted that the campaign is not only for security officer unionization, but also includes “an effort to uplift the African American community in Los Angeles.” Moreover, the agreement established a role for black community leaders in contract negotiations; in contract monitoring; in hiring local union leadership; and most immediately, in the search for the interim president (SEIU Security and Stand for Security 2006). With this matter resolved, the union made a final push for recognition. The blitz had shaken up the contractors and building owners, and attracted widespread media coverage. But, Shaffer recalled, “even though the blitz really pushed things along . . . it wasn’t focused enough to force the compression necessary to win.”32 So the union launched a campaign to “Stop BOMA Discrimination,” using tactics similar to those that had won the neutrality agreement from Maguire. The union created a glossy pamphlet charging BOMA with racial discrimination. Above photos of segregated water fountains—one for “SECURITY OFFICERS ONLY” and the other for “ENGINEERS, JANITORS, PARKING ATTENDANTS ONLY,” it stated, “Primarily Latino Janitors and parking attendants, largely Anglo operating engineers and other workers in the city’s tallest buildings have formed unions to improve their lives and their jobs. Only security officers, the majority of whom are African American, are being denied their civil right and freedom by corporate landlords to form a union of their choice” (Stand for Security 2006c). Well aware of how Maguire had fared resisting a similar charge from the union, BOMA now came to the table to discuss a neutrality agreement. Yet, in what Shaffer saw as a delaying tactic, they still insisted that all buildings under 150,000 square feet be excluded from the neutrality agreement. From the union’s perspective, the proposal was unacceptable because there were so many security officers working in those smaller building, especially those between 75,000 and 150,000 square feet. Early in the campaign, Arden Realty, the second largest downtown building owner, had been a key organizing target. Arden CEO Richard Ziman was active in the L.A. Democratic Party but had always resisted unionization. With significant holdings in the 75,000–150,000 square foot range, Arden Reality now reemerged as a focus, and the campaign sought to apply further pressure to Ziman.

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On September 14, 2006, reverends Lee and Logan attended the annual Mayoral Housing Summit, at which the topic was affordable housing, with Ziman as a featured speaker. The entrance fee was $350 per person. Reverend Logan paid for the two of them to enter. The auditorium was packed with hundreds of professionals. “We are holding these signs,” Lee recalled, “and you can see every one of them is looking and reading these signs [which say] ‘Racism and discrimination by Arden Company.’ ”33 Ushers came and tried to persuade the reverends to leave, but they had paid the entrance fee, and they refused. In the questions and answer period, Reverend Lee raised his hand. He began by engaging the panelists’ arguments about affordable housing, and then asked how Ziman could credibly advance an ethical commitment to provide affordable housing when security officers working in buildings owned by Arden Realty can’t afford to pay even the lowest rents and often “have to make a decision between paying the electric bill and buying groceries.” Some members in the audience broke into applause. When the moderator tried to pass over the question, Lee raised his voice and said, “Excuse me, this is not a funny or a light hearted situation, and I expect an answer to the question.” Members of the audience clapped more vigorously (see L.A. Business Council 2006a, 2006b). The following week, a rally attended by three hundred clergy, security officers, union representatives, and other supporters rallied in West Los Angeles in front of Arden Realty headquarters, located at a major intersection. At the peak of the afternoon rush hour they marched into the intersection, Smallwood Cuevas recalled, “They sat down in the intersection at 5 o’clock in the afternoon with all the busses and the UCLA traffic . . . it was crazy.”34 An hour later, the police began arresting the protesters and loading them on busses. Reverend Lee, Reverend Logan, and sixteen others were arrested and spent most of the night in jail before the union was able to bail them out (Lee, interview; Los Angeles Times 2006; Shaffer, interview; Stand for Security 2006a). In May 2006, General Electric Company purchased Arden Realty in a $4.8 billion deal, the largest real estate transaction in southern California history (Christoffersen 2005; Vincent 2007). Despite the pressure on Ziman and Arden’s new CEO Joaquin de Monet, Arden had not come to the table (Lee 2006; Monet 2006a, 2006b). So the black community leaders and the union decided to target GE directly. In October, they sent a delegation to the company’s “stakeholder” meeting in New York, a forum for community members to raise concerns. The delegation included reverends Lee and Logan, two other local black ministers, and Jayson Pope. They didn’t make much headway in New York, so the group drove to GE corporate headquarters in nearby Fairfield, Connecticut. “We went in and were very nice to

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the front desk person,” Pope recalled. “And then we just kind of went into a conference room.”35 The person the delegation had spoken with in New York was put on a speaker phone and was very upset. Eric Lee recalled the attitude: I mean, you are talking about community leaders, and we know their mindset when we walked in there: Here are the senior VPs from probably one of the largest corporations in the world. And you got people who are coming from struggling community based organizations, black folks. Their mindset was paternalistic, was somewhat arrogant, condescending.36

William Conaty, the senior vice president of Human Resources, walked in to the room and said, “This is very unprofessional that you guys just storm in here.” Pope replied, “Well, we think it is very unprofessional that you are treating black workers like this.” With Maguire and Thomas having already agreed to neutrality, the black community leadership mobilized, the union’s ongoing “Stop BOMA Discrimination” campaign, and with the pressure on GE/Arden, BOMA finally agreed to neutrality for all commercial properties over seventy-five thousand square feet. On November 15, 2006, after a campaign of almost five years, the building owners agreed in principle to card-check neutrality, which meant they would not fight unionization and would recognize the SEIU if a majority of employees signed cards (Vincent and Mathews 2006). Although the building owners held the real power, the security officers were employed directly by the security contractors, and so they too had to be party to the neutrality agreement. In December 2006, a month after the building owners conceded, the five largest security contractors that employ 80 percent of the security officers that work in L.A. office buildings over seventy-five thousand square feet signed a formal neutrality agreement. They agreed to allow SEIU to solicit union authorization cards from their employees, and that they would recognize the union and negotiate a contract if a majority signed cards. Five months later, on May 20, 2007, after a second blitz to collect union authorization cards, the contractors recognized SEIU’s new local—Security Officers United Los Angeles (SOULA) 2006— and began contract negotiations (SEIU SOULA 2007). With reverends Lee and Logan on the hiring committee, the union appointed Faith Culbreath, a black SEIU leader who had worked for the union’s Property Services division in Washington, D.C., and Detroit, as SOULA’s interim president. Culbreath in turn appointed Pastor Logan to the contract negotiating committee as a community liaison. Culbreath was welcomed to Los Angeles in an all-star reception at the offices of the Sentinel, Los Angeles’s leading black newspaper (Miller 2007).

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The final victory came on January 26, 2008, when more than four thousand security officers ratified their first union contract. It provided a 40 percent increase in wages and benefits over the five-year contract term, as well as medical insurance and job security (Guzmán 2008; Khalil 2008; Los Angeles Times 2008; SEIU SOULA 2008).

Black Community Power and Security Officer Unionization SEIU’s strategy of tapping black community power was crucial to its success in pressuring building owners and ultimately winning unionization. This is not to suggest that SEIU would necessarily have failed without the support of black community leaders. To the contrary, given their resources, commitment, and track record, SEIU may have found other ways to win security unionization in Los Angeles as they did in other cities where community support was less prevalent. But in Los Angeles, the union relationship with black community leaders was central to the campaign, and de facto provided the crucial leverage for victory. Three aspects of the union’s approach are especially noteworthy. First, SEIU hired “bridge builders” who understood and were respected by both the union and black community institutions. Second, SEIU understood the need to share power with black community leaders and demonstrated its willingness to do so. Third, and perhaps most important, the union built ties to influential black community leaders with their own institutional interest in mobilizing to address the plight of black workers. At first, the union garnered some support from black elected officials, but with minimal participation from black community leaders. This changed when “bridge builder” Lola Smallwood Cuevas recognized SCLC’s potential institutional interest in the campaign. The security campaign helped reinvigorate SCLC by advancing black worker organizing in the tradition of Martin Luther King, as reverends Lawson and Johnson laid the foundation for wider black community support. SCLC leaders established the Clergy Labor Coalition, and Lawson crafted the “plantation capitalism” argument that defined the fight for unionization as a fight against racism. Later Jayson Pope assumed the “bridge builder” role and the community base for the campaign shifted to Bethel AME Church and Pastor Logan. The security organizing drive helped Logan establish his social justice ministry, while Reverend Eric Lee, the new CEO of SCLC, also developed an institutional interest in the campaign. The community allies were concerned from the outset about whether SEIU had a genuine long-term commitment to addressing the broader interests of black workers. The issue crystallized in the demand by black

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community allies for direct participation in selecting a black interim president for the security officers’ local and for a role in the contract negotiations. The union responded by placing Pastor Logan and Reverend Lee on the presidential search committee, appointing Faith Culbreath as the interim president, and seating Logan on the contract negotiations committee as a community liaison. For vulnerable low-wage workers, external sources of power are often needed to win unionization. In the L.A. security officers’ campaign, SEIU’s alliances with black community leaders were crucial to winning the neutrality agreements that led to union recognition, and later to a union contract. At key strategic junctures, black community allies applied compelling moral pressure—charging building owners with racism for denying predominantly black security officers the right to join the union of their choice. Although the union’s research and pressure tactics played a critical role, the protests of black leaders were also essential to the campaign’s success. In the case of Thomas, the first L.A. building owner to agree to neutrality, the threat of losing investment from CalSTRS was key. But the protests outside his building and the prospect of public charges of racism by community leaders at the CalSTRS board meeting made that threat palpable. Similarly, threatening Maguire’s $1.1 billion loan from Australia required research by the SEIU team and support from Australian unions. But Maguire only agreed to neutrality when the union’s black community allies publicly charged him with racism. And again, only the “Stop BOMA Discrimination” mobilization and the pressure on key building owners such as Richard Ziman led BOMA to agree to neutrality. When workers share an identity outside the workplace, and independent institutions are organized around those identities, unions can partner with the leaders of those institutions to advance unionization. But such coalitions can be fragile. As it seeks to expand the security campaign into additional sectors of the burgeoning security industry, both in Los Angeles and nationally, black community support should not be taken for granted. Maintaining it will require ongoing bridge building and an organic commitment to maintaining the alliance with independently powerful black community leaders. The relationship must not devolve into what Frege, Heery, and Turner (2004) call a “vanguard” coalition, in which union allies are weak and subordinate to the union. Weak community allies could never have provided the external leverage necessary to win unionization in L.A. security. The L.A. security officers’ campaign illustrates both the challenges involved in such coalition-building efforts and their future promise.

10 From the Shop to the Streets UNITE HERE ORGANIZING IN LOS ANGELES HOTELS

Forrest Stuart

Thanks to a decades-long process of restructuring and consolidation, the North American hotel industry has gained enhanced capacity to block employee attempts to unionize. In an effort to reverse the resulting decline in union density, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union (HERE), now part of UNITE HERE,1 developed an innovative organizing model that combines “rank-and-file intensive organizing” (Bronfenbrenner 1997) with research, community coalition building, and mobilizations both inside and outside the workplace that generate “public dramas” (Chun 2005).2 This model has been far more successful in overcoming employers’ opposition to unionization efforts than traditional labor organizing approaches. This chapter elaborates the coalition-building dimension of the HERE model through a case study, based on participant observation, of the union’s recent drive to unionize thirteen hotels near the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Part of the union’s national Hotel Workers’ Rising (HWR) campaign, the LAX drive relied heavily on the work of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), whose research helped frame the effort as part of a strategy for local economic renewal. The union organized rankand-file hotel workers in the LAX area, but its campaign also relied on extensive outreach to political, religious, and other community allies, building a coalition to support card-check neutrality agreements and a living wage ordinance specifically targeting the LAX-area hotels. When the employers responded with efforts to repress workers’ organizing efforts and block the living wage ordinance, the campaign staged public dramas—shaming rituals 191

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and public protests—with the support of the union’s community allies that provided crucial leverage. Although at this writing the final outcome of the campaign is uncertain, it has already led to contract and negotiation victories in some of the LAX hotels and has also helped empower workers on the job to stand up to management on a regular basis.3

Hotel Industry Restructuring and the HERE Organizing Model The restructuring of the hotel industry that began in the 1980s substantially reduced the level of unionization in the industry. The percentage of hotel workers covered by a union contract fell from 15.4 percent to 11.7 percent between 1983 and 2000, and then to only 9.1 percent in 2007.4 Consolidation and centralization of ownership followed a period of overbuilding amid the economic recession of the 1980s. Many independent property owners were unable to survive this downturn and were either forced into bankruptcy or sold their properties to larger, publicly held corporations and investment groups. By the turn of the century, one-fifth of the industry’s total revenues were posted by the four largest hotel firms, and the largest fifty firms accounted for half of all revenues (Bernhardt, Dresser, and Hatton 2003). Under these conditions, hospitality has grown into a $130 billion a year industry, employing more than 1.8 million workers nationwide (U.S. Census 2002; U.S. Labor Statistics 2006). Industry consolidation was one factor contributing to the decline in union density, as older union hotels went out of business and nonunion competitors enlarged their market share (Cobble and Merrill 1994). Larger hotel chains have more significant reserves of capital at their disposal to fight unionization and can more easily absorb the impact of local strikes and workplace actions, since the costs involved are spread across multiple properties. In addition, these companies wield significant political clout, thanks to not only direct campaign contributions but also their ability to exert influence over local tourism markets. Because of the intensified competition and performance pressures they face, large hotel corporations have developed cost-cutting strategies that influence the context for potential unionization efforts. One such strategy is “lean” staffing, which increases the amount of work performed by each individual employee (Bernhardt, Dresser, and Hatton 2003). Another is “crosstraining,” which allows managers to assign workers a variety of tasks and thus to hire fewer workers and to deploy those that remain with greater flexibility. Cross-training also reduces the costs to hotels when terminating employees; indeed, entire union worker committees can be fired en masse without fear of losing access to qualified replacements.

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As in many service industries, labor costs in hotels make up the bulk of operating costs, so that any increases in employee compensation directly impact hotel profit margins. However, since competition in the industry is highly localized, wages can be taken out of competition if unionization in a given market is extensive enough, potentially undercutting the economic dimension of employer motivations to resist organizing efforts. Indeed, as Bernhardt, Dresser, and Hatton (2003) have shown, the mere presence of a union at a single hotel does not guarantee workplace improvements unless union density increases across an entire local market. This is precisely why HERE adopted a geographic market approach to its hotel organizing campaigns at LAX and elsewhere. Industrywide organizing is only one dimension of the HERE model, however. In the face of hotel industry restructuring, the union crafted a comprehensive new approach designed to counter employers’ enhanced antiunion capacities. Like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), HERE turned away from the traditional focus on winning National Labor Relations Review Board (NLRB) elections. Under the NLRB process, unions submit authorization cards from at least 30 percent of workers, stating that they desire union representation, following which the NLRB will administer an election. Because many employers use legal and technical challenges to prolong the process, sometimes for years, many unions have abandoned this approach entirely (Waddoups and Eade 2000). HERE pioneered what has become a popular alternative means to seek union recognition, namely “card-check neutrality.” With this approach, the union secures advance agreement from employers to recognize the union once a majority of eligible workers sign union authorization cards. As researchers have demonstrated, card-check campaigns yield higher recognition success rates than traditional NLRB elections (Eaton and Kriesky 2001). Along with card-check neutrality, HERE’s organizing model includes three key elements—usually deployed simultaneously. The first is what labor scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner calls “rank-and-file intensive organizing” (Bronfenbrenner and Juravich 1998; see also Sharpe 2004). Teresa Sharpe’s (2004) ethnography of a hotel organizing campaign in northern California illustrates the HERE variant of this approach. As Sharpe documents, organizers educate workers about the hotel industry and its power structure, and help them mobilize confrontational worksite actions that disrupt everyday business practices. These actions help build collective power in preparation for larger-scale acts of protest. A second element of HERE’s model involves building alliances with political and religious leaders and other key figures in the local community. Here, paralleling its organizing approach inside the workplace, the union escalates confrontational actions to fight against employers’ antiunion

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tactics. These actions typically involve what Jennifer Chun (2005) calls “public dramas.” Among their goals is to stain the international brand image of targeted hotel companies, framing labor disputes as part of the broader quest for social justice. Apart from their moral impact, these efforts can affect consumer demand, damage hotel firms’ investment opportunities, and influence third-party organizations in the hotel market, such as travel agents and convention bureaus (Cobble and Merrill 1994). HERE’s public dramas are amplified by its strategic use of media outreach, bringing hotel workers’ struggles into the center of public discourse. The HERE approach to mobilizing community allies has been highly effective not only in California, but in campaigns across the nation (Peters and Merrill 1998; Sharpe 2004). A third element of HERE’s comprehensive organizing approach is its use of economic and social research. Not only does the union use research to determine the key leverage points for pressuring employers but also deploys it to appeal to potential allies. By linking employment practices—such as low wages, the lack of health care coverage, and workplace injuries—to other problems in the targeted community, research can help persuade allies that support for the union’s campaign will help them achieve their own, preexisting goals. This allows the union to benefit from its allies’ independent capacity to exert leverage on employers—through legislative and political reforms, for instance. HERE has also been highly responsive to the changing demographics of the U.S. hotel industry workforce, adopting a forthright immigrant rights platform (Wells 2000). In addition, the union has systematically widened the scope of its organizing. Rather than launching narrow campaigns that target a single hotel, the union has increasingly sought to synchronize contract negotiations so that all the unionized hotels in a given region are at the bargaining table at the same time. In 2004, this approach was expanded and formally crystallized into the HWR campaign, which involves an effort to synchronize expiration dates of existing contracts not only within but also across regions. The HWR campaign also includes a demand for “growth clauses” in all the union’s contract renewals in North America (Zuberi 2007). Under such clauses, hotels would agree to remain neutral in future campaigns that target newly acquired or constructed properties.

The LAX Hotel Campaign Unlike some of the other cities where UNITE HERE has a presence, Los Angeles has relatively low levels of hotel industry union representation. In

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this context, the HWR effort to synchronize contract renegotiations is not enough; the percentage of properties under contract in the local market also must be increased in order to take wages out of competition. As a step in that direction, Local 11, the UNITE HERE union local representing the city’s hotel workers, launched an organizing campaign in one key segment of the L.A. market, namely the thirteen nonunion hotels along Century Boulevard near LAX. Drawing on the signature HERE organizing model described above, Local 11 not only relied on extensive research and rank-and-file intensive organizing inside the hotels but also mobilized powerful allies in the area, creating the Coalition for a New Century. This coalition-building process was an integral feature of the campaign, and from the outset, the unionization effort as a whole was framed as a project that would benefit not only hotel workers but the wider community. In building the coalition, Local 11 worked closely with LAANE, a labororiented, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) founded in 1993 with support from both HERE and the L.A. County Federation of Labor. LAANE took on the task of conducting background research on the LAX area, in order to assess the manner in which hotel industry conditions impacted the LAX-adjacent community, as well as to uncover issues that might help activate potential community and political allies.5 In August 2005, LAANE organized a Blue Ribbon Commission designed to gather input from citizens and community leaders, and published the “Plan for a New Century,” which put forth a comprehensive plan for reinvestment in the tourism industry as a central mechanism for alleviating poverty in the Century Boulevard Corridor adjacent to LAX (Century Corridor Commission 2006). Comparing hotel room rates, occupancy, and hospitality business taxes the commission found that the L.A. tourism industry lagged behind that of other “destination cities” like Las Vegas, San Francisco, and New York. The report argued that a fundamental reason for this disparity was the city’s relatively low public spending on its airportadjacent hotel zone and put forth a reinvestment plan that included building a mini–conference center near LAX. In addition, it called on the city to expedite approvals for improvements requested by airport-area businesses, to institute bed-tax rebates for hotel property enhancements, and to consolidate hotel transportation under a Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) clean fuel system. The commission suggested that in return, businesses should be encouraged to hire new employees from the local area and list jobs with community organizations before distributing announcements to the general public. The report also called for new city- and employer-funded job training programs, and for public review of any new hotel projects in the Century Corridor to assess their impact on the community (Century Corridor Commission 2006).

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Most important for the union campaign, the coalition proposed three new ordinances designed to improve the wages and working conditions of hotel employees. The first was a living wage ordinance, which would set minimum hourly wages in the 13 LAX hotels at $10.64 an hour, or $9.39 for hotels that offered workers employer-funded health care. The second ordinance required that service fees charged to patrons would be passed on to workers, rather than being kept by the hotels. A third ordinance called for worker retention rights when hotels are sold, guaranteeing employment for a minimum of ninety days after transfer of ownership.6 Unlike most living wage ordinances, whose coverage is limited to jobs in businesses directly contracting with public entities, the LAX ordinance targeted jobs in private-sector hotels (Luce 2004). The Blue Ribbon Commission report argued that this was appropriate in light of the benefits that LAX—a cityowned facility—bestows on hotels in the corridor. It also pointed out that low wages in the hotels had a negative impact on the communities adjacent to LAX.7 Armed with the commission report, the coalition launched a campaign to win public support for the proposed ordinances. If successful, not only would the living wage ordinance take wages out of competition and thus help neutralize potential employer opposition to unionization, but the resulting public scrutiny would also potentially reduce the effectiveness of any antiunion measures the LAX hotels undertook. Moreover, the coalition believed that the ordinances would resonate with potential allies in the community. Thus the proposed “Plan for a New Century” became the centerpiece of the coalition’s effort to ensure its LAX organizing drive reached beyond the workplace into the public arena. As organizers knew from previous experience, the effort to counter hotel attempts to block unionization would require a deep and sustained commitment. HERE has a reputation as a savvy union with the ability to mobilize workers, and as in the union’s previous campaigns, the initial focus was on clandestine organizing inside the workplace. The first step was to identify leaders—senior workers who are trusted by their co-workers—in all the key hotel departments, from catering, to housekeeping, to the front desk, to the banquet department. HERE organizers, after finding these rank-and-file leaders, worked to win them over to the union cause, thus building the core of a hotelwide network that comprises the internal union organizing committee of worker leaders. Only after this was accomplished did the union make the campaign public; at that point the committee began working to actively build support for the union in the full workforce. Meanwhile, outside of the workplace, LAANE spearheaded community organizing efforts on behalf of the coalition. As LAANE organizer Marx

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Gutierrez explained, in the LAX campaign strategy to mobilize community allies in some respects parallels HERE’s model of shop-floor organizing: A community is essentially one big shop, with different constituencies. There’s the LGBT constituency, the immigrants’ rights groups, the legal groups, the religious groups, and in each of these groups you find leaders. And it’s the same basic theory; you’re finding the leadership and turning them on to a specific campaign that is going to be long term.8

In reaching out to potential allies in the community, organizers identify leaders and for each specific constituency focus on issues that resonate most with each group. In this phase of the LAX effort, Gutierrez stated that LAANE organizers emphasized to their community audiences that the campaign was fundamentally concerned with reducing poverty and community blight caused by low-wage work. When we talk about it this way it breaks down barriers, and that’s why we always talk about it that way, instead of just “Live Better, Work Union.” We don’t come in there with a T-shirt with a fist in the air with a hook or something like that. . . . When we talk to groups we generally go in there and talk about low-wage work and ask if any of them have had a low-wage job. You just give people the numbers, what you can get in the city with a minimum wage job, and you see that in this city it’s not much. It’s just a life of poverty. You talk about housing, access to health care, time with children, quality of life, and really paint the macro picture for people in terms of their city.9

Gutierrez stressed the importance of communicating the underlying campaign issues that often stand independent of unionization. Soliciting stories and personal experience builds rapport with audiences and helps them imagine living in Los Angeles on a hotel worker’s salary. Another effective technique for building support in the community involved staging special events to link allies to hotel workers themselves. For example, just before the unionization drive went public, in December 2005, LAANE held an event at St. Joseph’s Church in Hawthorne, about a mile south of the LAX hotels. It was a posada, a Catholic celebration, popular across Latin cultures, in which churchgoers commemorate the biblical portrayal of Mary and Joseph in their search for accommodations just prior to the birth of Jesus. But this posada embellished the traditional script to focus on the economic difficulties facing low-wage workers in Los Angeles. It involved hundreds of church and community members, as well as more than a hundred hotel workers from the Radisson-LAX. Church members dressed as Mary and Joseph and visited the various doors of the church. As the sun set, the couple was followed by a long candlelight procession. At the first

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entrance, the procession was greeted by an individual dressed as a hotel manager. They asked him if he had any available positions. He replied that he did, but that he would only pay the minimum wage and require long overtime hours. He added that if they did not agree to these conditions, he would fire them, and then proceeded to slam the door in the face of Mary and Joseph. At the next door, the procession requested prenatal care. The person in the doorway turned them away, stating that without health insurance, they could not get medical care for baby Jesus. The procession continued in this manner around the church, seeking lodging and other necessities. At each entrance Mary and Joseph were denied the services they sought. The posada was followed by a banquet where community members spoke with hotel workers and their families about the economic difficulties they faced. Organizers stressed that when hotels refuse to respect neutrality agreements, poor working conditions are exacerbated because workers no longer can decide for themselves whether or not they want a union. Community members became deeply concerned about protecting workers’ free speech rights and stopping employer intimidation. Events like this one helped community allies develop personal connections to hotel workers and their struggle for better working conditions, which gave them a solid basis for providing long-term support throughout the campaign. Crucially, the organizing efforts were designed to allow each community ally to support the campaign for her or his own individual reasons, which often stood independent of unionization. For example, Aisha Blanchard-Young, a nine-year veteran teacher in the Inglewood schools, explained what initially motivated her to participate. During my first involvement in this movement, I was just a teacher in Inglewood. Many of the people who work in those hotels have children who are my students. There was a real connection there. My students don’t have access to decent health care and if their parents are going to be stressed about how they are going to afford those things, it’s going to trickle down to the classroom—they can’t learn, they can’t focus, and so I care about that. So yeah, I’ll go confront the boss with you all. As I got more involved, I saw the big picture.10

As an educator, Blanchard-Young witnessed the indirect effects of low wages and substandard conditions in the LAX hotels. Not only was her own job made difficult, but she saw students suffering due to conditions over which they had no control. This approach proved highly effective as LAANE set about organizing LAX-adjacent communities with high rates of poverty, crime, and urban blight. Indeed, these communities confronted the visible symptoms of

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substandard hotel jobs every day. But in reaching out to more affluent communities and more centrist political interests, organizers took a different tack. LAANE’s initial mapping had revealed important community networks that brought these disparate groups of individuals together. Los Angeles is characterized by a dense network of local civic and political clubs, as well as local party affiliates such as the Westside Democrats, LAX Democratic Club, and the L.A. Greens. Such groups include a fairly large number of frustrated middle-class individuals who gather on a monthly basis to debate current issues and lobby their political representatives. While hotel conditions might not always resonate with these individuals on a personal level, the “Plan for a New Century” took on significance for many of them. For example, Jane Affonso, a member of the LAX Democrats, recalled: For the LAX Democrats, they really feel like this is an issue that they can get behind. The members of the club are actually not that progressive, but because they feel like it’s on their turf, and affects the LAX area broadly, they should be involved as a group.11

Linda Piera-Avila, a member of the L.A. Greens, similarly states that while she had some personal connections to the campaign, including being the granddaughter of an L.A. hotel employee, her support for it was rooted in her Green Party commitments.12 Members of these political groups felt that participation in the campaign was not only beneficial for hotel employees, but also for their own organizations. For example, when they joined the campaign, the LAX Democrats were a relatively new organization and, according to Affonso, “were looking for a central agenda item to cement their legitimacy.”13 Conditions were similar for the L.A. Greens, as Piera-Avila noted: First and foremost, we care about the [hotel workers] issue. But in addition, we wanted to network and create good name recognition in the progressive community. We want people to know that we are involved in labor and social justice issues, and that we’re not just tree huggers, overly concerned with environmental issues. We want to show that we put our blood, sweat, and tears where our mouth is.14

Participation in the LAX campaign thus gave local political groups a means to legitimize their political role in the city. LAANE’s outreach to these groups was buttressed by the work of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), an interfaith advocacy association of more than six hundred religious leaders throughout the L.A. area, founded in 1993. CLUE’s mission is to organize religious leaders and congregations in the community, to provide spiritual and moral support to

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workers involved in labor struggles, and to help win moral legitimacy for efforts improving working conditions. As Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo points out in her analysis of CLUE’s history, acts of civil disobedience and protest by priests, rabbis, and ministers in religious attire are a powerful source of public legitimacy that can attract a wide range of additional allies and supporters. CLUE’s efforts on behalf of social justice in the workplace are rooted in a long tradition of Judeo-Christian teachings (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2008; see also Peters and Merrill 1998). CLUE leaders and members alike emphasize that supporting the struggles of low-wage employees should be seen as a central component of both religious identity and practice. The involvement of groups like CLUE in unionization and living wage campaigns can influence not only church congregations but also community and political decision-makers.15 After clandestine organizing within the hotels, the coalition publicly announced its Century Boulevard Campaign in February 2006. To jumpstart the campaign, the coalition sought a forum through which it could bring the “Plan for a New Century” to the attention of L.A. City Hall to begin mobilizing political allies. The initial opportunity to do so took the form of a hearing before the City Council’s Commerce, Trade, and Tourism Committee. The LAANE research team was aware that committee chair Janice Hahn and vice-chair Bill Rosendahl had been discussing plans for improving the Century Corridor, and that the committee had been working with the local business improvement district to help promote tourism there. At the hearing, workers and other affected community members testified about abuses that could be addressed by the three proposed ordinances. Housekeeper Maria Mendez testified that she earned only $9.38 per hour after eighteen years working at the Hilton-LAX, and that from these meager earnings she paid $200 per month for family health insurance. To afford this expense, she worked double shifts. Full-time Westin-LAX banquet server Manny Tavarez reported that because he has no health insurance, he takes his children to Tijuana, Mexico, when they are ill. Tavarez also reported that despite the 20 percent service gratuity automatically charged to banquet customers, he did not receive his full share of tips from the hotel, losing as much as $150 per night. And Radisson-LAX employee Victor Maya testified that when his hotel changed owners in 2000, 240 workers were laid off, with devastating effects on their incomes and health insurance coverage. Some of these workers had been employed at the Radisson-LAX for thirty years. Community representatives, including prominent religious leaders and local educators, provided testimony as well. They suggested that the hotels’ poor employment policies worsened the reputation of the Century Boulevard area (as home to numerous topless bars and lacking in attractive

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dining, entertainment, and retail opportunities, it is considered “seedy” by many local residents). For example, Tom Johnstone, assistant superintendent of the Lennox School District, stated that because many parents employed in the hotels lack family health insurance and must work multiple jobs to earn a living, the district incurs large expenses for after-school programs and school-based health clinics. In addition, limited parental supervision exposes many students to crime, street gangs, and drugs. Committee members were also reminded that the violent crime rate in the vicinity of the hotels is five-times higher than the L.A. County average (Century Corridor Commission 2006). The underlying message presented by the testimony of workers and coalition allies at the hearing was that if City Hall wanted to consider improvements to the Century Corridor to reduce crime, improve landscaping, and modernize infrastructure, they also needed to address the plight of lowwage hotel workers. The workers’ testimony struck a chord with committee chair Janice Hahn, who relayed her impressions following the hearing. More than their wages, I think I was drawn to their testimonies about their treatment, about their feeling of disrespect. They were not being treated with dignity. I think that caught my attention almost more than what they were making. I found myself thinking, “Gee, I wasn’t aware that we still had conditions where employers were treating their employees like this.” Then I was invited to go down and see this for myself. So I went down to check out the Four Points Sheraton.16

Hahn was the only committee member to accept the initial invitation to visit the area and talk to LAX hotel workers. When she did this in late February 2006, her experience echoed the workers’ testimony at the hearing. Ten minutes into Hahn’s visit, she was aggressively escorted off the premises by security guards. This was a turning point, she later recalled: I think that [the hotel] knew who I was, so I thought to myself, if they treated me like this, an elected official who chairs this committee, then it rings true for me that they certainly are harassing, intimidating, bullying, and treating their workers with disrespect. That was it for me. In my eyes, the workers have all the credibility in the world. From that moment on, I was on their side.17

Angered, Hahn returned to her office and began recounting her experiences to fellow city council members and to L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. This is an extreme example of the kind of experience that, as LAANE’s Gutierrez noted, wins lasting support from individuals who may not otherwise align themselves with organized labor.18

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Staging Public Dramas Once the political, community, religious, and workplace “shops” had been fully mapped and organized, the coalition escalated its efforts to apply pressure on the LAX area’s antiunion hotels. A particular target was the HiltonLAX, one of the most intransigent properties in the corridor. For more than a year before the campaign went public, employees at the Hilton-LAX had engaged in workplace confrontations with management. This had developed workers’ leadership skills and built a critical mass of prounion sentiment inside the hotel. As management responded with repressive (and in some cases illegal) antiunion tactics, union organizers coordinated confrontations inside the hotel with public dramas staged by the coalition on the outside, mobilizing community allies and drawing media attention to the campaign. Three of these events are detailed below.

Mother’s Day Protest at the Hilton-LAX In May 2006, the Hilton-LAX management unexpectedly terminated a worker who was an influential union supporter. According to UNITE HERE organizer Lorena Lopez, a delegation of workers immediately left their posts and marched to the human resources office, demanding an explanation for the firing. Management refused to meet with them. A few hours later, when the workers were eating lunch in the employee cafeteria, several hotel managers entered the room and singled out several workers for suspension. Commotion erupted in the cafeteria. When the dust settled, a total of seventy-seven workers had been suspended and instructed to immediately vacate the hotel property. Lopez and other Local 11 staff met with the suspended workers just outside the hotel, where they learned that the suspensions were for an indefinite term. In response, Local 11, LAANE, and CLUE mobilized the coalition into its first disruptive public drama. LAANE organizers contacted City Council members and found the highly receptive ears of Councilwoman Hahn, who was already familiar with the situation from her visit to Century Boulevard only three months earlier. Hahn agreed to speak with Hilton-LAX management about the mass suspensions. Later, Hahn recalled that her expectation was that asking the Hilton-LAX management for immediate reinstatement of the workers would be an easy task. However, when she tried to reenter the building the next morning, along with the suspended workers, hotel security blocked the entrances. As the procession surged toward one of the main doorways, Hahn inadvertently collided with a security guard. The two tussled briefly, and Hahn recounts being physically pushed over a nearby railing. She was distressed

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by this but regained her balance and joined the workers as they ran to a different entrance and into the hotel. When they got to the general manager’s office, they were told that he had left the property. Hahn demanded an immediate appointment, and then a worker spotted the manager hiding behind a nearby pillar. When the group confronted him, he stated that he would only speak privately with the councilwoman. Hahn agreed. She later recalled: It was the strangest thing I have ever been involved in. It was me, the GM [General Manager] and the HR person in this vault room. They were both sweating and were extremely nervous. They asked me, “Why are you here, why are you doing this, why are you involved in this?” I responded, “Well, I’m very concerned. These workers are in this hotel which is on the first line of hospitality for visitors coming out of LAX and you just suspended 77 of them.” I had to remind them that some of these workers had been with the Hilton for 20 years. I convinced both of them to go down and talk to them about what was happening. “You have 75 workers here; you make their appointments right now. I’m not leaving until you make their appointments right now.” So they agreed! The employees had to have this meeting or else they would have never been reinstated. I have never done union negotiations or labor relations; I didn’t know anything but I knew that [the employees] were going to get screwed and that management was going to use this opportunity.19

Meanwhile, outside of the hotel, LAANE organizers had mobilized the constituencies from the community that were part of the coalition supporting the hotel workers, who formed picket lines around the Hilton-LAX property and set up tents and accommodations, digging in for what was expected to be a lengthy protest. This mobilization, which garnered significant media attention, helped shape the actions of hotel management. At the height of the protest, community supporters and political allies joined with workers at a sidewalk Mother’s Day brunch. The magnitude, timing, and symbolism of this protest were strategically planned. Mother’s Day is a highly profitable occasion for hotels, which usually attract extra dining revenues from the holiday. Indeed, the suspended workers attending the brunch asserted that they had never seen hotel business so slow on Mother’s Day. Potential customers altered their plans and avoided patronizing the hotel once they saw the protesters outside. Thanks to Hahn’s confrontation with management, the sidewalk pickets by community supporters, and the Mother’s Day disruptions, the Hilton-LAX reinstated all of the suspended workers after two weeks.20

Civil Disobedience for an LAX Living Wage On September 28, 2006, four months after the successful Mother’s Day event, coalition members marched along Century Boulevard in what turned

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out to be the largest act of civil disobedience in L.A. history. This was another public drama designed to call attention to the need to improve working conditions in LAX hotels through unionization and the three proposed ordinances—especially the living wage proposal. However, the coalition framed the event much more broadly, as a march for immigrant rights like the ones that had taken place in March and May of 2006 in Los Angeles and around the United States. Most of the hotel workers were immigrants, which created a natural link between their plight and the larger issue of comprehensive immigration reform. As Kurt Petersen, director of organizing for Local 11, explained, the LAX hotel drive provided an opportunity for supporters of immigrant rights to embrace a concrete and potentially achievable economic demand. Coalition organizers approached leaders of the immigrant rights movement, including the We Are America Coalition, to march with the hotel workers. As a result, on September 28, nearly three thousand protesters gathered to obstruct Century Boulevard, LAX’s principal transportation artery (Mathews 2006a). Organizers strategically recruited elected officials and other prominent community supporters of the hotel campaign to participate in a staged arrest of more than three hundred supporters. Among them were city council members Ed Reyes and José Huizar—both representing districts with large numbers of Latino voters and both vocal supporters of immigrant rights. Huizar, who had become a naturalized citizen at the age of twenty-one, was the first Latino immigrant elected to the City Council, with support from Local 11, and was leading an alliance opposing naturalization fee hikes at the time. He was also a former board president of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), one of the LAX hotels’ largest customers, regularly renting space in the properties for training sessions, meetings, and banquets. Also arrested were several California State Assembly members, the mayor of San Fernando, a popular syndicated radio host, educators, politicians, clergy, and many others (Dellinger 2006a). This act of civil disobedience attracted extensive national media coverage, including television as well as the New York Times.21 This amplification of the protest gave the coalition the leverage it needed to secure action in the City Council. A week later, Hahn’s Commerce, Trade, and Tourism committee voted to adopt the reforms proposed by the Plan for a New Century (Laidman 2006). After an 11–3 City Council vote in favor of the living wage ordinance, Mayor Villaraigosa signed it into law on November 27, 2006. The tip protection and worker retention ordinances were also passed unanimously. Hahn proudly recalled her own role and the council’s contribution to the effort: No one should have a job that is that difficult, that many hours, and hard labor that does not translate into actually making ends meet. . . . When we

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asked our city attorney, it was within our power, we could actually impose a living wage, a tip protection ordinance, and a worker retention program if the hotel sold or changed names. I was more excited when the city attorney came back with those recommendations that we could do it than at any other point in this struggle. Because I found out that it is within my power, I can actually do this.22

However, the September street mobilization and the subsequent passage of the ordinances provoked a strong reaction from the hotel managements, resulting in a tragic outcome. According to Local 11’s Petersen, several of the hotels held antiunion counterprotests on September 28. On that day, Radisson-LAX housekeeper Maria Uriostegui reported to co-workers and friends that not only had she been prohibited from joining them in the march down Century Boulevard, she had been pressured by managers to publicly denounce the union campaign. Later that evening, Uriostegui showed visible sign of stress and fatigue, and the next day, she died in her sleep from a sudden stroke, at age thirty-six. This event further fueled the outrage of the hotel workers and their supporters, who vowed to hold the hotels accountable for their repressive actions.23

A Public Fast by Hotel Workers and Supporters Immediately after the City Council’s passage of the living wage ordinance, the hotel owners and business leaders associated with the L.A. Chamber of Commerce began an effort to block it, seeking a referendum in the May 2007 elections. The business campaign, called Save L.A. Jobs campaign, cost nearly a million dollars. In just a few weeks, the hotels gathered the nearly fifty thousand required signatures to halt implementation of the living wage ordinance and place it on the ballot. In response, and invoking the memory of Uriostegui, the coalition mobilized once again. On December 6, sixteen hotel employees began a seven-day, water-only fast. The goal was to generate even further negative publicity for the hotels by demonstrating the lengths to which workers were willing to go in order to win better working conditions. For this public drama to be successful, allies had to enlarge their role so as to help keep the fasting workers safe, healthy, and motivated to withstand the physical demands of the protest. During the fast, clergy members held daily vigils and group prayers, as political leaders joined area volunteers to hold activities for children of the fasters and their co-workers. Health care professionals like Piera-Avila, monitored the fasters’ blood sugar and vital signs. She later explained the important role of this community support: While [hotel employees] certainly could have done it on their own, it would have been dicey. Fasting is not something to mess around with. You have to

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be careful because people can pass out, and the paramedics will need to be called. If that happens, workers’ health will be endangered, and there will be a lot of bad press.24

Several community allies participated in minifasts, and presidential-hopeful Senator John Edwards and SEIU president Andy Stern held a press conference with hotel workers, providing national support for the fast on the sidewalk of Century Boulevard. Edwards commended the fasters for their courage and cited the LAX living wage ordinance as a national model for improving the economic opportunities for a sagging middle-class (Dellinger 2006b). Momentum continued to grow, along with media attention to the fast. On December 8, twenty-two members of the California congressional delegation called on the LAX hotels to drop their effort to overturn the living wage legislation in a letter to Mayor Villaraigosa: Rather than pursue a costly ballot initiative to decide this issue, we urge local business leaders to work with their employees, either through collective bargaining or by adopting the living wage. We should set an example that Los Angeles is a city that stands for workers’ rights and fair wages for all. (CBS 2 2006)

In addition, seven California State Assembly members scheduled a trip to Los Angeles during the fast to urge withdrawal of the referendum efforts and in support of the living wage mandates. At the end of the week, Mayor Villaraigosa himself joined the event commemorating the end of the fast in a festive sidewalk celebration.

Victories: A Living Wage and Union Recognition By February 2007, the LAX hotels began to respond to the growing political pressure. After discussions with the mayor, a compromise was reached— the hotels agreed to negotiate with the city on the terms of a new ordinance. However, after the renegotiation process, shortly before council vote on the compromise ordinance, the hotels filed a lawsuit challenging it, complaining that the new living wage ordinance was too similar to the earlier version. When the courts ruled in favor of the hotel interests, the city appealed the decision. An appeals court ruled on the matter in December 2007, finding in favor of the city. The appellate judges asserted that while the two versions of the ordinance contained similar language, the second version did in fact address the original business concerns (Hymon 2007). Still unsatisfied, the hotels appealed to the California Supreme Court on February 6,

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2008, but they did not prevail. On April 9, 2008, nearly a year and a half after the mayor had initially signed the living wage ordinance into law, it was upheld by the state’s highest court, in a major victory for the campaign (Orlov 2008). The L.A. City Council and its attorneys fought aggressively for the ordinances throughout this long process. Councilwoman Hahn recalled that at times, she and other elected officials had been harshly criticized for what the hotels alleged to be an illegal push to mandate unionization in private industry. She expressed a different view: That’s not why I was doing it. I was really doing it as something separate from unionization. Those three [ordinances] and the overall strategy really stand on their own merits, independent of unionization. I always framed this whole thing as being about the face of the hospitality and tourism industry. Millions of visitors fly into LAX and they stay at our hotels because of these workers. These are the people who are waiting on them, who are cleaning their room, who are answering their call at 11:30 at night for a grilled cheese sandwich. I began to think that this workforce is just so valuable to tourism in Los Angeles. It’s a wonder that we have never recognized or positioned the issue like this before.25

Other members of city council, including Ed Reyes and José Huizar, similarly believed that the ordinances would improve the economic well-being of the constituencies they represented, and also help advance the goals of the immigrant rights movement. After the series of public dramas, ongoing community support, and validation from the California courts, hotel workers experienced their first victories as four Century Boulevard hotels finally agreed to recognize UNITE HERE. By the spring of 2008, the Four Points Sheraton and the Sheraton Gateway had negotiated their first union contracts, and a successful card count had led to union recognition at the Radisson-LAX and the WestinLAX. According to the Los Angeles Business Journal, these four hotels are among the largest in L.A. County, and account for a majority of the hotel rooms on Century Boulevard (Nusbaum 2008). The contract victory at the Four Points Sheraton exemplifies the successful application of the HERE organizing model. The hotel’s owner, American Property Management Corporation (APMC), is the fifteenth largest hotel firm in the United States (Labor Desk 2008). After the union won recognition through a successful card-check process in September 2007, workers began accusing APMC of negotiating in bad faith and blocking efforts to improve working conditions. After six months at the bargaining table with no progress toward a contract, the coalition initiated a boycott of the Four Points Sheraton on March 10, 2008, as it had already done at the Hilton-LAX.

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The union drew the attention of APMC representatives to the Hilton example, claiming that since that boycott began in 2006, the LAX Hilton had lost $5 million in banquet customers alone. On the second day of the Four Points boycott, after several clients pledged to pull upcoming events from the property and move them to nearby competitors, the hotel began negotiating in good faith and soon afterward signed its first union contract.26 Even in the hotels that have not yet recognized the union—notably, the Hilton-LAX—the campaign has successfully empowered workers in their daily struggles on the job. Invisible to the broader public, managers frequently attempt to undermine unionization efforts thorough everyday interactions designed to foster an environment of fear, typically on the advice of antiunion consulting firms. In 2007 alone, the Hilton-LAX paid one such firm, Cruz & Associates, more than $900,000, or about $2,000 per worker.27 Yet the coalition’s organizing strategy has begun to effectively neutralize these costly antiunion efforts. In the summer of 2007, for example, a group of Hilton banquet workers confronted management over the issue of tip distribution. The workers reported that a newly instituted system of gratuity dispersal had reduced cash payouts. The banquet servers formed a delegation to protest the new policy, pointing out that it constituted infringement of the servers’ legal right to tips. In response, the hotel reversed course and reinstituted the original gratuity policy. According to senior banquet staff, this type of managerial capitulation was unprecedented. They also indicated that the Century Boulevard tip ordinance empowered them to make their demands to management more aggressively and to win a significant victory on this issue.28 Two months later, in August 2007, workers again protested when kitchen managers at the Hilton-LAX suspended an employee who refused to participate in cross-training. As Lopez later explained, ten cooks and several servers confronted the managing chef with refusals to train for additional jobs without adequate compensation, and threatened a collective work stoppage. The kitchen managers reversed course and immediately reinstated the suspended employee.29 Such workplace protests were rare or nonexistent at the hotel before the Century Boulevard campaign. However, the involvement of political, community, and religious allies in the organizing effort gave workers a sense of moral legitimacy and made them more willing to confront their employers. As Marta Santamaria, lead organizer of the Sheraton Four Points Hotel, recalled: When the campaign first started, the workers were afraid to even talk to the managers. The managers didn’t even know the names of some of the workers that had worked in the hotel for 20 years. Now, when they go on

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delegations to the general manager, management knows their name, because every time they discipline someone, they all march into human resources and protest.30

Rank-and-file workers also testified to the importance of community involvement in helping them stand up for their rights. As housekeeper Julieta Rodriguez put it: If I am receiving support, it helps me grow. It makes me feel better. It makes me want to know my rights. This fight has taught us a lot about how to defend ourselves. My boss is always attacking me, telling me to do this and do that. I told him, “You know what? Instead of making our lives harder, you should think of us as the heart of this hotel. And you don’t want to have a problem with your heart. So give us our due respect. And when the workers speak, learn to listen!”31

Similarly, when housekeeper Amalia Reina was falsely accused of stealing room supplies and threatened with termination, she drew on community support, and the moral high ground it provided, as she defended herself against the claims by her supervisor. I told her, “You are accusing me of robbing these towels but I know that the problem is that I am supporting the union! And that is the reason! But this is not going to work because everyone is supporting me—the politicians, the clergy, everyone. So many people are supporting me! Sí se puede!”32

In this way, external leverage enhanced workers’ internal organizing efforts, enabling them to engage in aggressive and confrontational on-the-job protests.

Conclusion The highly successful LAX hotel organizing campaign illustrates many of the strategies and tactics that HERE has developed over the years in its efforts to rebuild union density in the hotel industry. At the heart of the LAX campaign was the creation of the Coalition for a New Century, a broadbased labor-community alliance that was able to generate a great deal of pressure on employers. Alongside the coalition efforts, Local 11 organized inside the targeted hotels, training workers in techniques to confront their employers. LAANE generated research on the effects of the LAX hotels on local communities, enabling the coalition to frame the campaign so that it resonated with potential allies and thus won their support. The coalition also staged public dramas to increase the pressure on targeted hotels to improve

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employment practices and desist from antiunion efforts. Strengthened by the external pressure brought to bear by its mobilizations of influential allies, the union’s internal organizing efforts altered the work environment and, over time, empowered workers to forcefully express their demands. Engaging employers on two fronts, the coalition reached recognition and contract victories at four major hotels. Public dramas were also crucial in winning sustained support from influential members of the L.A. City Council, which adopted the coalition’s proposed living wage ordinance and two other ordinances benefiting LAX hotel workers in late 2006. Local politicians steadfastly supported the coalition even when the hotels pushed back in an effort to block implementation of the law, leading to a prolonged legal battle. Ultimately, the mix of rank-and-file-intensive organizing, sustained community support, and confrontational public dramas proved a potent formula, and the positive outcome of the LAX campaign augurs well for UNITE HERE’s future, both in Los Angeles and across North America.

11 The Janitorial Industry and the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund Karina Muñiz

It is 3:00 a.m. in Los Angeles. While the majority of the city’s residents are sound asleep, Esperanza is only half way through her shift.1 After waxing the floors of the entire supermarket, cleaning the bathrooms, and wiping down the freezers in the meat area, she still needs to clean the employee offices, sweep the front of the building, and tidy up the produce section. If she doesn’t take any breaks she may be able to finish all the work her supervisor has told her she must do tonight. He still hasn’t given her any of the safety equipment he promised her, and the cleaning fluids are starting to make her skin peel. For the second time this week, her nose is bleeding from exposure to such strong chemicals. Her paycheck was supposed to arrive two weeks ago, but the company keeps telling her to wait one more day. And the supermarket manager locks the building at night, so there is no way out until This chapter is dedicated to Edward Tchakalian who passed away on February 6, 2006. Tchakalian served as a mentor to all Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund (MCTF) staff and worked with the janitors and staff until his last days. According to Lilia Garcia, executive director of the MCTF, he created the vision that has made the MCTF what it is today. Tchakalian was born in Shanghai, China. His parents fled Armenia and the Turkish massacres in the early 1900s, and his family eventually migrated to San Francisco, California. Tchakalian joined the marines and served in Korea from 1951 to 1952. On the GI Bill he pursued his graduate degree in economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He went on to work at the State of California’s Industrial Welfare Commission and spent weeks working with agricultural farm workers and Cesar Chavez in central California. Tchakalian later became the state’s senior deputy labor commissioner helping thousands of California workers. After his retirement, he nurtured and fostered the development of the MCTF.

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he comes back at 7:00 a.m. to open the doors. If she didn’t desperately need this job, Esperanza would have already quit to work somewhere else. After her near-fatal journey across the desert just to get to Los Angeles, the hope of a good job that pays decent wages seems like a far away dream. Esperanza’s story is unfortunately not unique, but as customers of supermarkets, all most of us see are the clean aisles, the well-organized fruit, and the shiny floors. And while the SEIU’s Justice for Janitors ( JfJ ) campaign has brought to light the plight of the maintenance worker, most nonunion janitors employed in Los Angeles still make subminimum wages, work six to seven days a week, do not get paid overtime, and are often not paid for all the hours they work. Many workers are not trained, nor given proper equipment to protect their hands and feet from chemical exposure. Accidents on the job are common—as is failure to report these accidents for fear of retaliation.2 These unlawful and unsafe conditions have been on the rise in recent decades. In the past, a highly unionized janitorial industry and labor law enforcement effectively protected janitors’ rights and most were paid fair wages.3 Unionized workers knew they could go to their shop steward if they experienced wage and hour legal violations or health and safety issues. Employers were held responsible through the union contract. Without a union, avenues for worker redress are very limited. Today, the majority of janitors in Los Angeles County do not have a union contract.4 Given the fact that unionization is incomplete, the union, the unionized employers, and law-abiding nonunion employers all share an interest in putting a floor under wages and working conditions. A floor limits undercutting and illegal business practices by nonunion, and/or non-law-abiding competitors, and makes workers less susceptible to labor law violations. However, taking wages and working conditions out of competition entirely requires very high union density and/or strict labor law enforcement. With these mechanisms in place employers could be held accountable for their actions, thereby stopping the proliferation of undercutting. This was the long-term goal of the Jf J campaign, which adopted an industrywide strategy to win union control of the local janitorial labor market and to take wages out of competition (Waldinger et al. 1998). Although the Jf J campaign has made significant gains, there are still more janitors working for nonunion than for union employers, so that the threat of undercutting is omnipresent. In this chapter, I expose an alternative strategy for leveling the playing field exemplified by the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund (MCTF)—a janitorial watchdog organization that monitors illegal business practices in the janitorial industry in California and facilitates labor law enforcement

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so that employers are held responsible and fair competition can exist. The MCTF involves a partnership between the janitors’ union and union employers whose market share is threatened by low-ball contractors (Ruckelshaus 2008, 406). In the context of limited labor law enforcement, MCTF’s work has achieved significant change in the industry.

Background: The Los Angeles Janitorial Industry In the L.A. janitorial industry, union density has fluctuated over time. Unionization originally dates from the 1940s, but as early as the 1950s, many local owners in commercial real estate were gradually replaced by national and international investors. The new owners found it more efficient to purchase cleaning services from janitorial firms, rather than hiring their own cleaning workforces in diverse and scattered buildings. This type of contracting posed a threat to Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 399’s membership, but the union was able to recoup initial losses. By the mid-1970s, nearly all of the large downtown buildings were under union contract, as were most of the large buildings in Hollywood, Pasadena, and Santa Monica (Mines and Avina 1992). The largest cleaning company, American Building Maintenance, was 100 percent unionized; and the union successfully organized other large janitorial firms. By 1982, total compensation in the union sector had risen to above twelve dollars an hour compared to only four dollars an hour in the nonunion buildings (Milkman 2006; Waldinger et al. 1998). With the office-building boom in the 1980s, however, nonunion building maintenance firms rapidly gained market share. These firms undercut the unionized cleaning contractors with discounted prices, and the unionized firms lost contract after contract. The shift to nonunion firms meant that janitors had to clean more square feet for less pay (and benefits) than before. In the same period, labor law enforcement declined and sweatshoplike labor practices increasingly appeared (Fisk et al. 2000; Milkman 2006, 101–2). The janitorial workforce consists of predominantly foreign-born Latino and Latina workers, many of whom are monolingual Spanish speakers with limited literacy in their native language. In contemporary Los Angeles, Latino immigrants make up more than 95 percent of the janitorial workforce.5 Most nonunion janitors hold multiple jobs, do not have health insurance, are public-transit dependent, and lack access to even basic health services. Many are unfamiliar with their workplace rights and the protections available to them under the law (Garcia 2007, 2). Subcontractors favor hiring immigrant workers who are especially vulnerable to exploitation (Ruckelshaus 2008, 373).

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However, immigrant workers were at the forefront of the SEIU’s Jf J campaign, which successfully reorganized the building services industry in the late 1980s, bringing five thousand to six thousand largely immigrant workers under union contract. In the years since, the union’s membership has been maintained over the course of a series of contract renegotiations (Erickson et al. 2002). Despite the union’s successes, however, the vast nonunion sector poses a constant threat to the union and to labor standards in the industry. Wage and hour violations, as well as tax fraud and criminal activity, remain widespread in the nonunion sector. State enforcement of labor law has been ineffective, and federal and state public agencies have reduced staffing and enforcement efforts (Ruckelshaus 2008, 371). As Janice Fine (2006, 265) summarizes the situation, “State inspectors are caught in a dysfunctional system that makes it impossible to sensibly prioritize when dealing with huge caseloads.” The janitorial industry’s clients range from owners of commercial real estate, to supermarkets, to medical facilities and industrial parks. These clients are the ultimate decision-makers in selecting the company to clean their facility. However the cleaning companies themselves are multilayered in structure. The “prime” contractor is the entity that submits a bid to the client and negotiates the contractual relationship. The prime is typically an established business operation with physical offices and organized staffing structures with legitimate payroll systems. However, the prime often subcontracts jobs to other entities that actually perform the cleaning services. The character of “subs” varies dramatically. Many operate within the “underground” economy, paying wages off the books, in cash, and without maintaining legally required payroll records (Garcia 2007, 3; Greenhouse 2008a, 237). In 2004 alone, the Janitorial Enforcement Project of the California Employment Development Department uncovered more than $48,351,502 in unreported wages, and 2,706 previously unreported janitorial workers (Cal. Employment Dev. Dept. 2005, 6). In addition, employers who violate wage and hour laws often purchase insufficient workers’ compensation coverage or none at all. Those who do have coverage often do not report workplace accidents, because reporting an accident increases the employer’s workers’ compensation insurance premium (Garcia 2007, 3). In 2004, the Employment Enforcement Task Force issued labor code citations to 221 businesses for a total of $1,155,000 for failure to provide workers’ compensation insurance coverage (Cal. Employment Dev. Dept. 2005, 15). The state absorbs millions of dollars in costs associated with uninsured workplace accidents. If an injury is severe enough, workers will go to an emergency room at a county-funded hospital—the most costly type of health care and a significant burden on taxpayers (Garcia 2007, 10).

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Misclassifying janitorial workers as “independent contractors” is another common business practice that fosters unfair competition (California Employment Dev. Dept. 2001, 10).6 True independent contractors have the right to direct and control the tasks for which they are hired, including when and where the work is performed, the tools or equipment used, where supplies and services are purchased, what work must be performed by a specific individual, and the sequence that is followed in carrying out the work. By contrast, an “employee” must be declared as such by the employer, who is then obliged to cover payroll taxes, workers’ compensation insurance, and a variety of other mandated obligations (Garcia 2007, 5). Because labor costs are a large proportion of total costs, the janitorial industry’s competitive structure gives subcontractors huge incentives to break the law. If subcontractors do not pay the legal minimum wage and fail to pay for worker’s compensation insurance and payroll taxes, they can submit a substantially lower bid to potential clients. An illegitimate subcontractor can easily have a 35 percent cost advantage over a subcontractor who pays payroll taxes and insurance (Garcia 2007, 6). Clients who choose substantially lower bids often know that the subcontractor is engaged in illegal activity. Yet they are not held to account because they do not directly employ the janitors. The subcontracting system, moreover, creates confusion among workers as to who is actually their employer (Ruckelshaus 2008, 379). These arrangements are not unique to the janitorial industry. Similar conditions can be found in many other industries from residential construction, to restaurants, and the especially notorious apparel industry. What sets the janitorial industry apart from many of these is the leverage that partial unionization has generated. The MCTF is a key initiative developed as a result of this unionization.

The MCTF’s Establishment and Development SEIU Local 1877, which represents janitors in Los Angeles and other parts of California, partnered with three of its largest signatory contractors to establish the MCTF in 1999 (Garcia 2007, 1). The MCTF is a Taft-Hartley Trust Fund financed by union employers in the janitorial industry and jointly governed by the contributing employers and the union. Its goal is to combat the growth of unfair competition in the janitorial industry by exposing the use of illegal and unfair business practices. The MCTF grew out of the union’s recognition that there were limits to what organizing alone could accomplish. Union employers were frustrated by subcontractors who could easily outbid them by violating labor laws.7 Local 1877 needed a strategy that could expose illegal practices in the industry

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and establish a system to hold the clients soliciting the cleaning services accountable. According to Triana Silton, then an SEIU Local 1877 staffer who was among MCTF’s founders, “We wanted to establish standards that said, ‘If you’re engaged in illegal business practices you will get caught, and if you’re a client company, and you select a bid that is extremely lower that the other competitors, you must know why and take some accountability.’ ”8 The MCTF idea came from Silton’s research on how fair competition was fostered within the unionized construction industry. “We looked at how the building trades were holding the ‘bad apples’ accountable,” she recalled. “They worked together with the union employers to create a monitoring system for their competitors.”9 In the building trades, Taft-Hartley labormanagement Trust Funds had been established years before to investigate illegal business practices and to fill in the gaps where labor law enforcement was lacking. These building trades Trust Funds are often used to promote fair bidding systems and have also developed marketing data on the comparative cost and quality of union versus nonunion construction. Their compliance programs are based on the premise that when nonunion shops violate the law, they obtain an unfair advantage that inhibits the ability of union contractors to compete. Trust Funds also monitor compliance with wage and hour laws as well as health and safety, environmental, tax, employee benefits, and workers compensation laws (Waites and Cohen 2003, 13–14). Drawing on the building trades example, Silton and Mike Garcia, president of Local 1877, proposed using this strategy in janitorial. Establishing the MCTF was also a strategic business investment for employers who obeyed the law and were not afraid to partner with the union.10 Diversified Maintenance Services was among the employers involved in the establishment of the Trust Fund. As its CEO, Dick Dotts, who chairs the MCTF’s Board of Trustees, recalled: This is a matter of leveling the playing field—we follow the laws. Because as union employers we have to follow the contract. . . . Whereas other companies, they don’t have a collective bargaining agreement they have to abide by. So we must level the field economically so that they [nonunion contractors] must also abide by the law. . . . We put the ball up in front of the net for the union so to speak.11

Exposing illegal business practices and holding employers accountable was also an important strategy for SEIU Local 1877 to maintain union density. Shoring up the wage floor made it feasible for union employers like Dotts to be able to stay in business. In addition to Dotts, Dave Ferguson of American Building Maintenance (ABM), the nation’s largest janitorial company, also got on board when the MCTF was formed in 1999.

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Both the union and the unionized employers know that MCTF’s ability to focus on wage and hour claims could ultimately lead to higher union density by exposing illegal business practices and putting pressure on employers—and the clients who do business with them—to comply with the law. As Dotts recalls: The question was: Could the market be held by the union, would it be loyal? . . . One of the discussions we had was, “How do you protect businesses so that we do have a level playing field as far as future opportunities are concerned?” It’s difficult to organize in the janitorial industry because employees are all over the place . . . they’re scattered, it’s not like they are in a factory. The problem was the basic model wasn’t effective and [union] employers could not carry that off independently. We created the Trust Fund to be managed by both employer trustees and union trustees.12

Highlighting wage and hour violations in the janitorial industry and filing claims with the Labor Commission was part of Local 1877’s organizing from the beginning, but it was not nearly as systematic or as effective as the MCTF. According to Jono Schaffer, a top staffer of SEIU Local 1877 at the time MCTF was founded the union saw the MCTF as important because it exemplified and increased the distinction between union employers and nonunion employers. MCTF can explicitly go after nonunion employers. . . . Traditionally union organizers wouldn’t have considered going after subcontracted work because you go through the exercise of organizing workers and you lose the contract and then go back to square one. With market-based strategies we’ve tried to build broad representation until we have enough of the market organized that we can defend the new rates.13

The MCTF and the building trades trust funds that inspired it, are legally rooted in the Labor Management Cooperation Act of 1978, an amendment to the Taft-Hartley Act that permits the establishment of labor-management cooperation committees (LMCCs). The 1978 law specifies the purposes of such Trust Funds as providing workers and employers with opportunities to study and explore new and innovative joint approaches to achieving organizational effectiveness; to enhance the involvement of workers in making decisions that affect their working lives; and to expand and improve working relationships between workers and managers.14

The MCTF’s purpose falls within this legal framework, establishing a collaborative approach between employers and the union with regard to wages

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and conditions. In the building and construction trades there are between 250–300 LMCCs in the state of California alone.15 But according to Dotts, MCTF is the only such fund in the janitorial industry and is unique in the nation.16 LMCCs are tied to collective bargaining agreements, under which the union and the employers agree on the financial contributions to the Trust Fund (Waites and Cohen 2003, 5–6). The MCTF started off as a Memorandum of Understanding in January 1999 and was subsequently included in the 2000 collective bargaining agreement.17 Union contractors pay a specified number of cents per hour (the amount has increased from three to five cents over the past decade) into the fund for every working union janitor. At this writing, the MCTF is funded by forty signatory contractors in southern California and has offices in Los Angeles, Santa Ana, San Diego, and the San Francisco Bay Area. While the MCTF is neither a union nor a worker center, and does not have a membership base, its work resembles that of the worker centers that have proliferated in the United States in recent years. Like many worker centers, the MCTF promotes enforcement of labor standards and directs its efforts at raising wages and improving working conditions in low-wage industries (Fine 2006, 157). To this end, the organization utilizes three key strategies: (a) labor law investigation and enforcement; (b) worker education and outreach; and (c) agency and legislative reform.

Labor Law Enforcement: The Albertsons’ Case When the MCTF was first established in 1999, Javier Gonzalez, then an organizer at Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA, a popular education based worker center), was hired to lead the organization. He had experience filing wage and hour claims for day laborers, as well as organizing and educating workers about their rights, from his previous work with Victor Narro, then at Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA).18 Gonzalez had established relationships with the state labor commission that facilitated winning back pay for workers. Those relationships planted the seeds of the MCTF’s biggest victory, a class-action suit against Building One Services Solutions (a subsidiary of Encompass) and three major California supermarket chains (Albertsons, Ralph’s, and Safeway/Vons) for failing to pay janitors the minimum wage and the legally required premium for overtime. The case, settled in 2005, garnered $22.4 million in back wages for more than two thousand janitors, and ultimately led to thirteen hundred newly unionized janitorial jobs in southern California.19

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In 1999, Gonzalez began by bringing individual cases before the state Labor Commission. As is still the case today, the MCTF staff visited workplaces to talk with janitors about their working conditions, while also conducting in-depth interviews with workers in their homes. Once an individual case was assessed and violations of labor laws found, the MCTF explained to workers their legal rights in obtaining back pay and redress. If a worker chose to pursue a claim, Gonzalez and his staff served as the liaison between the janitor and the various regulatory agencies. As the MCTF began to bring these cases, in addition to establishing relationships with the state agencies and holding press conferences to expose the illegal business practices of employers, its work came to the attention of a senior deputy labor commissioner, Ed Tchakalian. Gonzalez recalls, “One day he pulled me aside after we won a case against an employer and told me that he was retiring and wanted to come volunteer for the MCTF . . . and he began to volunteer with us.”20 During Tchakalian’s forty-year career as a labor commissioner, he had established strong working relationships with other deputy commissioners, which became an enormous asset for MCTF. Just before he retired, Tchakalian had spent a year as a special investigator assigned to look at wage and hour violations in the supermarket sector of the janitorial industry. At that time, the MCTF was working primarily in the commercial real estate sector and had not yet begun to monitor retail store janitors. “Ed kept saying to me, ‘You’ve got to do the supermarkets . . . I can’t tell you what I found but the stuff is remarkable,’ ” Gonzalez recalled.21 As a special investigator, Tchakalian had compiled substantial evidence of wage and hour violations that were robbing workers of millions of dollars, as well as widespread health and safety violations. He also found that these illegal practices were costing the state millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. But the Labor Commission lacked the resources or the leadership to systematically pursue these cases.22 Heeding Tchakalian’s advice, Gonzalez approached the MCTF board and won approval to spend six months looking into the supermarkets. The union was still focusing primarily on janitors in office buildings, although as early as 1997, Adolfo Gamez and Reina Schmits of Local 1877 had been interviewing and filing grievances for janitors contracted at Vons and Albertsons over labor laws violations. Gamez recalls, “The response from the agencies wasn’t immediate—they would just go and talk to the employer and would conclude that there were no violations.” He added: Then in 1999 the MCTF got interested and agreed to help us with the supermarkets. The MCTF reviewed the information and concluded that they had enough to take action. They analyzed how we were working with the

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government agencies, and how we were not very successful. They wanted other entities to get involved in order to be more effective. . . . The MCTF was able to facilitate a structure and a system where they could put together a crystal clear package for the Department of Labor.23

Knowing that the state already had the information compiled by Gamez and Schmits, the MCTF began compiling new cases to prove that the violations were continuing. Gonzalez recalls what it was like when they first started visiting the stores, It was just absurd, we would come home and I couldn’t sleep. I had never seen stuff like this before. We met people where all they owned was a spoon, a cup, a plate and a sheet. People were paying their coyotes, paying for transportation, paying for their checks to be cashed. And they were scared—culturally they were intimidated. We went to one place where you had families living in a one-bedroom apartment that they divided by sheets that almost looked like tic-tac-toe.

He recalled another case in which a worker cut off his finger when the floorbuffing machine went out of control and slammed into the cash register. He waited alone for six hours until the store manager got there, afraid to call 911 because he was undocumented. Another man was infected with the HIV virus when a needle accidentally went into his leg. One woman was fired because she took a day off for Christmas even though she hadn’t missed a day of work in two years.24 Tchakalian, having worked for the state, knew the challenges in getting the Labor Commission to act even on these egregious violations, given their staffing, organizational, and budget constraints. With Tchakalian’s experience and understanding of the industry, the MCTF developed a new approach. Gonzalez recalls, “Ed was a genius. . . . He came up with a strategy to get the State to pay attention.”25 The MCTF began by asking for a briefing meeting with the Labor Commission’s District Office and Field Office staff. Ed and I sat down with them and told them our entire hypothesis of what was going on. We had been in communication with someone from Building One who had given us access to information. We painted the entire picture. I told them that every Friday we were going to bring in 10 workers with violations.26

They began to do this and gradually the numbers increased, until the last Friday of the month when the Labor Commission was forced to respond to more than twenty workers. The MCTF staff was doing house visits during the day and approaching workers on the job at night, in order to encourage janitors to speak out about their working conditions. Every time they got

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pay stubs from workers that showed tax violations such as failure to provide an itemized wage statement, misclassifying workers as independent contractors, or paying them in personal checks, a copy would be forwarded to the state agencies. This investigative work soon came to the attention of the employers. Tchakalian knew that if businesses could be held accountable, the MCTF would have far more leverage in putting a floor under wages and conditions.27 This was the larger goal of the MCTF’s work. While filing individual wage and hour claims could result in much-needed back pay for workers, it didn’t transform the industry as a whole. But once the companies’ livelihood, credit, and reputations were on the line, there was potential for largescale change. In principle, both the supermarkets—the clients—and the janitorial firms they hired could be held criminally liable for labor law violations. “Ed was always thinking bigger,” Gonzalez recalls. “He would ask, ‘Who is the guy behind the guy? Who is the one who pitches this to Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons? You’ve got to go to the top.’ The clients possess the greatest power and often are able to operate with impunity. When a client obtains a bid from a subcontractor that is substantially lower than its competitors’ bid, they should know that that labor laws are being violated.” Yet Tchakalian knew from experience that the state was not going to take on big employers like Albertsons and Vons. Gonzalez recalls, “He told me, ‘What we need is a lawsuit. This isn’t really a wage and hour issue, this is a civil rights issue.’ ”28 Gonzalez and Tchakalian then approached Victor Narro (then at CHIRLA) for assistance with the civil rights strategy. As Narro recalls, “The MCTF really was instrumental. . . . They uncovered all the data. Ed, having worked in labor enforcement for so many years, knew how the system worked.” Narro contacted Tom Saenz, then litigation director for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). “Tom was really impressed,” Narro recalls, “and having MALDEF as one of the lawyers in the case gave it the political capital it needed.”29 Tchakalian also approached Janet Herold to see if her law firm, Bahan and Herold, would be willing to take on a class-action suit against the supermarkets. Because Bahan and Herold had worked with Tchakalian previously for many years on labor law cases in the garment industry, which has equally complex subcontracting arrangements, he knew they had the necessary expertise.30 During this time, the MCTF also contacted Los Angeles Times reporter Nancy Cleeland. She visited the supermarkets with the MCTF staff and saw what the conditions were like.31 On July 2, 2000, a front page story by Cleeland was published in the Sunday Times, with the headline, “Heartache on

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Aisle 3: Sweatshop for Janitors.” It painted a stark picture of nonunion janitors’ experiences working in L.A. supermarkets: Frightened, desperate and isolated, they and thousands of other vulnerable immigrants constitute a new class of sweatshop labor. Late at night, as unionized stockers tear through cartons of merchandize and a few blearyeyed shoppers fill their carts, they are the anonymous figures at the end of the aisle, polishing the linoleum. (Cleeland 2000)

In November 2000 MALDEF, Bahan and Herold, and several other civil rights firms filed suit against the three largest supermarket chains (Albertsons, Ralphs, and Vons/Safeway), their prime contractor Building One Service Solutions, and all of their subcontractors. The lawsuit, known as Flores v. Albertsons (Flores v. Albertsons Inc., 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6171 C.D. Cal.) alleged gross underpayment of minimum wages, no overtime pay, forced double time work, and other violations. At the same time, the L.A. District Attorney’s Office spearheaded a criminal investigation with a multiagency taskforce that included both the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Unit, the state Department of Labor Standards and Enforcement (DLSE), the City Attorney, and the State Employment Development Department (Garcia 2007, 8). Flores v. Albertsons drew on joint-employer theory to directly challenge the idea that janitors are not the employees of building owners. Although the building owner (or client) may have the practical ability to oversee the work of the janitors and the contractual power to demand firings, it is difficult to establish legally that the client is the “joint employer” of the janitors who work in its buildings. Unless the building owner or manager can be shown to be a joint employer, however, he or she is not legally accountable to the janitors.32 MCTF had ample evidence to make a strong joint-employer case in the Flores case. For example, they had found dozens of forms that stated in writing that the subcontractors were not going to pay janitors until their work was evaluated by the client. The forms were signed by the workers, listed the workers’ hours, the client’s evaluation of the job, and were signed by the store manager. Even so, “the stores were saying they had nothing to do with the workers” Gonzalez recalls.33 In 2000, Gonzalez transitioned into working for SEIU Local 1877, and Lilia Garcia was hired as the executive director of the MCTF (she is still in that position at this writing). Garcia hired Tchakalian as a staff member, and he helped to mentor her on how to develop an effective strategy that could create systemic change. Once the Flores lawsuit was filed, MCTF continued to monitor the employers’ behavior, and to identify, recruit, and build a base among workers involved in the case.

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Many of the Los Angeles supermarket janitors were (and are) recently arrived immigrants from Puebla, Mexico.34 Workers got jobs through connections with family and friends, or directly through subcontractors who went to Puebla to recruit new workers, helping arrange their passage into the United States (for which they were charged against their pay once they started working).35 Because many of the janitors from Puebla had returned home, MCTF staff traveled to Puebla themselves to gather data for the lawsuit. Javier Amaro, a field investigator for the MCTF at the time, describes the creative ways in which they identified plaintiffs: We interviewed over 500 different people to be able to identify those we wanted involved in the class action. In some towns in Puebla we had to get a bullhorn and make an announcement inquiring as to whether residents had worked in Los Angeles as janitors for the supermarkets during that time. We even had to speak to the priest of the towns in order to find potential plaintiffs.36

The MCTF staff kept in contact with the plaintiffs and went back to Puebla after the lawsuit ended to find those who were owed money. Garcia recalls: Lawyers didn’t have the capacity to go to Puebla nor did they initially understand the complexities of claims administration with a predominantly immigrant clientele. Also, lawyers couldn’t solicit potential plaintiffs. It took the MCTF, a separate non-profit (501c5 status), to be able to legally encourage workers to join the lawsuit.37

The relationships that the MCTF field investigators had built with workers enabled them to accomplish all this. SEIU Local 1877 could not have pursued the matter alone as its organizers were responsible for many other activities. By concentrating on wage and hour violations, the MCTF developed expertise on how to move claims and built strong relationships with the regulatory agencies (Garcia 2007, 15–17). Five long years after the Flores suit was filed, twenty-three hundred janitors were awarded $22.4 million in back wages in January 2005. The joint employer Flores v. Albertsons lawsuit also changed the supermarket chains’ janitorial business practices. By the end of the lawsuit, all the chains in southern California had elected to contract with union janitorial contractors, which meant that their janitors had a collective bargaining agreement that gave them living wages and healthcare benefits.38 This also meant thirteen hundred new union jobs in southern California and increased union density within the janitorial industry, which in turn gave the union more leverage to put a floor under wages.

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Gamez recalls what this meant for Local 1877, “Prior to the lawsuit, the companies didn’t really care if workers were getting paid . . . but once these [labor law] violations went public, with the court case and Los Angeles Times article, companies were willing to negotiate with us to avoid any future liability issues.”39 And as Jono Schaffer, also of Local 1877, points out, “The Albertson’s case led to a big settlement in which [1300] workers don’t have to worry about a MCTF solution anymore.”40 Once the supermarket janitors became members of Local 1877, the burden of protecting their wages and working conditions was shifted to the union itself, which had to ensure that employers were adhering to the contract.

Education and Outreach through Field Investigation Labor law enforcement is but one prong of the MCTF’s threefold strategy. Equally critical, and in a symbiotic relationship with labor law enforcement, is education and outreach to workers. As MCTF director Garcia puts it, “With awareness-raising, education and advocacy, even frightened, vulnerable workers will report work-related injuries and wage and hour violations through State and Federal mechanisms in order to assert their rights” (Garcia 2007, 13). To this end, MCTF has from the outset sought to develop direct relationships with workers. But gaining workers’ trust is often challenging. Nonunion janitors justly fear that if they complain, employers might retaliate by firing them and/or by threatening them with deportation. MCTF’s field investigators are trained not only to understand, identify, and document noncompliance, but to gain workers’ trust, and be able to explain to workers their rights within the legal system so that they can advocate for themselves in the future. Like many worker centers (see Fine 2006, 12), the MCTF uses leadership development techniques to empower workers to take action on their own behalf and to work for broader economic and political change. All janitors who pursue a wage and hour claim with the MCTF must also participate in an interactive leadership training series that connects their work environment to the industry structure and the MCTF’s overall strategy. As Garcia explains: From the outset we tell janitors that in order to win we all have important roles, especially them. This is a challenging task because the legal system within which we operate has significant limitations that are often unjust. The underlying objectives of our trainings are to provide janitors with the tools to assert their rights, to become familiar with the laws their employers need to follow, to understand the industry structure, to understand how the legal system works, and to engage in a substantive discussion on how together we can change the industry.

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In-depth home visits with workers are also critical tools for building trust between the workers and the MCTF investigators. “Without this investment, it would be very difficult to get workers to talk to us,” Garcia points out. “This type of outreach is essential to successful enforcement and longterm industry change.”41 One of the MCTF’s most effective means of gaining workers’ trust is to hire rank-and-file janitors onto its staff. Currently, five out of its eight staff members are former janitors. As Rafael Ventura, a former janitor himself who is now a regional field coordinator for the MCTF, explains: I’ve spoken to many workers who are afraid. I understand, because of the problems I had in the past with companies, supervisors and the pressure and intimidation you feel. I tell them about my experiences and put myself in their position. I let them know that if a person doesn’t do anything then the companies will continue to be abusive. We’re all afraid but we can support each other and look for solutions together.

Ventura is an immigrant from El Salvador who was a union leader during the Justice for Janitors campaign and whose experiences in his own country shaped his world view: After coming from a country where there was so much injustice you carry with you the illusion that things here will be different—that they’ll be better. But the reality is that when you get here, you realize that while it might not be the same as back home, there is still the same injustice. And if I couldn’t do anything about the injustice over there, well here is an opportunity to be able to make change so I’m going to take advantage of it.42

An even more telling example is Francisco Javier Solórzano, who became a field investigator in the MCTF’s Los Angeles office after filing a wage claim against his employer, Mike Sullivan of Advanced Building Maintenance (ABM), that involved a two-year battle for redress.43 Solórzano had been working six to seven days a week, twelve hours a day without getting paid any overtime. His supervisor encouraged workers to underreport hours in order to keep their jobs. Solórzano said, “I remember asking for a day off and was told that if I wanted a day off I could go look for work elsewhere.” He started talking to other workers to try to change the situation. Like Ventura, his Salvadoran background informed his perspective: I learned from being in this country and in El Salvador how to organize when you’re up against those with economic power. . . . I had a very clear vision that those in power will try and abuse their privilege. . . . I came from

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a war in my country, where we had a clear understanding that part of the conflict had to do with U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. . . . I came here and had to deal with the same power dynamics.44

Solórzano’s fight against the company led to an all-out attack against him. For one year, after he filed his wage claim against the company and tried to encourage others to speak out, his supervisor devised retaliation tactics. Solórzano was assigned to bathroom duty every day, even though prior to this workers would share this task, each cleaning the bathroom about once a week. He was also physically threatened when leaving the building. Despite all this, Solórzano continued to encourage other workers to file claims. His determination eventually paid off. ABM had janitorial contracts with Los Angeles County, and Solórzano was able to document the fact that one of the company’s managers was providing the Internal Services Division—the government entity that monitors all county contracts—with false information. The company also was prepping workers on what to say to inspectors, threatening them if they did not comply. Solórzano’s diligence enabled the MCTF to compile a case against ABM, which was subsequently audited by the L.A. County auditor-controller. The auditor’s report found that ABM was out of compliance with state labor laws, county contract requirements, and the county’s Living Wage Ordinance (McCauley 2004). The report recommended that all four departments that did business with ABM terminate their contracts, and as a result the company lost a total of ten janitorial contracts worth $3.1 million and was forced to pay approximately sixty thousand dollars in back pay.45 While this was a great victory for Solórzarno and his co-workers, the struggle took a toll on his personal life. As is common in the industry, Solórzano originally got the job as a janitor through a relative. But once he began organizing, his brother-in-law—who was also his supervisor—started to threaten him to the point where eventually he had to flee the state for his own safety and that of his family.46 According to Garcia, predatory firms often utilize the family structure as a way to intimidate. She notes that when a supervisor is a relative it is much more difficult for workers to speak out against labor violations.47 When Solórzano later returned to Los Angeles, the MCTF hired him full time as a field investigator. The lived experience of former janitors like Ventura and Solórzano’s and their deep understanding of the risks involved in speaking out is a huge asset for the MCTF in establishing relationships with workers and in developing their education and outreach model. Without the janitors’ willingness to come forward about labor law violations, the MCTF

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would not be able to expose illegal business practices or pursue labor law claims.

Agency and Legislative Reform In an ideal world, Garcia notes, “the Labor Commission should be a household name. It should act as a union in terms of being a representative for nonunion workplace rights by aggressively enforcing their contract which is in the labor code.”48 Failing that, law-abiding employers and workers can turn to the MCTF as a strategic ally working with the agencies to foster fair competition and to advocate for workers’ rights. Instead, however, the level and effectiveness of labor law enforcement in California has sharply declined in recent years. As one recent study documented, the state’s Department of Labor Standards Enforcement has seen steadily declining funding, whether measured on a per worker or per establishment basis, since the mid-1980s; and funding levels are still below the 1981 level (Bar-Cohen and Carrillo 2002). In addition, the Labor Commission’s limited hours of operation, language barriers, and other problems mean that it fails to meet the needs of many of the state’s most marginalized workers.49 Organizations like the MCTF not only help to bring low-wage industries to the forefront, but also put pressure on the agencies to become more effective. As Lilia Garcia explains: Building relationships with the agencies moves cases. We’re asking workers to go out on the line for this. Then for an agency to not follow up, it’s really hard for the worker and disruptive to our efforts. . . . I want the Deputy Labor Commissioners to see the human aspect of these cases. I need to connect with them. If they have families, I tell them about the worker’s family and how he’s got four kids that depend on him and he didn’t get paid for his work. Too often the fatality of a case stems from the broken system. Deputies are encouraged to be mechanical about a serious economic problem.50

The relationships that Garcia has been able to establish with the state Labor Commission are critical. She now sits on the state Department of Insurance Fraud Assessment Commission and was recently nominated to serve on the city planning commission (Selvin 2008). She was also one of the principal founders of Coalition of Low-Wage Immigrant Worker Advocates (CLIWA) and served as its chair for four years.51 Formed in 2000 to build a bridge between agencies and advocates, CLIWA’s mission is to advance labor law enforcement in low-wage industries like garment, restaurant, day

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labor, household, and janitorial work (Fine 2006, 164). Garcia recalls that the organization was formed organically: Four worker advocate organizations came together—KIWA, CHIRLA, the Garment Worker Center and the MCTF—because as advocates we were seeing commonalities in the industries and shared similar experiences. . . . We were dealing with subcontracted industries that have predatory employers, and we needed a much more aggressive role from the agencies.52

Tchakalian organized a meeting for the advocates to discuss shared frustrations and to identify how to work together toward solutions. They realized, for example, that the labor commissioner at the time, Art Lojan, was pitting them against each other saying he could not help one industry because he was prioritizing the other, when in actuality he wasn’t prioritizing either one.53 For two years, CLIWA worked on recommendations to improve labor law enforcement and established close working partnerships with key actors within the state bureaucracy. CLIWA also advocated in support of budget increases for the enforcement division of the state’s Department of Industrial Relations. The coalition testified at state senate hearings and held an action outside of Governor Davis’s office demanding that the budget not be cut for enforcement agencies. This was an unusual step for advocates who were often mistrustful of government agencies, but CLIWA recognized the need to win more resources for the agencies (Fine 2006, 164). CLIWA also made specific recommendations for operational changes in the approach to low-wage industry labor law enforcement. For example, they suggested developing a system that prioritized cases based on how many violations an employer had and how many workers were impacted. As a result of CLIWA’s advocacy, the Office of Low Wage Industries (OLWI) was established under the state’s newly consolidated Labor and Workforce Development Agency in 2003. However, soon after Governor Schwarzenegger came into office, OLWI lost its funding.54 Nevertheless, CLIWA still serves as a source of leverage in the Labor Commission today. The MCTF has also played an important role in legislative reform. Beginning in 2001, with other CLIWA groups such as Sweatshop Watch and CHIRLA, MCTF cosponsored California Senate Bill 179 known as the Financially Sufficient Labor Contracts Act, which led to California Labor Code sec. 2810.55 Mark Schacht, deputy director of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation (CRLAF) and lobbyist in Sacramento, crafted the bill and on October 12, 2003, Governor Davis signed it into law. Garcia worked closely with Schacht to help get the bill passed and later to implement it.56 The law imposes various requirements on individuals contracting for labor

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or services with construction, farm labor, garment, janitorial, or security guard contractors. It states in part: A person or entity may not enter into a contract or agreement for labor or services with a construction, farm labor, garment, janitorial, or security guard contractor, where the person or entity knows or should know that the contract or agreement does not include funds sufficient to allow the contractor to comply with all applicable local, state and federal laws or regulations governing the labor or services to be provided.57

The client is subject to specific civil penalties if he or she enters into a contract with the knowledge that the funds were not sufficient to comply with labor law. According to Garcia, “[Sec. 2810] makes it clear that state policy supports written contracts, and that the client has an obligation to know whether or not the contractor is complying with state laws.”58 The law mandates that various legal requirements be explicitly enumerated in such contracts, such as a workers’ compensation insurance policy number, employer identification numbers for state tax purposes, the total number of workers to be employed under the contract, and the total number of persons to be utilized under the agreement as independent contractors. The law also ensures that if all requirements are met within the written contract, then the client cannot be held liable for any labor law violations that should arise.59 Once sec. 2810 was passed, the MCTF coordinated trainings with advocates on how to use the law, while recognizing that implementation is always a challenge. The first lawsuit under sec. 2810 was filed by the State of California on March 4, 2008. David Balter, an attorney in San Francisco who works for the Labor Commission investigated the violations by an employer in the janitorial industry and subsequently put together the case. According to Garcia, “This is a big deal. The Labor Commission does not file many lawsuits. So when they do, they get noticed.”60 This creates another important mechanism to hold clients—the ultimate decision-makers in the janitorial subcontracting chain—accountable through a written contract.

Future Prospects: Policy Advocacy and Expansion of Trust Funds The problems the MCTF has tackled are found both inside and outside the janitorial sector. As firms in an increasing variety of industries engage in contracting out, the MCTF offers a potential model for lifting labor standards throughout the low-wage economy.61 The legislative reform work of groups like CLIWA can help raise public awareness of labor law violations across industries and advocate changes in law and in public policy

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to help hold contractors accountable in unregulated markets. Another important potential avenue along which to expand the work of MCTF is to establish Trust Funds through other SEIU locals around the country. MCTF already offers trainings to SEIU staff to assist them with investigative fieldwork and strategy. And the MCTF model could be replicated in other cities where union janitors face the problem of undercutting from nonunion firms. In Houston, for example, where SEIU organized five thousand janitors in 2005, replicating the MCTF could be very useful (Greenhouse 2005). According to Christopher Schwartz, research director for Jf J in Houston, “Sprawl is quickly increasing and new companies are emerging all the time that are viciously anti-union with a business model that preys on the undocumented work force.”62 He noted that given this scenario the value of the MCTF becomes clear.

Conclusion Using these three strategies—labor law enforcement, worker education and outreach, and agency/legislative reform—the MCTF has worked for the past decade to put a floor under wages and conditions in the janitorial industry. Its work promotes and assists labor law enforcement so that employers are held accountable and fair competition can exist. Its most farreaching success is the Flores v. Albertsons case, which won $22 million dollars in workers’ back pay and indirectly created three hundred new union jobs in southern California. This lawsuit set a major precedent, making it far more difficult for future clients to deny their role in fostering unfair competition. The publicity the case received exposed illegal business practices to the public, and the subsequent increase in the number of union jobs created higher union density and greater control of the market. Another key aspect of MCTF’s ongoing efforts is its role in worker empowerment, education, and outreach. Because field investigators must be well informed about the labor code and on how to compile a case, they regularly help to educate workers about their rights. This creates opportunities for janitors to not only win financial compensation for wage and hour violations, but to become their own advocates in the future. In the still largely unregulated low-wage janitorial labor market, the MCTF has been at the forefront of innovative efforts to level the playing field. Yet the MCTF is not without limitations. Even in the absence of labor law violations, many janitors are unable to make ends meet working fulltime for the minimum wage. Even if the MCTF reached its goal of putting a floor under wages and conditions through large-scale compliance of labor law, many janitors would still be living in poverty. Unionization could be

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the next step, empowering workers to win higher wages, as well as health care and pension benefits. One hundred percent union density is probably the single most effective means to take wages out of competition, but even in Los Angeles that remains a distant prospect. The immediate need remains that of monitoring and preventing employers’ illegal behavior. Workers in dire need of pay owed to them cannot wait until a successful union campaign guarantees them a better paying job with benefits. And workers are robbed daily of millions of dollars while employers continue to engage in illegal practices, and the State of California is losing large sums of money in unpaid taxes. In this context, the MCTF’s current three-pronged strategy addresses the immediate needs of workers and builds the trust necessary for workers to advocate for themselves, even when unionization is not a realistic short-term option. Under MCTF’s worker center–like model, long-standing relationships can be built with workers by means of wage and hour claims, opening the door for more extensive organizing in the future. In today’s political economy, alternative strategies such as the MCTF—especially if they are able to expand in size and scope—can bring real change for low-wage workers.

Afterword Victor Narro

Working on the project that evolved into this book allowed me to retrace a journey from my early days in Los Angeles as a legal advocate to my current work at the UCLA Downtown Labor Center. In the course of that journey I was directly involved in many of the immigrant worker organizing campaigns that you read about in these pages, and I witnessed the growing synergy between the labor movement and the worker centers that Ruth Milkman identifies in her introduction as the core of the L.A. organizing model. It all started with my first job after law school. I was hired by the L.A. Regional Office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) in 1992. My first assignment was a First Amendment case involving the rights of day laborers to congregate in public areas throughout L.A. County. After a small but vocal group of residents complained about a day laborer corner at a shopping center in Ladera Heights, an unincorporated area of the county, MALDEF went to court to defend the right of day laborers to seek work in public places as a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visiting these workers weekly to get their support for the litigation exposed me to the harassment they regularly endured from sheriff’s deputies and business owners. Ever since, I have been actively involved in efforts to organize day laborers and find ways to improve their lives. Another highlight of my four years at MALDEF was the opportunity to serve on the litigation team that sued the State of California to prevent the implementation of Proposition 187, a ballot initiative that—had it not been 233

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struck down by the courts—would have eliminated access to many health and social services, including public education, for undocumented immigrants and their children. Our plaintiffs for this historic case were ordinary schoolchildren. I will never forget the experience of taking a declaration from Maria, a straight-A middle-school student who aspired to be a veterinarian, as she held back her tears and told me how much she feared not being able to return to school if Proposition 187 became law. Proposition 187 sparked a strong grassroots campaign by MALDEF and other immigrant rights groups to defeat it. In the two weeks leading up to the election, unions came together with immigrants’ rights groups, students, and community organizations to mobilize 150,000 people for a massive march in downtown Los Angeles. At the time this was the largest immigrants’ rights march in the city’s history. Working on the day laborer issue in Ladera Heights and the grassroots campaign against Proposition 187 connected me with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), the L.A.–based immigrant rights organization that Caitlin Patler’s chapter in this volume describes. There I met Pablo Alvarado, CHIRLA’s day laborer project organizer at the time, who now leads the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), which is the subject of Maria Dziembowska’s chapter. In 1994, after the L.A. County Board of Supervisors passed an antisolicitation ordinance prohibiting day laborers from looking for work in public areas, I joined a task force that included Alvarado, officials from the L.A. County Human Relations Commission, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to seek a solution to this issue. Our approach was to use face-to-face dialogue and mediation to reach consensus among major stakeholders. This “human relations” approach to day laborer issues would later become a model throughout the country. These face-to-face meetings led to moments of transformation for some participants. For example, learning firsthand about the day laborers’ daily struggles in this way caused the captain of the Ladera Heights Sheriff’s Station to abandon his earlier efforts to impose aggressive law enforcement against the workers. A year later, at an L.A. County Human Relations awards luncheon, he received an award for his human relations work with day laborers. Working with Alvarado and the day laborers at Ladera Heights led me to the next phase of my journey. In 1996, I accepted a position as workers rights project director for CHIRLA, where I would remain until 2002. My years at CHIRLA deepened my connection to the struggles of day laborers and other low-wage immigrant workers. In 1997, CHIRLA and the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA) entered into

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a partnership to manage and operate the City of Los Angeles Day Laborer Program in North Hollywood and Harbor City. Since then, the program has expanded to eight other day-laborer worker centers throughout the city and one in Pasadena. Pablo Alvarado introduced me to IDEPSCA and its executive director, Raul Añorve, with whom he cofounded the organization. They combined legal advocacy on behalf of day laborers with the concept of grassroots popular education, drawing on the teachings of Paulo Freire and other great popular educators. Over time, IDEPSCA blossomed from a small volunteerbased literacy program to a vibrant organization that used popular education to organize immigrant working families throughout Los Angeles. I was deeply influenced by IDEPSCA’s quarterly holistic retreats at the Casa de Maria Retreat Center in Montecito during the 1990s. Here I became intimately familiar with the lives of the group’s members and organizers. To this day, I use the popular education methodology I learned at these retreats in my work with immigrants. I recently completed a six-year term as president of IDEPSCA, and I am still an active member of its “asamblea general.” As lead organizer for CHIRLA’s Day Laborer Program, Alvarado transformed the City of Los Angeles’ Day Laborer Program, using a worker center model that later would be replicated throughout the country. His efforts helped to put a human face on the issue of day labor solicitation and change the negative stereotypes and perceptions of day laborers among homeowners, elected officials, local businesses, and law enforcement personnel. Starting in 1997, I worked with him and other organizers from CHIRLA and IDEPSCA to implement a series of “intercorner” conferences where for the first time, day laborers from different corners connected with one another to share their struggles and create a strong solidarity network. In this period, Alvarado, Añorve, and other organizers created a leadership development process and a political education curriculum out of which a new generation of worker-leaders entered the movement. Every Thursday night, day laborers came to CHIRLA for leadership development workshops, which also served as my own advanced training school on organizing and strategy development. These initiatives eventually led to the formation of the countywide Day Laborer Association. Besides helping me develop as an organizer, Alvarado introduced me to the invaluable process of integrating culture and sports into organizing. In 1997, he created the Jornaleros Del Norte, a musical band made up of day laborers who write and perform their own songs and corridos about the struggles of day laborers. Today, the band continues to attract wide audiences of students, organizers, and workers.

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Alvarado’s keen organizing instincts also made him realize that soccer could play an important role in leadership development among day laborers. In November 1998, CHIRLA and IDEPSCA held the first Copa Jornalera (Day Laborer Cup) at the Rose Bowl. This event attracted hundreds of day laborers and their families and helped tie the community to the struggle for immigrant rights. Since then, we have held a Copa Jornalera every year, and the number of participating teams has steadily increased alongside the growth of the day laborer organizing movement. In the late 1990s, the Day Laborer Association joined CHIRLA and MALDEF in filing a legal challenge against the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, arguing that the anti–day laborer ordinance that they adopted in 1994 violated the constitutional rights of day laborers. This high-profile campaign to support the First Amendment rights of day laborers reached its climax in 2000, when the court declared the ordinance unconstitutional. Federal court judge George King’s decision specifically included day laborers in affirming that the First Amendment protected the right to look for work in public streets and sidewalks. This decision also helped to dispel stereotypes and foster a public image of day laborers as human beings worthy of dignity and respect. Building on these experiences in Los Angeles, CHIRLA and IDEPSCA trained representatives from organizations in Portland, Seattle, and other cities to set up day-laborer worker centers and organizing projects, through a hybrid apprenticeship and technical assistance program. This relationshipbuilding process led to the creation of NDLON in 2001. For the past six years, Alvarado has served as the national coordinator of NDLON, currently a collaboration of about three dozen community-based day laborer organizations from California to New York. Under his guidance, NDLON has worked with local governments to establish safe worker centers that provide information to workers to help them prevent exploitation, improve skills, and gain access to essential services. These centers have helped strengthen local worker groups and build immigrant leadership. Among Alvarado’s recent accomplishments is the partnership he forged with the AFL-CIO and Change to Win in 2006. Although the Day Laborer Program was the biggest project within CHIRLA’s Workers’ Rights Project, it was one among several efforts to address the issues that impact immigrant workers. For example, CHIRLA’s Domestic Workers Association brought together domestic workers to participate in leadership development workshops and create a solidarity network. These women met regularly on Sundays at CHIRLA to collectively identify issues and develop long-term strategies. They mounted a successful campaign to declare March 30 “Domestic Workers Appreciation Day”

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in California. In March 2000, state assembly member Gil Cedillo authored this declaration, which was overwhelmingly approved by the legislature and the governor. Today, through its Household Workers Project, CHIRLA continues to fight for the rights of domestic workers. During my years at CHIRLA, it grew from a local immigrant rights organization to a major national player in the fight for comprehensive immigration reform, as Caitlin Patler’s chapter points out. This transformation would not have been possible were it not for the leadership and guidance of executive director Angelica Salas, an inspirational leader who helped connect CHIRLA and the L.A. immigrant rights movement with the labor movement, an alliance that became a model for the rest of the country. Through Salas’s leadership and coalition-building, CHIRLA created strategic alliances with many of the innovative immigrant workers campaigns highlighted in this book. As executive director for almost half of CHIRLA’s twenty-two-year history, Salas continues to provide leadership for the movement. My time at CHIRLA paralleled the emergence of many of the communitybased worker centers whose work is documented in this volume. They launched a wave of campaigns among day laborers, garment workers, restaurant workers, and others. The first worker center that I became involved with was the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA), which in 1996 was called the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates. KIWA was founded in 1992 to help low-wage workers in the Koreatown area of Los Angeles gain a voice in the workplace and in the community. As Jong Bum Kwon’s chapter in this book documents, KIWA has led many campaigns to support the struggles of Koreatown’s working people. Recognizing that Korean workers are not alone in suffering from exploitation in low-wage industries, KIWA also organizes Latino immigrants who work alongside their Korean counterparts, helping to build a unique multiracial partnership between two communities that are often pitted against each other. In 1996, KIWA shifted from a service and advocacy organization to one of direct-action worker and community organizing by launching the Restaurant Workers Justice Campaign (RWJC). The process began with a small group of Korean and Latino restaurant workers who gathered on Sundays and gradually formed ties of friendship and mutual support. At these meetings, they discussed the labor violations and unhealthy working conditions that they daily experienced as restaurant workers. This campaign was my first effort to expand CHIRLA’s Workers’ Rights Project beyond its initial focus on day laborers and domestic workers. When KIWA first launched this campaign, the restaurant industry was dominated by an employer group called the Koreatown Restaurant Owners Association (KROA), which systematically retaliated against workers

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involved in organizing efforts through blacklisting, intimidations, threats of deportation, and other discriminatory tactics. To be successful, KIWA’s campaign had to inspire workers with enough courage to enable them to take on KROA. KIWA’s RWJC campaign sought to improve basic working conditions while empowering the two thousand Korean and Latino workers in the industry to stand up for their rights. KIWA targeted key restaurants for boycott campaigns in order to educate both workers and the community about the problems the workers faced. In 1998 KIWA helped form the Restaurant Workers Association of Koreatown (RWAK), a membership organization that was able to confront KROA effectively, and which today has more than four hundred members. My work with KIWA connected me with Paul Lee, then KIWA’s organizing director, who later joined the campaign to organize car wash workers described in Susan Garea and Alexandra Sasha Stern’s chapter in this volume. A major highlight of the restaurant campaign and the turning point in weakening KROA was the Elephant Snack Corner boycott. In March 2000, eight Latino restaurant workers who had been fired came to KIWA for help in filing an unpaid wages claim. KIWA then launched a boycott campaign against Elephant Snack, a very profitable restaurant with a large clientele of affluent Koreans and law enforcement officers. The fired workers, KIWA, and their supporters picketed at first weekly and later on a daily basis, outside the restaurant. Community organizations came together to show their support by sponsoring individual “picket nights.” There were also periodic rallies when unions, students, community organizations, and supporters all gathered at the Elephant Snack Corner to voice their disapproval of the restaurant owner. The owner responded by calling in a Korean FBI special agent to investigate Paul Lee and me. I will never forget the experience of returning to my office at CHIRLA after a visit to Elephant Snack as part of a KIWA delegation and finding an FBI agent waiting for me. He accused me of being part of an extortion racket designed to extract payment from the employers, and claimed that I was working with KIWA to funnel money from this scheme to an overseas account. Finally, he asserted that the eight Latino workers at Elephant Snack were in the Mexican Mafia, another party in our alleged extortion scheme. I later learned that this FBI agent was a close friend of the owner of Elephant Snack. We responded by filing a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice that led to a thorough investigation and ultimately to administrative disciplinary action against this agent. Soon after the launch of the Elephant Snack boycott, I was able to connect KIWA with my former colleagues at MALDEF, who joined KIWA in filing a

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lawsuit against the Elephant Snack Corner for unpaid wages and overtime pay. In a settlement agreement that was historic for Koreatown, the owners of Elephant Snack Corner agreed to pay back wages to the workers, subject their payroll records to monitoring for three years, and participate in a series of labor rights seminars with their employees. This victory was a major highlight of KIWA’s RWJC. In November 2001, Korean and Latino workers at Assi Market in Koreatown—one of the six large Korean-oriented supermarkets in Los Angeles— started a campaign to organize and win recognition for an independent union, the Immigrant Workers Union. With KIWA’s assistance, these workers gained strong support from their co-workers and from the community. The company, however, hired one of the largest union-busting law firms in the country to fight the union drive. In advance of the National Labor Relations Board election scheduled for March 2002, Assi Market intimidated and threatened workers, and fired a key union supporter. I got a personal taste of this when two antiunion thugs followed me from Assi to my car and pursued me for a couple of miles in their truck. After the NLRB election vote resulted in a tie, the workers continued to organize public street actions with community allies. Then in July 2002, the company used a Social Security Administration “no-match” letter to suspend sixty of the workers who had been active in organizing the union. This triggered KIWA’s Assi Market Boycott Campaign, analyzed in Jong Bum Kwon’s chapter. For almost two years, workers and their allies picketed the supermarket practically every day and mounted other public actions to highlight the unlawful terminations and the persistent exploitation of workers. Finally in 2007, after a five-year campaign, Assi Market agreed to a settlement that included $4 million in back pay for two hundred workers. One by-product of the Elephant Snack Corner campaign was the May 1, 2000, mobilization in which more than five hundred workers and activists marched through Koreatown to participate in a rally in front of the Elephant Snack Corner to demand justice for the eight fired workers. The organizers connected this march with events around the world to commemorate International Workers Day. This event forged the relationships between different worker centers that led to the creation of the Multiethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Network (MIWON). As Chinyere Osuji’s chapter in this volume recounts, MIWON focuses on fostering the civic participation of immigrant workers from various ethnic communities in the movement for comprehensive immigration reform. Its leadership development curriculum brings low-wage workers together across ethnic lines in efforts to improve living and working conditions for immigrants and their families.

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As a founder of MIWON along with Paul Lee, I was deeply involved during the first few years of its history, when we brought together Korean, Chinese, Latino, and Pilipino workers and organizers. We helped create a multiethnic oversight board that united workers from different cultures and communities. The meetings involved translation across four different languages, using creative popular education methods. Today, MIWON is a vibrant multiethnic organizing network of five L.A. worker centers, which carries on the tradition originally set by KIWA during the Elephant Snack campaign of celebrating May 1 as “Immigrant Worker Day” in Los Angeles. Over the years, I became involved with several other worker centers as well. In 2001, I joined a group of antisweatshop advocates to create the Garment Worker Center (GWC). Soon after it opened, nineteen Latina garment workers from six factories who sewed for the popular women’s clothing line Forever 21 came to the center with complaints of labor law violations. Kimi Lee, the GWC executive director, and Joann Lo, organizing director, along with the workers involved, developed a strategy to seek redress from Forever 21, as the chapter in this book by Nicole Archer, Ana Luz Gonzalez, and their coauthors recounts. After attempts to negotiate a settlement directly with Forever 21 failed, the workers filed a lawsuit against the garment contractors, the manufacturers for whom they sewed, and Forever 21. The lawsuit sought unpaid wages, damages, and penalties, as well as assurances from Forever 21 that they would not employ sweatshop labor in the future. On November 17, 2001, GWC announced an official boycott of Forever 21. Workers from the center and their community allies picketed Forever 21 stores every Saturday for the rest of the year and reached out to university students and community groups to build support for their campaign, demanding accountability from retailers and raising awareness among consumers. Inspired by this effort, in 2002 I decided to leave CHIRLA to accept the position of coexecutive of Sweatshop Watch, a statewide organization that was closely connected with the GWC. With the principal responsibility of opening up the L.A. Sweatshop Watch office, I devoted most of my time and effort to the Forever 21 campaign. Every weekend, I stood with the workers and their allies in front of a different store. Later, when the company filed a lawsuit alleging defamation against the GWC, Sweatshop Watch, CHIRLA, and individual workers and staff members, I received a phone call from a Los Angeles Times reporter who informed me that I was one of those named in the suit. The Forever 21 boycott grew into a national campaign when GWC members and organizers traveled throughout the country on a speaking tour

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in an effort to generate public support and solidarity. At each stop, workers spoke with university students and community organizations about the boycott and went to Forever 21 stores in the area to pass out leaflets and picket. Among the cities targeted in this national effort were San Francisco; Amherst, Massachusetts; New York City; San Antonio and Austin, Texas; Miami; and Washington, D.C. The tour helped leaders see their local campaign as part of the larger struggle for corporate responsibility. Through this national effort, the boycott also gathered more strength and support, leading to a major victory three years later when Forever 21 came to the table to negotiate. In the final settlement, Forever 21 made a commitment to ensure that the clothing sold in its stores would be made under lawful conditions. I became involved in a different kind of effort around this time, when SEIU Local 1877 approached me about an exciting new initiative that came out of their 2000 contract victory—the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund (MCTF), a Taft-Hartley trust fund charged with monitoring contractors for labor law violations. As Karina Muñiz’s chapter in this volume details, MCTF has enjoyed great success as a watchdog organization; in addition, it has helped to reform the California Labor Agency and improve labor law enforcement for low-wage workers generally. I also worked with the Pilipino Worker Center (PWC), another important L.A. worker center whose history is analyzed in Nazgol Ghandoosh’s chapter. In 1996, PWC was housed in KIWA’s offices. Aquilina Soriano, then a full-time student at UCLA and a part-time volunteer for PWC, became its executive director after PWC’s founding director left Los Angeles to work for a community organization in San Jose. Under Soriano’s leadership, PWC has grown into a strong community organization with programs designed to connect the different generations of Pilipinos. Among PWC’s many contributions to the movement is its creative use of art and culture. In the May 1 marches held by MIWON, for example, artists from PWC’s art collective have displayed their works in the form of large puppets, murals, and poster designs. Today, Soriano is leading the PWC effort to construct its own building, which will contain affordable housing units as well as economic development projects and worker cooperatives. My work with KIWA introduced me to the plight of L.A. taxi workers. For many years, taxi workers looked to KIWA as a safe meeting space where they could begin to discuss their work problems and explore organizing possibilities. This led to a collaborative effort with the South Asian Network (SAN) and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center to launch a major initiative to organize taxi workers, the Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance (LATWA), discussed in Jacqueline Leavitt and Gary Blasi’s chapter in this volume.

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During my many years in the immigrant rights movement, I had frequent contact with Local 11 of the Hotel Workers’ union (now part of UNITE HERE). My first direct experience with a union organizing campaign was with Local 11’s effort to unionize service workers at the University of Southern California. I was inspired by Maria Elena Durazo’s two-week hunger strike in support of the USC workers. My relationship with Local 11 would grow stronger over the years, especially with the development of Hotel Workers Rising campaign discussed by Forrest Stuart in this volume. I assisted the union with immigration strategy issues and also spent a few nights in jail with the workers after six arrests for civil disobedience. Over the years, the immigrant rights and labor movements have grown closer and closer together. In 1996, when the late great labor leader Miguel Contreras became the first Latino to head the L.A. County Federation of Labor, he embraced the struggle of immigrant workers as a central concern for the labor movement. He worked to connect immigrant union organizing campaigns like the Justice for Janitors 2000 contract campaign and the Local 11 hotel organizing campaigns with the immigrant rights movement. In this same period, Angelica Salas and I were working to raise the profile of CHIRLA’s workers’ rights organizing project. We worked closely with organizations like the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) on labor/community efforts like the Living Wage Campaigns and the struggle for justice for hotel workers that Forrest Stuart describes in his chapter. CHIRLA became the main immigrant rights organization in LAANE’s subsequent labor-community coalition campaigns. During the AFL-CIO convention in November 1999, Contreras invited CHIRLA to bring its members to the floor. More than three hundred day laborers and domestic workers from CHIRLA and IDEPSCA attended. Through Gary Smith, then communications director for the L.A. County Labor Federation, we learned that Contreras was very impressed by the turnout of day laborers and domestic workers, and that he wanted the Labor Federation to do more to help them. This helped build support for a controversial resolution adopted on the AFL-CIO convention floor that would lead to a dramatic change in organized labor’s official position on immigration. The labor–immigrant rights coalition in Los Angeles thus helped create momentum for the AFL-CIO’s historic decision in February 2000, when it declared its support for a new amnesty for undocumented immigrants, an end to employer sanctions, and increased labor protections for immigrant workers. Immediately after this announcement, the AFL-CIO scheduled a series of town halls on immigrant worker rights that culminated in a June event at the L.A. Sports Arena. As part of the planning committee for that event,

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we at CHIRLA worked side by side with labor leaders like Maria Elena Durazo—now the executive secretary-treasurer of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, who then headed Local 11—and Mike Garcia, president of SEIU Local 1877. The June 6 AFL-CIO Town Hall filled the Sports Arena to capacity with more than sixteen thousand immigrants, while another five thousand stood outside. Most of those attending came from the membership base of local community groups. CHIRLA alone mobilized two thousand day laborers and domestic workers for this historic event, which demonstrated the power of labor-community solidarity and relationship building. The most dramatic manifestation of the various worker center and union organizing efforts discussed in this book took place in the spring of 2006, when immigrant families—women and men, grandparents and grandchildren— poured into the nation’s streets to demand justice and equality. On March 25, in Los Angeles, close to 1 million immigrants in Los Angeles participated in one of the largest civil demonstrations in U.S. history. Many immigrant rights and labor leaders were surprised at the magnitude of the opposition to the anti-immigrant legislation then under consideration in Congress. I was part of the organizing committee for the March 25 protest, a committee made up of representatives from some of the worker centers and immigrant rights groups along with SEIU Local 1877. These organizers, many of whom appear in the pages of this book, contributed to the politicization of a large sector of the immigrant population that made this huge mobilization possible. They also worked with the Spanish-language media, which proved extremely important in spreading the word about the marches. Two months later, on May 1, 2006, immigrant rights groups, worker centers, and unions worked together to create the largest May Day demonstration in U.S. history. About 1 million immigrants took to the streets in Los Angeles for a morning and afternoon march, part of a multimillion turnout for the many protests that took place that day all across the country. The role and the contributions of attorneys in many of the campaigns documented in this book deserve special mention. The CLEAN Carwash Campaign exemplifies the role of progressive lawyering in strategic organizing. This campaign originated when a group of innovative legal services attorneys launched an effort to pass a law to regulate the car wash industry. Their legal strategy later became the blueprint for an organizing campaign. As Susan Garea and Sasha Alexandra Stern recount, the lawyers envisioned the car wash worker law as a means to bring about long-term changes in the car wash industry, not as an end in itself. I cofounded this network of lawyers, the Los Angeles Worker Advocates Coalition (LAWAC) in 1999

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to address a variety of issues impacting immigrant workers, and the carwash industry eventually became our central focus. LAWAC merged with an equivalent network of northern California legal advocates in 2007 to create the Coalition of Low Wage and Immigrant Worker Advocates (CLIWA). Today, the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers are spearheading the CLEAN Carwash Campaign, which combines a labor standards campaign with a union organizing model that is also rooted in the community and resembles a worker center. CLIWA remains active in this campaign, serving as a bridge between the legal and organizing strategies. The same innovation and creativity that SEIU Local 1877 demonstrated during the historic Justice for Janitors campaign later led to SEIU’s successful effort to organize security officers in Los Angeles, analyzed in detail in Joshua Bloom’s chapter in this volume. Launching a strong partnership with Latino and African-American community organizations became the hallmark of this campaign, which was the largest union organizing effort of African American workers in decades. The campaign highlights the effectiveness of community allies as a source of leverage in union organizing. Today, as a project director at the UCLA Downtown Labor Center, I continue to provide assistance and resources to the worker centers and unions whose efforts are documented in this book. Through student internships and placements, research initiatives, and labor education programs, I am able to connect the resources available at UCLA to the labor and immigrant rights movement. Because of its location near downtown Los Angeles and close proximity to the major immigrant rights groups and unions, the Downtown Labor Center has become a central resource for unions and worker centers, who often send their members and organizers to our training programs. Through the Downtown Labor Center’s recently established Miguel Contreras Center for immigrant workers, I have a new home for my ongoing engagement with worker centers and low-wage organizing throughout Los Angeles. Finally, it would be a great injustice if I failed to mention the significant role that the immigrant workers themselves have played in the many successful campaigns recounted in the preceding pages. These courageous individuals and their families have provided all of us with invaluable models of humility and service to others. This book is a tribute to them.

Notes

Introduction 1. For data on the numbers of participants in these marches, see Bada, Fox, and Selee (2006, 36). For discussion of the links between the marches and the labor and worker center campaigns that preceded them, see Wang and Winn (2006); see also Bloemraad and Voss (forthcoming). 2. The Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) was formed in 1995 through a merger of two older unions, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated Textile and Clothing Workers Union. Then in 2004 UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union (HERE) to become UNITE HERE. For simplicity’s sake, below I refer to all these unions as “UNITE HERE” even when discussing pre-2004 events. 3. New York City has nearly twice the number of worker centers as well as higher union density (the proportion of all workers who are union members) than Los Angeles; Chicago comes close to Los Angeles on both counts. For a geographically sorted list of worker centers, see Fine (2006), appendix B; for metropolitan area level union density data see http:// unionstats.gsu.edu/Met_107b.htm. 4. Fine does not include in her study the hundreds of contemporary immigrant hometown associations, although some of them do engage labor issues on behalf of their members; nor do we consider them here. 5. Indeed, Fine (2006, appendix B) includes CHIRLA in her list of worker centers, even though its primary focus is on immigrant rights. MIWON is not on the list but is discussed in the text (Fine 2006, 226–27). 6. This parallels the “boomerang” pattern Keck and Sikkink describe in the transnational context: “When channels between the state and its domestic allies are blocked . . . [advocates] search out international allies to try to bring pressure on their states from outside . . . [who] can amplify the demands of domestic groups, pry open space for new issues, and then echo back these demands into the domestic arena” (1998, 12–13). In the L.A. case, the allies are rarely international in nature, but they are consistently based outside the boundaries of the traditional tripartite relationship among employers, government, and workers.

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7. Both typically engage in what Keck and Sikkink specify as: “(1) information politics, or the ability to quickly and credibly generate politically usable information and move it to where it will have the most impact; (2) symbolic politics, or the ability to call upon symbols, actions, or stories that make sense of a situation for an audience that is frequently far away; (3) leverage politics, or the ability to call upon powerful actors to affect a situation where weaker members of a network are unlikely to have influence; and (4) accountability politics, or the effort to hold powerful actors to their previously stated policies or principles” (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 16). Worker center staff, many of whom are attorneys and/or trained researchers, use their professional expertise and the legitimacy it confers to attract media attention to key issues (information politics). Like the TANs’ human rights advocates, they tend to frame the issues in the morally laden language of social justice (symbolic politics)—for example, by highlighting extreme cases of workplace abuse. They often identify sources of influence (leverage politics), both moral and material, often taking advantage of opportunities for public shaming of target actors, such as employers and state officials. Their campaigns typically aim at creating legal and political remedies for the low-wage and immigrant workers they represent (accountability politics). This strategic repertoire has enabled the worker centers—typically very small organizations with limited resources and staff to achieve extensive impact. 8. See “Procedures and Rules for Implementing the National Worker Center—AFL-CIO Partnership,” http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/jointheaflcio/upload/wc_procedures.pdf.

1. The Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance 1. Vy Nguyen, interview by author, June 26, 2007. In the spring and summer of 2007, I made regular visits to KIWA to both observe and interview staff and organizers. As mentioned, the MWJC ended that April. My analysis is therefore retrospective, based not on direct observation of the campaign but on documenting organizers’ reflections after a difficult and trying struggle. Moreover, at the time of my research, KIWA itself was in a state of transition, so that responses to my queries were often shaped by the prevailing mood in the office: self-critical, determinedly hopeful, and at times, defensive. It was a difficult time to do the research. But organizer responses, when understood in context, revealed a commendable willingness to self-reflection and honesty. For that, I am very grateful. As more than one interviewee observed, no individual or organization has been as critical of KIWA as its own members. 2. I have enclosed Koreatown in quotations to mark that it is a culturally constructed space. Hereafter, I will leave it unmarked but emphasize that Koreatown is neither completed nor uncontested but a product of ongoing cultural struggle; see Smith (2001, 97). 3. Roy Hong, interview by author, May 18, 2007. Emphasis added. 4. Much of the research on KIWA focuses on its multiethnic coalition building (e.g. Chang 1995; Cho 1992; Cho and Kim 1996; Lee 1996, 1994; Lien 2001; Omatsu 1995, 1994; Park 2002, 2004; Saito and Park 2000) and intraethnic politics (e.g. Chung 2007, 2005; Park 1999, 1998). 5. The term definitional drama borrows from Victor Turner’s (1974) concept of “social drama” (see also Chun 2005) and Barbara Myerhoff’s (1992) reformulation of Turner’s concept as “definitional ceremony.” For Turner, social dramas are processes of conflict resolution that take public, dramatic, and predictable form. They are fundamentally conservative in that they work to either reintegrate aggrieved social groups into the community or legitimize irreparable schism between the contesting parties (41). In Myerhoff’s reformulation, definitional ceremonies are less culturally informed practices of conflict and crisis management than strategies of visibility and affirmations of collective social value and identity (263). Jennifer Chun’s work has also been informative. She has written exemplary comparative analysis of how low-wage non-standard workers in the United States and South Korea have waged symbolic struggles through public dramas that reconfigure the moral and legal relations between employer and employee (Chun 2005). 6. Fine (2006) argues that one of the strengths of worker centers is that they serve as “vehicles” for collective voice that alter the terms of public debate (249–50). She states, “Part of

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the power of worker centers derives from their ability to organize a base of working poor to speak from their own experiences. This enables them to ‘reframe issues,’ proposing fresh analysis and policy ideas, casting employment issues in starkly moral terms, and often altering the terms of the debate in the community” (250). My analysis supports this argument: KIWA’s actions have indeed changed the terms of debate. My argument goes further, however, critically examining the role of direct actions in transforming people’s imagining of a particularly constructed community and cultural space. 7. The neighborhood is roughly bounded by Fairfax Avenue to the west, Melrose Avenue to the north, Hoover Street to the east, and Pico Boulevard to the south. The most recent U.S. Census data (2000) illustrate the continuing dense population of Korean service and business interests in the area. Koreans own the majority of the businesses along its central arteries, including nearly 90 percent of the establishments along Western Avenue between Pico and Beverly Boulevards (Yu et al. 2004). 8. Vy Nguyen, interview by author, April 19, 2007. 9. Hong, interview. 10. The post-1965 Korean emigration to the United States peaked in 1987 and gradually declined thereafter until 1999, when the Asian financial crisis precipitated a new wave of emigration (Yu and Choe 2003). 11. In my research with union members of the now defunct Daewoo Motor Union between 2000 and 2002, workers, even those active in the movement, expressed disdain for the term nodongja, as it was identified with political radicalism and manual labor (see Kwon 2005). 12. Hong, interview. 13. Ibid. 14. Danny Park, interview by author, April 20, 2007. 15. Edward Park, interview by author, April 25, 2007. 16. There is a temptation to attribute KIWA’s unique identity and practice to the student and labor movements in Korea. However, that was only one factor; KIWA was inspired by the founders’ understanding and experience of both U.S. and Korean social and labor activism and the specific conditions they encountered in Koreatown in the early 1990s. KIWA’s history and practice is suggestive of a transnational political imaginary activated through social and cultural networks. The examination of such processes is outside the scope of this paper, but the following brief history is instructive. Roy Hong and Danny Park were members of Young Koreans United (YKU, est. 1983), “a leftist advocacy organization founded by political exiles of the Kwangju massacres, who dedicated themselves to supporting movements for peace, human rights, and social justice in Korea” (Chung 2007, 155). The Kwangju Uprising (May 1980) was a seminal moment in Korean dissident politics. In the spring of 1980, local residents of Kwangju City rose up to protest General Chun Du Hwan’s seizure of power after the assassination of longtime dictator Park Chung Hee in 1979. The new regime ordered the military to suppress what it deemed a communist insurrection; more than two hundred residents were killed and thousands more injured. For Korean students and intellectuals, it was a watershed that revealed not only Korea’s “postcolonial” condition but also suggested the possibility of popular resistance. For Korean immigrant students and intellectuals, Kwangju dislodged the hold of the Korean state’s official anticommunist, narrow ethnic nationalism and raised deep suspicion regarding the hegemonic narrative of U.S. benevolence and deliverance from North Korea. It inspired young activists to turn away from homeland issues and toward the immediate concerns of immigrants (see Chang 1988; and Louie 2004). The political culture of YKU was influenced by the Korean student movement and Korean folk culture. In addition, Marxist-Leninist thought and revolutionary nationalism aimed toward the reunification of the divided peninsula circulated among activists. For a brief narrative of the YKU see Chung (2007). Hong and Park first encountered social justice movements in high school when they volunteered for the Chul Soo Lee Defense Committee. Chul Soo Lee was a Korean immigrant who was wrongly convicted of murdering a gang member in San Francisco’s Chinatown in

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1973. After ten years of imprisonment, four of them on death row, he was finally exonerated in 1983. One member of the committee was an organizer for SEIU Local 97, who introduced Park to labor activism, and while still in high school, he translated for Korean airport janitors. Hong, in turn, worked as a labor organizer for the Justice for Janitors campaign in Denver in the 1980s. Hong’s most explicit connection to the Korean labor movement was his trip to Kuro, South Korea, a densely populated industrial zone established in the mid-1970s. In June 1985, the area exploded in labor unrest as workers and students protested state violence and demanded state recognition of democratic unions. Although violent state repression decimated the movement, Koo (2001) argues that it had significant symbolic import because it was explicitly politically motivated, not confined to narrow business unionism, and involved worker solidarity across firm and industry lines. In addition, the movement was mobilized from the networks of students, workers, and union leaders in the community. Hong met with people from “worker centers” in the Kuro area, community-based formal and informal network and support organizations. Their model of community-based labor organizing, the construction of a space where workers could meet and self-educate, inspired him. He explained that without that trip, because of his past organizing experience with “J for J,” he might have attempted to follow traditional union organizing models instead (Hong, interview, May 18, 2007). Park did not have firsthand experience with movements in Korea, but was inspired by the passionate culture of the student movement there. He moved to Los Angeles in the mid1980s to organize local students around the study and performance of traditional Korean folk music and culture. An important cultural dimension of the student movement was its reappraisal of folk culture as a source of national essence and political resistance. Folk art forms, including percussion, mask dance, and shamanic theater, were incorporated into mass festivals and demonstrations. KIWA-led protests are often punctuated by Korean folk drumming and dances. 17. Hong, interview. 18. Ibid. 19. Danny Park, interview, April 20, 2007. 20. Hong, interview. 21. Ibid. 22. The campaign ended in victory in January 1995 when KARF agreed to turn over the remaining balance to KIWA to disburse among the workers. For more details analysis see H. Lee (1996, 1994). 23. Edward Park, interview. 24. Korean-language and English ethnic newspapers from the early 1990s shows numerous articles placed by KIWA and KIWA allies and written by journalists partial to describing the plight of Korean and Latino workers in Koreatown. Particularly in the immediate aftermath of the uprising, ethnic and mainstream news media were willing to cover labor issues. As Hong recalled, the media was looking for topics about race relations and the predicament of the “victims.” Still, KIWA was subjected to periodic media blackouts and attacks on its reputation in the local ethnic media. 25. Hong, interview. 26. As reported in the Los Angeles Times (Kang 1998b), a random sweep of restaurants in Koreatown by the U.S. Department of Labor revealed that 41 out of the 43 restaurants investigated were in violation of labor laws, and approximately 200 workers were owed nearly $250,000 in back wages (also cited in KIWA 2000b). 27. For a more detailed description of the restaurant campaign see Chung (2007, 159–64) and Fine (2006, 109–12). 28. Danny Park, interview, April 20, 2007. 29. Ibid. 30. Hong, interview. 31. Ibid.

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32. According to Fine (2006, 111), by 2004 there were approximately 350 members (250 Latino men and 100 Korean women). In my interviews, that number was not confirmed; staff reported that there were 20–30 core members and numerous others who occasionally attended organizational meetings. 33. Jung Hee Lee, interview by author, June 15, 2007. 34. Danny Park, interview, April 20, 2007. 35. Ibid. 36. The most egregious example is the Elephant Snack restaurant in 2000. The owner called in a friend from the FBI (who in turn called in an INS agent) who harassed the eight Latino workers with threats to arrest or deport them. The agent and owner then spread word that KIWA would steal the back wage collections. Such accusations of KIWA’s selfish motivations and questionable conduct periodically reappeared in later years as well. 37. An Le, interview by author, April 12, 2007. 38. Its website (http://www.rheebros.com/) lists supermarkets in Los Angeles, CA; Ellicott City, MD; Rockville, MD; Germantown, MD, Silver Spring, MD; Philadelphia, PA; Fairfax, VA; Flushing, Queens, NY. Furthermore, it is involved in global wholesale and import operations of Asian food products, and produces its own retail product lines for a transnational market. 39. Despite criticisms of the process, most union organizing continues to follow the NLRB model. 40. Vy Nguyen, interview by author, March 30, 2007. 41. Danny Park, interview by author, June 21, 2007. 42. Paul Lee, interview by author, July 3, 2007. 43. Danny Park, interview, June 21, 2007. 44. Paul Lee, interview, July 3, 2007. 45. This quote is from an interview conducted by Visual Communications, a nonprofit Asian American, progressive media organization located in Los Angeles, as part of the filming of the documentary Grassroots Rising (2008). 46. Max Mariscal, interview by author, April 24, 2007. 47. Several promanagement workers were reinstated several days after; the total suspended was 56. 48. KIWA and IWU are separate organizational entities. KIWA, as a nonprofit, holds a different legal status and social mission than that of a union. KIWA, however, was the incubating organization for the IWU, providing institutional and organizational support. 49. Mariscal, interview. 50. Danny Park, interview by author, July 17, 2007. 51. Ibid., June 21, 2007. 52. Ibid. 53. An informal survey of Assi cashiers revealed that sales were affected, with one estimate at nearly 70 percent in the first few months, when the pickets and demonstrations were most raucous ( Jessica Kim, interview by author, April 19, 2007). 54. Kim, interview. 55. Danny Park, interview, June 21, 2007. 56. Ibid. 57. Paul Lee, interview, July 3, 2007. 58. Vy Nguyen, interview by author, June 21, 2007. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid., July 10, 2007. 61. Ibid., June 21, 2007. 62. “Koreatown on the Edge: Immigrant Dreams and Realities in One of Los Angeles’ Poorest Communities” (KIWA 2005a); “Living Wages in Koreatown Supermarkets: A Key Strategy in the Community Fight against Poverty” (KIWA 2005b). 63. Danny Park, interview, June 21, 2007. 64. Ibid., July 17, 2007.

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2. Organizing Workers along Ethnic Lines 1. Over the course of a year beginning in March 2007, I made frequent visits to PWC to interview the five-person staff, to participate in the organization’s internal meetings and public events, to shadow the executive director, and to receive feedback on drafts of this chapter. I also conducted one-hour in-depth interviews with five adult and four youth members of PWC, and had informal conversations with several other adult members. Finally, I reviewed the organization’s newsletters, grant applications, press releases, newspaper clippings, and membership database. My inability to speak Tagalog and non-Filipina background posed some limitations but also offered some advantages in conducting this research. While all members spoke and read English, many were more comfortable speaking in Tagalog. Therefore while issues of Balitang AFW, PWC’s newsletter, are almost exclusively in English, member meetings were conducted primarily in Tagalog. PWC staff translated these proceedings for me. My non-Filipina identity may have influenced the information that informants revealed to an “outsider,” but combined with my lack of affiliation with any Filipino organizations, this may also have been an asset insofar as it encouraged respondents’ frankness and sense of confidentiality. 2. American-born founders Jay Mendoza, Aquilina Soriano-Versoza, John Delloro, and others began working to launch PWC in 1995, and Philippines-born organizers Lolita Lledo and Dong Lledo joined in 1997 and 1998 respectively. In 2000, Soriano-Versoza replaced Mendoza as executive director on his move to another city, and American-born Strela Cervas joined as an organizer. 3. In addition to these two groups of organizations, the field of Filipino immigrant organizations also includes social and religious organizations such as hometown and regional associations that connect immigrants based on homeland geographic ties, alumni associations which bring people together based on their scholastic ties, and Filipino ministries that serve the largely Catholic population. 4. Jay Mendoza, interview by author, January 24, 2008. 5. Lolita Lledo, interview by author, October 25, 2007. 6. http://www.pwcsc.org/about.htm. 7. While migrants who cross the U.S.–Mexico border can (though at significant risk and cost) evade spotty border enforcement, those who fly from abroad cannot get past immigration authorities without a valid visa (which they can then choose to overstay and thus reside in the United States without proper documentation). 8. Aquilina Soriano-Versoza, interview by author, August 13, 2007. 9. Mendoza, interview. 10. Names of all members have been changed to protect their privacy. 11. Aquilina Soriano-Versoza, interview by author, June 21, 2007. 12. PWC leaders point to the more active youth membership as evidence that a main problem for adult members is their lack of free time. In 2006, PWC started a youth membership organization, called Youth Unite! with 50 active members who are predominantly recent immigrants. The relatively low numbers of adult participants at the worker center stands in marked contrast to attendance by youth members, who now meet twice a week to have discussions, plan fundraising events, and participate in other activities. Most youth members are in their early 20s and although they work, by living at home they have less financial responsibility relative to their older counterparts. PWC very actively encourages their participation in the worker center, offering access to a band room, computers, couches, and games inside the main office which help make the worker center a bustling teenage hangout. 13. Mendoza, interview. 14. Home care workers provide health-related services, housekeeping, and personal care to the elderly or disabled in their homes or in residential care facilities (i.e., those that do not provide licensed medical care). For a profile of this workforce, see Montgomery et al. (2005) and Yamada (2002). PWC staff use the terms caregiver and home care worker interchangeably,

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but because caregiver is an umbrella term that includes many other occupations, I use the term home care worker. 15. The organization’s current records indicate that 30% of AFW members are home care workers. Strela Cervas, an organizer, suggests that this may underestimate the actual number of those currently working as home care workers, as some respondents may have reported their previous profession in the Philippines. 16. Gloria explains that she trusted PWC’s guidance to stand up to her boss because of her longtime friendship with one of the organizers, dating to when they both lived in the Philippines. 17. The other coalition partners are the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), the San Francisco-based Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA), and La Raza Centro Legal. 18. PWC’s funding comes primarily from private foundations, government grants, and individual donors. Similar to other worker centers (Fine 2006, 219–23), the $24 in annual dues are requested, but not actively collected, from members. 19. http://www.ltsc.org/aboutus/aboutus.html. 20. Working in partnership with nonprofit developers, some unions have also made affordable housing a part of their strategies, one of the most notable being the Boston-based Local 3 of the Bricklayers Union during the 1980s (Wilson 1985).

3. Alliance-Building and Organizing for Immigrant Rights 1. Among other provisions, IRCA provided a path to legalization for 2.2 million undocumented immigrations and 700,000 of their family members, making amnesty available for individuals who could prove they were in the United States prior to January 1, 1982. IRCA also created a system of sanctions for employers found to knowingly hire undocumented workers. By 2006, the undocumented population in the United States had grown to more than five times what it was when IRCA was implemented (Passel 2006). 2. A brief note on data collection: while researching this paper, I was a doctoral student in sociology at UCLA and also worked part-time at CHIRLA as a volunteer from 2002 to 2004 and an employee from 2004 to 2008. I had access to CHIRLA’s historical records for my research and also conducted formal and informal interviews with CHIRLA’s current executive director, state policy coordinator, former workers’ rights project director, former household worker organizer, two immigrant youth members, and the former deputy director of the Human Rights Division of the Ford Foundation. 3. In 1980, the Ford Foundation began seeking solutions for the “long-term problems” of refugees and migrants (www.fordfound.org/archives/item/0112/text/4). In December 1986, a proposal on “Refugees & Migrants: Problems and Program Responses” was presented to the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees (see Ford Foundation 1986). This report cites the following as problems to be addressed by Ford funding initiatives: anti-immigrant sentiment, “racism, fear, and xenophobia,” “public misunderstandings” of resident alien populations, and uncertainty about the implementation of IRCA. 4. In 1991, the Steering Committee chose Acosta as CHIRLA’s first executive director and formed an executive management committee to oversee the group’s work. CHIRLA began with fiscal sponsorship from the United Way, until it received its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in 1993. At that point, it established a Board of Directors in place of the Steering and Executive Management committees. 5. Father Olivares was a Roman Catholic priest known for making Our Lady Queen of Angels Church a sanctuary for refugees from El Salvador in 1985 (New York Times 1993). He remained active in CHIRLA until his death in 1993. 6. Angelica Salas, interview by author, October 22, 2007. 7. This office was established in 1987 to protect legal immigrants against discrimination based on national origin or perceived citizenship status or unfair employment verification practices. See U.S. Department of Justice (1999).

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8. Angelica Salas, interview by author, October 20, 2007. 9. During the 1980s, 97% of Salvadorans and 99% of Guatemalans applying for political asylum were denied, as opposed to only 50% from Nicaragua. As a result, many Central Americans were deported, frequently leading to death or disappearance. 10. The case of American Baptist Church v. Thornburgh (760 F. Supp. 796, ND Cal. 1991) provided a second hearing to Central Americans whose asylum applications had been denied during the 1980s and established Temporary Protected Status for political asylum seekers while their applications were being processed. 11. For more on day labor organizing in Los Angeles, see Dziembowska, this volume. 12. Victor Narro (former CHIRLA workers’ rights project director), interview by author, October 22, 2007. 13. Angelica Salas, interview by author, September 12, 2008. 14. Taryn Higashi, interview by author, October 7, 2008. Higashi is now executive director of Unbound Philanthropy, and formerly deputy director of Ford Foundation’s Human Rights Unit (2002–8) and program officer for Ford’s Migrant and Refugee Rights Portfolio (1997–2008). 15. The bills were Assembly Bill 633 (1999) and Assembly Bill 1688 (2003). For more on the car-wash campaign, see Garea and Stern, this volume. 16. Joseph Villela (CHIRLA state policy coordinator), interview by author, September 18, 2008; Juana Nicolas (CHIRLA household worker organizer and former household worker), interview by author, September 17, 2008; Salas, interviews October 22, 2007 and September 12, 2008. 17. Salas, interview, September 12, 2008. 18. Author’s personal observation as a CHIRLA staff member. 19. Ibid. 20. Myrna Ortiz (18 years old), e-mail, September 25, 2008. Ortiz is a member of UCLA IDEAS (Improving Dreams, Equality, Access, and Success), a support and advocacy group for undocumented UCLA students and their allies. Two other former CHIRLA high school members are UCLA-IDEAS program chairpersons. 21. Encouraging beneficiaries of services to become organizational members is a feature of other organizations, including the Workplace Project described in Gordon (2005). 22. For a more extensive analysis of GWC, see Archer et al., this volume. 23. Salas, interview, October 20, 2007. 24. Narro, interview. 25. In its 2007 strategic planning process, CHIRLA identified collaborations such as MIWON as adding value to internal programs and committed to continued partnership. 26. From www.ndlon.org. For more on NDLON, see Dziembowska, this volume. 27. Author’s personal observation as a CHIRLA staff member, 2004–8. 28. Higashi, interview. 29. The Northern California Immigrant Rights Coalition is no longer in existence. CIPC now has new members; see www.caimmigrant.org for more information. 30. The bills were S.B. 1569 (Kuehl) and A.B. 2060 (De La Torre), respectively. 31. Whelma Cabanawan (CHIRLA’s administrator and coordinator of new citizen voter registration), e-mail, October 1, 2008. 32. Salas, interview, October 20, 2007. 33. The proposed federal Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (“The DREAM Act”) would allow undocumented high school students to legalize their status via higher education or service in the armed forces. Versions of the bill have been introduced for several years in the U.S. Congress, but as of this writing it has yet to become law. 34. Coalitions were formed in Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. 35. Salas, interview, September 12, 2008. 36. Ibid. 37. For more information see www.fairimmigration.org.

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38. CHIRLA is involved in collaborative fundraising with WAAA for nonpartisan electoral organizing in California. 39. For more information see www.cirnow.org. 40. Author’s personal observation, June 2006. 41. Salas, interview, September 12, 2008. 42. The Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, H.R. 4437 (Sensenbrenner, R-WI), was swiftly passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December 2005. Had it become law, H.R. 4437 would have criminalized undocumented immigrants for their simple presence in the United States and made it illegal to provide services or shelter to such persons, among other provisions.

4. Building Power for “Noncitizen Citizenship” 1. Until 2005, KIWA was known as “Korean Immigrant Worker Advocates” (see Kwon, this volume). 2. GWC later ceased to be a member of MIWON, although still participates in some MIWON-sponsored activities. 3. Victor Narro (in attendance at the meetings), personal communication, April 29, 2008. 4. The resolution states: “Whereas, the City of Los Angeles has historically been a place of refuge for migrants escaping from political turmoil, natural disasters and economic hardships in their country of origin. Immigrants from across the world have built this city and its economy continues to thrive through the major contributions of their labor. Nowhere is this clearer than in the low-wage industries, where wealth is created by garment, restaurant, day labor, domestic, home care workers and other immigrant workers who receive poverty wages and endure exploitation; and Whereas, immigrant workers have endured deplorable working conditions such as long work hours without overtime pay, no access to workers compensation, little regard for their health and safety, harassment, discrimination, blacklisting, and have little or no protection by government agencies in charge of enforcing labor laws; . . . Whereas, Immigrant workers face higher levels of exploitation because most lack legal documentation, and they are subject to threats and harassment to be thrown out of the country, incarcerated and deported thereby creating a fearful working and living environment. . . . Let it be resolved . . . that true legalization in this country should be given in the form of permanent legal status and citizenship. This should not be limited to any country of origin or work industry.” (Quoted in Narro 2005–6, 511–12) 5. CHIRLA was already involved in the campaign when the entire network decided to join the effort. 6. Below I refer to California Assembly Bill (A.B.) 60 and California Senate Bill (S.B.) 60 as “the driver’s license bill” and the campaign as “the driver’s license campaign.” 7. Mayron Payés, personal communication, August 21, 2008. 8. Without MIWON, KIWA and CHIRLA continued to push for the driver’s license bill until the 2005 federal Real ID ACT was passed (Kirkpatrick 2005). This act prohibited state governments from providing undocumented persons with driver’s licenses. 9. At this point, MIWON was not yet a part of the mobilization for driver’s licenses. 10. This “Caravan for Justice” used an approach similar to the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in which immigrants and their supporters rode in buses across the country to tell their stories and push for immigration reform in Washington. The ride took place from September 30 to October 4, 2003. See http://www.iwfr.org/default3.asp 11. That year, because May 1 fell on a Sunday, in an effort to maximize turnout, the marches were held on Saturday, April 30. The following year, MIWON resumed organizing the marches for May 1. 12. H.R. 4437, 109th Cong., 1st sess. (2005). 13. More than 500,000 people participated in the March 25 march, which also called for a boycott and was organized by the March 25 Coalition. See Watanabe and Becerra (2006). MIWON was not an official sponsor of the March 25 effort and, per personal communication

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with Liz Sunwoo (former MIWON director). MIWON was only minimally involved, although some of its affiliates did participate. 14. Many of the MIWON organizers that I interviewed expressed a desire to include a role for African Americans in the immigrant rights movement, especially given the fact that similar to some immigrant groups (particularly Mexicans and Chinese) they have a long history of enduring racial discrimination in the United States and continue to be disproportionately found in low wage jobs. MIWON has a relationship with community-based organizations that work with African American communities (for instance, Community Coalition), and there is a great deal of mutual recognition of the overlap in the needs of low-wage African American and immigrant workers. While African Americans are included in the vision of interethnic collaboration, MIWON’s focus on immigrants and on winning gains specifically for an immigrant worker base has set limits on the extent of its ties to the African American community to date.

5. The Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance 1. LATWA was named in solidarity with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), founded in 1998. Although NYTWA states about 19 chapters exist across the country (Parks 2006), LATWA has independent status. In March 2007, taxi drivers from Canada and the United States convened for the first time in order to build an international movement (Waheed 2007). 2. Los Angeles, CAL., Administration Code Section 22.484(g)(2)(B)(1)(ii)(2000). [Old City Charter art. XX, Section 212 (pre-2000)] 3. The exception is City Cab, which is owned by a single operator who leases all 166 taxicabs in his franchise to drivers. 4. The family elder, Mitch Rouse, also controls the SuperShuttle fleet of airport vans across the country as well as taxi fleets in several other cities and a limousine company. 5. Fees include: radio, meter, a geographical positioning system, insurance, cooperative dues, and special fees set from time to time by the cooperative insiders. 6. Lease rates cover access to the company’s dispatch system that handles requests for taxi cabs. This is the lifeline for drivers’ access to fares. 7. Jerome Schnitzer, interview by authors, June 26, 2006. Schnitzer was among the founders of the L.A. Independent Taxi Drivers Association. 8. ITOA filed its Articles of Incorporation on April 22, 1977. UITD filed on June 27, 1977. The founding documents of both cooperatives set out their status as nonprofit cooperatives. The articles of UITD claimed tax exempt status under Section 501(c) (6) of the Internal Revenue Code, pertaining to “business leagues.” The ITOA articles referred only to its nonprofit status. 9. Russell writes that the Russian members of the two cooperatives formed the “Club of the Spinning Wheels” in early 1980 and thwarted the efforts of a group of taxi drivers who wanted to form a third cooperative (130). Russell attributes much of the subsequent degeneration to the influx of Russian immigrants. 10. In 2008 ITOA had 246 licensed cabs and UITD had 289. 11. Maday died of a heart attack two years after the settlement, in 1994. 12. A company named Anything Yellow, Inc. acquired the rights to Maday’s Golden State Transit Corporation in 1995. As a result of L.A. City Council approvals, in 1998, the L.A. Taxi Cooperative was also operating as Yellow Cab. 13. To protect confidentiality, we do not name the interviewees; all unidentified quotes are from field interviews with drivers and took place in 2007 and 2008. 14. For example, at the time of our research, the president of the South Bay Yellow Cab Cooperative (which operates the United Checker franchise) was employed by ASC and Van Ness Management, the Rouse company that provides management services to ASC and its associated cooperatives. We found that the majority of drivers currently come from the Middle East and Pakistan (Blasi and Leavitt 2006, 8, 18). The high visibility of supervisors from some countries of the Middle East may reflect a particular moment in time, however. For example, Russell (1985) identified Russians as playing an influential role in the past.

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15. SAN has two offices, one in Artesia where one concentration of South Asians lives and the second at the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA). See Kwon, this volume. 16. The TCI is based on price increases in fuel, insurance, etc. 17. LATWA’s campaign was aided by City Controller Laura Chick’s independent audit of ATS, which found that LAWA had continued to lease its property as a taxicab holding lot for LAX on a sole-source basis and suggested that a request for competitive bids for the lease could better serve LAWA and the city (City of Los Angeles Controller 2007). As of this writing, all bids have been rejected. 18. LATWA asked LAWA to improve working conditions at LAX. Suggestions included providing gym equipment such as a treadmill and stationary bike; healthy food and a variety of food vendors; clean, covered, and safe places to eat; clean drinking water and shower. A similar effort was launched by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance in 2007 at John F. Kennedy International Airport’s Central Taxi Holding lot (Hunter College 2007). 19. Two of the four attorneys are employed by the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA), who participated in a manner permitted by the federal Legal Services Corporation. In their LAFLA capacity, with funds from the Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts (IOLTA), they assisted in analyses and documentation about the taxi industry as well as representing individual workers facing discriminatory actions. They conducted research on the corporate structures and business relationships between the various players who control the companies and cooperatives, and also prepared legal correspondence either for LATWA or particular workers (for example, to obtain documents under the public records laws). On the invitation of council members Janice Hahn, Eric Garcetti, and Bill Rosendahl, they were invited to testify about taxi-related issues. LAFLA is no longer involved in LATWA-related work. The other two volunteer lawyers on the organizing committee were an attorney employed by the nonprofit Asian Pacific American Law Center experienced in representing low-income immigrant workers and a prounion labor lawyer. 20. We purposefully do not include “medallion” systems as an option here, because there are so many permutations of such arrangements with such varied economic and other effects on drivers. 21. For example, the Winnipeg Taxi Coop in Manitoba Province, Canada, has an application for a workers cooperative pending before the provincial board regulating taxis in which the by-laws stipulate that plates (permits) cannot be sold on the secondary market; this should limit speculation and runaway prices (Murtagh 2008). As of this writing no action has been taken. 22. Steven Malanga (2002) proposes for New York City replacing medallions with licenses that would be renewed each year and that would revert back to the city when drivers retire. Malanga proposes that the new licensing system could generate funds by establishing a fee between $5,000 and $10,000 a year, far less than the $30,000 a year drivers now pay in leasing fees to medallion owners. 23. One historical example that may be relevant to today’s budget crisis in Los Angeles concerns municipalization. In 1920, the commissioner of the New York City Purchase Board as a cost-cutting measure bought 25 municipal taxis to take the place of city cars. The chauffeurs were retained as drivers, the cabs were metered, and waiting times were ostensibly eliminated (New York Times 1920).

6. From Legal Advocacy to Organizing 1. These accounts come from testimony given by Becky Monroe, Hung then the director of the Employment Rights Project at Bet Tzedek Legal Services, to the Senate Labor Committee in support of S.B. 1468. The stories are those of Bet Tzedek clients, although names have been changed to protect attorney-client privilege. 2. Sometimes, lawyers seek an injunction (a court order that prohibits a party from doing a particular act). Such relief does seek to prohibit future violations, but this remedy is not as common as the prototypical damages remedy.

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3. This collaboration was initially named LAWAC (Los Angeles Workers Action Committee), but later as it grew to a statewide entity, it changed its name to CLIWA in 2006. 4. The percentages of those employed in the car wash industry are 67% noncitizen and 27% undocumented; however, these statistics may be lower than the actual numbers because of the fear undocumented workers have of reporting and the incentive for car wash owners not to report the undocumented status of their employees. 5. Governor Davis’s signing statement to A.B. 1688 indicates that his labor commissioner found “multiple violations of California labor law, including: illegal cash pay, child labor law violations and inadequate workers compensation insurance. In addition, through these investigations, it became evident that this segment of the work force is often reluctant to report these crimes to a governmental agency for fear of retaliation.” 6. The DLSE “adjudicates wage claims, investigates discrimination and public works complaints, and enforces labor law and the Industrial Welfare Commission wage orders.” See www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/aboutDlse.html. 7. Victor Narro, interview by authors, December 6, 2006. 8. Ibid. 9. Betty Hung, personal communication, April 1, 2008. 10. Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Asian Law Caucus, Bet Tzedek Legal Services, California Rural Legal Assistance, California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Centro Legal de la Raza, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles (CHIRLA), Korean Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA), La Raza Centro Legal, Legal Aid Foundation Los Angeles, Legal Aid Society—Employment Law Center, Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund, National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), National Employment Law Project, National Immigration Law Center, Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County (NLS), Sweatshop Watch, UCLA Labor Center, Watsonville Law Center, Worksafe, Young Workers United. 11. August Tello, interview by authors, August 4, 2007. 12. California Assembly Bill (Cal A.B.) 1688, 2003 session, chap. 825. Cal ALS 825. 13. Anel Flores, interview by authors, September 18, 2007. 14. California Labor Code, secs. 2054, 2055 (2007). 15. Ibid., sec. 2059 (2007). 16. Ibid., sec. 2055 (2007). 17. Ibid., sec. 2065 (2007). 18. Ibid., sec. 2066 (2007). 19. For example, in one case handled by CLIWA member attorney Becky Monroe, a car wash employee, Mr. Perez (name has been changed), filed a complaint in L.A. Superior Court for unpaid wages and unpaid overtime. The employer, who had failed to pay the wages and overtime, was no longer operating that car wash, and proved difficult to locate. When the employer was finally located, he was insolvent. Before the Car Wash Worker Law, Mr. Perez would have been unable to recover his losses. However, the car wash where Mr. Perez had worked was taken over by Elmwood Car Wash. Because of the successorship clause, Mr. Perez was able to settle with Elmwood Car Wash. 20. Cal. Lab. Code, sec. 2055. 21. Ibid., sec. 2064. 22. Ibid., sec. 2062(a) (2007). 23. California Code of Regulations, title 8, sec. 13693(b) (2008). 24. Narro, interview, December 6, 2006. 25. Flores, interview. 26. Narro, interview, December 6, 2006. 27. Ibid. 28. Narro, interview, December 6, 2006. 29. Betty Hung, interview by authors, September 4, 2007. For example, the regulations would require wage claims to include proof from workers of “actual damages”—additional evidence over and above evidence of actual wages owed. CLIWA advocates argued that such a showing would be unnecessary and burdensome. However, the advocates were not successful in this effort.

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30. WCA’s mission statement states, “The primary purpose of this association is to serve and promote the interests of the carwash industry: to serve as a rallying point for collective action by individual operators and regional organizations of carwash operators on problems effecting the industry: and to do whatever is necessary, proper, and legitimate for the common good and welfare of the industry.” See http://www.wcwa.org/ 31. California Labor Code, sec. 2067 (2007). 32. California Code of Regulations, title 8, sec. 13684. 33. Narro, interview, December 6, 2006; Hung, interview. 34. California Senate Bill (Cal S.B.) 1468, 2006 session, chap. 656. Cal ALS 656. 35. Narro, interview, December 6, 2006. 36. Cal. Lab. Code, 2067. 37. Hung, interview. 38. Notably, LAFLA runs a clinic out of the labor commissioner’s office, which gives CLIWA a direct link to the commissioner. 39. D. Velasco, interview by authors, August 29, 2007. In one instance, a worker who attended a settlement conference was convinced to leave his evidence (documentation of wages paid and hours worked) with the opposing party, his employer, which ended of any chance of success for his claim. 40. LSC funding restrictions prevent legal service providers from directly representing undocumented clients. 41. National Labor Relations Act, sec. 7, codified at U.S. Code 29 (1935), sec. 157; Eastex Inc. v. NLRB, 437 U.S. 556, 55–56 (1978). In Eastex v. NLRB, the Supreme Court held that section 7 of the NLRA “protects employees from retaliation by their employers when they seek to improve working conditions through resort to administrative and judicial forums.” 42. Hoffmann Plastic Compounds v. NLRB, 535 U.S. 137 (2002). In Hoffman Plastics, the Supreme Court held that awards available to documented workers, back pay in this case, were not available to undocumented workers who were not legally entitled to be working in the United States, so the award went beyond NLRB discretion. 43. Note, however, that an employee’s immigration status is not relevant during a wage claim proceeding. 44. Carlos Pantoja, interview by authors, September 12, 2007. 45. One registration requirement that scofflaw employers may not meet is the requirement of payment of all final judgments for owed wages to former or current car wash employees (Cal. Lab. Code, 2062[a]). However, this provision may lead to the tension between individual claimants and an organizing campaign. Organizers may want to use this provision as a bargaining chip to encourage employers to change practices. Individual claimants may want to use this provision to exert pressure on employers to pay their judgments owed. These differing end goals could potentially conflict. The law, in order to pass, was drafted with the individual worker, not an organizing campaign, in mind. 46. Victor Narro, interview by authors, July 31, 2007. 47. A “carne asada” is a large gathering with a festive atmosphere including food and music, aimed at bringing a group of people together to communicate and build community. 48. Mike Yoffee, personal communication, June 1, 2008. 49. Narro, interview, July 31, 2007. 50. Yoffee, personal communication, June 1, 2008. 51. Ibid. 52. Victor Narro, personal communication, September 19, 2008. 53. Ibid.

7. NDLON and the History of Day Labor Organizing in Los Angeles 1. In July 2005, Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, and James P. Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, announced that they were pulling their unions out of the AFL-CIO. They formed Change to Win, a new labor federation that also includes five other unions. In the spring of 2006, NDLON met with the

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presidents of the unions affiliated Change to Win at the invitation of Terry O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), another Change to Win affiliate. Several weeks later, leaders of LIUNA met with members of NDLON’s executive committee to discuss opportunities to organize immigrant day labor workers employed in the construction industry. 2. IDEPSCA’s mission is “to create a more humane and democratic society by responding to the needs and problems of disenfranchised people through leadership development and educational programs based on Popular Education methodology. Specifically our goal is to organize and educate members of low-income Latino immigrants concerned with solving problems in their own communities.” See www.idepsca.org. 3. Raul Añorve, interview by author, May 14, 2007. Raul Añorve, written communication, September 25, 2007. 4. Pablo Alvarado, interview by author, April 4, 2008. 5. Añorve, interview. 6. Ibid.; and written communication. 7. Angelica Salas, interview by author, June 1, 2008. 8. In 1992, CHIRLA applied to take over the contracts, after the idea of a private contractor was suggested by the City Council in response to alleged mismanagement of the sites by city officials. At that point the city decided to withdraw its offer to put the contract up for a bid. However, CHIRLA and IDEPSCA did take over these two centers later, in 1996 (Salas, interview). 9. Victor Narro, interview by author, March 3, 2007. 10. Ibid. 11. Alvarado, interview. 12. Narro, interview. 13. Alvarado, interview. Alvarado’s commitment to worker participation in resolving community conflict is the consequence of his popular education experiences. 14. Ibid. 15. The contract was awarded at the end of 1996 to begin in 1997. According to the proposal CHIRLA would administer the centers while IDEPSCA would manage the worker education and leadership development aspects of the job. 16. Emphasis added. See http://www.ci.la.ca.us/CDD/emp_empday.html. 17. Tony Bernabe, interview by author, April 5, 2007. 18. Añorve, interview. 19. Narro, interview. 20. “. . . a que se comprometian y lo mas importante aprendimos que no es posible resolver solos y aislados la situación en las esquinas. Es necesario organizarse.” (“. . . to which they committed themselves and, most important, we learned that we cannot resolve the situation on the street corners, alone and isolated. We need to organize ourselves.”) (IDEPSCA and CHIRLA 1997, 1) 21. “Memoria del segundo inter-esquinal” (Report of the second intercorner conference), April 20, 1997. 22. A 1997 grant proposal confirms this sharing of responsibilities: “CHIRLA and the Institute [IDEPSCA] have provided most of the resources such as transportation, brochures, flyers, newspaper, etc. . . . CHIRLA and the Institute have provided all the training and resources to promote the Asociación” (IDEPSCA 1997, 5). 23. Narro, interview. 24. Añorve, interview. 25. Alvarado interview. 26. For more information about the Minutemen, see http://www.minutemanproject.com/. 27. Alvarado, interview. 28. A brief summary of the bill and links to the full text can be found at http://www.nelp. org/nwp/initiatives/day/daylaborbill.cfm. 29. Nelson Motto, personal communication, May 25, 2008. 30. Alvarado, interview. 31. The full text of the bill can be found at http://w2.eff.org/IP/Video/hr4569.pdf.

NOTES TO PAGES 152–168

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32. Narro, interview. 33. Añorve, interview; written communication.

8. The Garment Worker Center and the “Forever 21” Campaign 1. These unions trace the origins back to the 19th century but went through a series of mergers and other changes over the years. The ILGWU was founded in 1900. The United Garment Workers of America (UGWA) was formed in 1891; some of its members broke off in 1914 to form the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA). In 1994, the UGWA became part of the United Food and Commercial Workers. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) merged with the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) in 1976 to become the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). In 1995, the ILGWU merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). UNITE in turn merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in 2005, forming UNITE HERE! 2. http://www.unitehere.org/about/history.php 3. For example, in 2008, hourly labor costs were estimated by U.S. consulting firm Jassin O’Rourke at 22 cents in Bangladesh, 33 cents in Cambodia, 37 cents in Pakistan, and 51 cents in India. In China, labor costs have been rising in recent years but in 2008 were estimated to range from 55 cents in inland and remote areas to $1.08 in the coastal provinces. See http://www.emergingtextiles.com/?q=art&s=080523-apparel-labor-cost&r=free&n=1 See also Kernaghan 1997. 4. Free trade agreements include the 1989 Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Agreement, the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, and the 2005 Dominican RepublicCentral American Free Trade Agreement. 5. The MFA was a 1974 accord that “provided for quotas on [the] import of foreign-made apparel, as a response to unions and businesses in developed countries who sought to protect their domestic jobs and businesses” (Quan 2003, 36). 6. The Economic Employment Enforcement Coalition consolidates the inspection efforts of several government agencies. For details see http://www.dir.ca.gov/eeec/eeec.html 7. The Formation Committee members were Victor Narro from CHIRLA, Paul Lee from KIWA, Julie Su from APALC, Nikki Bas from Sweatshop Watch, and Edna Bonacich, a garment industry researcher and professor at UC Riverside. Sweatshop Watch served as the GWC’s fiscal sponsor and its Board of Directors had legal oversight of the GWC. 8. It is featured, for instance, in U.S. General Accounting Office (1994) and in various fashion industry and marketing professional courses. 9. Forever 21’s revenues were more than $1 billion in 2006, making it one of the top 500 privately held companies in the United States. Since 2001, the company has quadrupled in size and has more than 400 stores in the United States, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. These include Forever XXI (the large urban flagship), For Love 21 (accessories), Heritage 1981 (a midmarket entry), and Twelve By Twelve (couture) (Koyen 2008). 10. The groups that participated in this exchange were Domestic Workers United (New York), the Restaurant Opportunities Center (New York), the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (Florida), as well as GWC, PWC, KIWA, and CHIRLA from Los Angeles. 11. Luz Elena Henao and Miguel Morales, interview by Nicole Archer, October 1, 2007.

9. Ally to Win 1. I use the terms black and African American interchangeably. By “black community leaders” I mean the leaders of institutions and organizations that represent themselves as serving the common interests of black people, and whose legitimacy is widely recognized. 2. My sources include interviews with key participants in the campaign, participant observation at key stages of the organizing effort, journalistic accounts, as well as documents

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obtained from campaign participants. Factual information on the campaign included below is from the interviews, unless otherwise indicated. 3. One such union (established with the help of a well-known antiunion consultant) won recognition at seven L.A buildings in the early stages of the SEIU security campaign. 4. Jono Shaffer, interview by author, March 28, 2007. For details on the L.A. janitors’ campaign, see Waldinger et al. (1998). 5. The 2000 U.S. Census (PUMS) shows that L.A. County has about 27,000 security guards, of whom 34% are black, but the SEIU campaign that this chapter documents focused on just one industry segment, namely prime office building security, which employs a much higher proportion of black workers. 6. Shaffer, interview. 7. Norman S. Johnson, interview by author, September 18, 2007. Burke’s father had been an SEIU member, and Supervisor Burke herself was the first recipient of the SEIU scholarship. 8. Eric Lee, interview (with Lola Smallwood Cuevas) by author, May 21, 2007. 9. The meeting was attended by representatives from AGENDA and ACORN; Karen Bass, then of the Community Coalition (and now speaker of the California State Assembly); Mark Ridley-Thomas, former L.A. City Council member (and now a state senator); L.A. City Council members Jack Weiss and Jan Perry; and Martin Ludlow, who was then planning a successful run for L.A. City Council. Yvonne Burke, then chair of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, and Herb Wesson, then speaker of the State Assembly, both sent staff to the meeting. 10. Lawson was also chair of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) with strong ties to Los Angeles labor. 11. Jayson Pope, interview by author, August 29, 2007. 12. September 24, 2007. 13. Johnson, interview. 14. Shaffer, interview. 15. Johnson, interview. 16. Pope, interview, August 29, 2007. 17. Original text was boldfaced and underlined for emphasis. 18. Lee, interview. 19. Pope, interview. 20. See http://bethelamela.org/pastor.htm 21. Minister Tony Muhammed of the Nation of Islam, Jonathan Jackson of ACORN, Roselle Flowers from CLUE, Maulana Karenga of Organization Us, Reverend William Campbell of the Los Angeles Council of Churches, Anthony Thigpenn of Agenda, Rev. Brenda Lamothe from First AME, Thembekila Coleman-Smart, and Danny Tabor—a community organizer and now Inglewood City councilman—all participated frequently in strategy meetings at Logan’s Bethel AME Church. 22. Lee biographical details from http://www.sclclosangeles.org/revlee.htm 23. CalSTRS owned 64% of the joint venture (Business Wire 2003; Fulman 2003; Shaffer, interview). For October 2004 SEIU defeat of Thomas tax break in city council, see Nash 2004; Shaffer, interview). 24. Terence Long, interview by author, May 22, 2007. 25. Bahar Tolou, interview by author, March 28, 2007. See Capital Stewardship Program 2005; Manning 2005a, 2005b, 2005c. 26. Lewis Logan, interview by author, September 12, 2007. 27. According to Shaffer, SEIU was willing to create a separate local for the security officers from the start. See also Helfand 2006; Maguire Properties 2006; Moretti 2006. 28. Lee, interview. 29. Ibid. 30. Jono Shaffer, personal email to author, September 25, 2008. 31. Logan, interview. 32. Shaffer, interview. 33. Lee, interview.

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34. Lola Smallwood Cuevas, interview (with Eric Lee) by author, May 21, 2007. 35. Pope, interview, August 29, 2007. 36. Lee, interview.

10. From the Shop to the Streets 1. In 2004, UNITE (formerly the Union of Needletrades, Textiles and Industrial Employees) and HERE (Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union) merged to form UNITE-HERE! 2. Note that Chun analyzes organizing efforts carried out by SEIU locals. This chapter draws on her application of public dramas to examine HERE organizing tactics. 3. Empirical data for this analysis is the result of more than 12 months of participantobservation and ethnographic research in hotel and community organizing in Los Angeles. In-depth interviews were conducted with the campaign’s lead organizers, community advocates, political allies, and hotel workers themselves. The names of workers throughout this chapter have been changed for their protection. Because this is an ongoing campaign, vocal workers in leadership positions are already vulnerable to employee retaliation ranging from suspension to outright termination. The names of all other individuals, organizations, and hotels have not been altered. 4. Prior to 2003 the figures are for “hotel and motel workers”; after that the industry classification changed and the category became “traveler accommodation.” See http://www. trinity.edu/bhirsch/unionstats/ 5. LAANE has extensive experience with this type of policy-oriented research. For additional background on LAANE, including an overview of recent campaigns, see Gottlieb et al. (2005). 6. Vivian Rothstein, interview by author, April 27, 2007. 7. Kurt Petersen, interview by author, March 14, 2007. 8. Marx Gutierrez, interview by author, July 27, 2007. 9. Ibid. 10. Aisha Blanchard-Young, interview by author, April 6, 2007. 11. Jane Affonso, interview by author, August 14, 2007. 12. Linda Piera-Avila, interview by author, August 16, 2007. 13. Affonso, interview. 14. Piera-Avila, interview. 15. Vivian Rothstein, interview by author, January 29, 2007. Luce (2004); Peters and Merrill (1998). 16. Janice Hahn, interview by author, June 5 2007. 17. Ibid. 18. Gutierrez, interview. 19. Hahn, interview. 20. Lorena Lopez, interview by author, October 13, 2007. Following the initial suspensions, Local 11 filed 22 Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charges against the Hilton-LAX. In October 2008, all 22 ULP charges were upheld by the NLRB. (Vivian Rothstein, personal communication, November 1, 2008.) 21. See, for example, Chang 2006. 22. Hahn, interview. 23. Amalia Reina, Julieta Rodriguez, Leonora Ciriza, Katerina Villaverde, and Margarita Sanchez, group interview by author, April 14, 2007. Vivian Rothstein, interview by author, March 2, 2007. Petersen, interview, March 14, 2007. 24. Piera-Avila, interview. 25. Hahn, interview. 26. Kurt Petersen, interview by author, September 9, 2008. 27. Lorena Lopez, interview by author, August 13, 2007, LM-21 filed by Cruz and Associates Inc. on 4 April 2008. 28. Lorena Lopez, interview, October 13, 2007.

262 29. 30. 31. 32.

NOTES TO PAGES 208–216 Ibid. Marta Santamaria, interview by author, October 15, 2007. Julieta Rodriguez, interview by author, July 30, 2007. Amalia Reina, interview by author, July 30, 2007.

11. The Janitorial Industry and the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund 1. Composite of 105 interviews with nonunion janitors in L.A. supermarkets (Valenzuela 2006). 2. Valenzuela (2006) found that 73% of his respondents did not receive formal health and safety training at their current job. 42% reported never obtaining any safety equipment from the store or their contracting company. Of the janitors who worked overtime only 56% were paid for it. 44% of janitors who responded “yes” to working overtime were not paid overtime wages, and 25% reported not working overtime although they worked 6 days per week. 19% of the respondents indicated that they had suffered an injury that required medical attention in their current job, but only 10% actually received medical attention. 3. The Department of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) enjoyed strong budgetary growth in the mid-to late 1970s (Bar-Cohen and Carillo 2002). Union membership in Local 399 peaked in 1978 (Fisk et al. 2000, 200). 4. The SEIU represents approximately 12,950 of an estimated 57,430 janitorial workers in the county: 500 in the supermarkets according to Adolfo Gamez, lead organizer for Local 1877’s market division (Adolfo Gamez, interview by author, May 18, 2008); 6,000 in commercial buildings according to David Huerta, director of Local 1877 union membership (Lilia Garcia, interview by author, April 2, 2008); and 6,000 buildings and grounds workers in LAUSD. There are also approximately 450 unionized janitors (AFSCME) on the UCLA Campus (including the hospital) as well as the Venice Family Clinic, according to Karla Navarrete, a former union organizer at AFSCME (Karla Navarrete, interview by author, May 23, 2008). The total janitorial workforce estimate is from the Employment Development Department of the State of California (http://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/cgi/databrowsing/ occExplorerQSDetails.asp?searchCriteria=Janitorial+&careerID=&menuChoice=occExplorer& geogArea=0604000037&soccode=372011&search=Explore+Occupation). This figure probably omits many janitors working for illegitimate subcontractors. 5. Lilia Garcia (executive director of the MCTF), interview by author, October 3, 2007. Valenzuela (2006) found that 99% of nonunion janitors in Los Angeles supermarkets were born in either Mexico or Central America. 6. The 2000 annual report to the California Legislature released by the California Employment Development Department, “Joint-Enforcement Strike Force on the Underground Economy” described an investigation on a janitorial business that misclassified 249 workers as independent contractors. The employer was assessed $504,004 for unpaid employment taxes plus penalties and interest charges. EDD began looking into the janitorial industry in the summer of 1998 as a result of information provided by the owner of a southern California janitorial business. In 1998, 3 underground economy janitorial businesses were audited, and in 1999, 6 additional underground economy janitorial businesses were audited. In total, all 9 businesses were assessed $3,796,221 in unpaid employment taxes plus penalty and interest charges. In addition, 598 unreported employees were discovered. Assembly Bill (A.B.) 613 (Chapter 299, Statutes of 1999) required the Strike Force to include the janitorial and building maintenance industry as a targeted industry beginning in State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2000/01. 7. Even nonunion law-abiding employers are at an advantage within this system given that they are not required by law to pay for benefits that union employers provide under the collective bargaining agreement. 8. Triana Silton, interview by author, February 4, 2008. 9. Ibid. 10. Lilia Garcia, interview by author, August 23, 2007.

NOTES TO PAGES 216–226

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11. Dick Dotts, interview by author, November 12, 2007. 12. Ibid. 13. Jono Schaffer, October 5, 2007. 14. Labor Management Relations, U.S. Code, 29, sec. 176 (7). 15. Ellyn Moscowitz (attorney specializing in LMCCs), interview by author, April 8, 2008. 16. Dotts, interview. 17. Ibid. 18. Javier Gonzalez, interview by author, February 1, 2008. 19. Adolfo Gamez (lead organizer for the Market Division of SEIU Local 1877), interview by author, April 8, 2008. 20. Gonzalez, interview. 21. Ibid. 22. Lilia Garcia, interview by author, March 2, 2008. 23. Adolfo Gamez, interview by author, October 30, 2007. 24. Gonzalez, interview. 25. Ibid. 26. Lilia Garcia, interview by author, April 7, 2008. Gonzalez and Tchakalian were working with an informant who was providing them with information on Building One’s illegitimate subcontracting. 27. Gonzalez, interview. 28. Ibid. 29. Victor Narro (program director of the UCLA Labor Center), interview by author, February 5, 2008. 30. Garcia, interview, March 2, 2008. 31. Gonzalez, interview. 32. This also has implications for union organizing. The building owner can insulate itself from the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by contending that the nominal “supervisor” of the janitors is an employee of the cleaning contractor, and the contract allows the client to direct only the “results” of the cleaning work and not the “means” by which it is accomplished (Southern California Gas Co., 302 NLRB 456 [1991]) Then the property manager or building owner is treated as a “neutral” or “secondary” employer who can be protected from labor protests that would be permissible if directed at the contractor; the “primary” employer (Fisk et al. 214). 33. Gonzalez, interview. 34. Valenzuela (2006) found that 33.4 percent of nonunion janitors in Los Angeles supermarkets surveyed were from the state of Puebla, compared to 25.7 of janitors from all other states in Mexico combined. 35. Information compiled from various MCTF cases. 36. Javier Amaro (former regional coordinator, MCTF), interview by author, October 2, 2007. 37. Lilia Garcia, interview by author, September 27, 2007. 38. Ibid., April 7, 2008. 39. Adolfo Gamez, interview by author, May 13, 2008. 40. Schaffer, interview. 41. Garcia, interview, October 3, 2007. 42. Rafael Ventura (MCTF Regional Field Coordinator), interview by author, September 9, 2007. 43. Lilia Garcia, interview by author, April 8, 2008. 44. Francisco Solórzano, interview by author, August 18, 2007. 45. Lilia Garcia, interview by author, February 8, 2008. 46. Garcia believes that hiring family members and putting them in different hierarchical positions of power is a strategy that subcontractors use to be able to pit one against the other in order to hinder or diffuse organizing efforts. 47. Garcia, interview, April 7, 2008.

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48. Ibid., August 23, 2007. 49. Ibid., February 4, 2008. 50. Ibid., April 2, 2008. 51. Until 2005, CLIWA was known as the Coalition of Immigrant Worker Advocates (CIWA). 52. Lilia Garcia, interview by author, May 8, 2008. 53. Ibid., May 8, 2008. 54. Ibid., February 8, 2008. 55. Victor Narro, interview by author, May 13, 2008. 56. Garcia, interview, May 8, 2008. 57. California Labor Code, sec. 2810 (2003). 58. Garcia, interview, May 8, 2008. 59. Cal. Labor Code, 2810. 60. Garcia, interview, May 8, 2008. 61. Ibid., July 11, 2008. 62. Christopher Schwartz (research director for SEIU JfJ, Houston), interview by author, July 22, 2008. Schwartz noted that SEIU has 75% of the Houston market for buildings 100,000 square feet or more, for a total of 142 million square feet.

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Contributors

Nicole A. Archer is a doctoral candidate in the history of consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a former research fellow at the Garment Worker Center. Gary Blasi is professor of law at the UCLA School of Law. Much of the research reflected in the chapter he coauthored for this volume was conducted by students in his Fact Investigation Clinic. Joshua Bloom is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UCLA, former director of the Social Movements Project at the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley, and coauthor (with Waldo E. Martin, Jr.) of the forthcoming Black against Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Black Panther Party (New Press) He worked eight years as a full-time organizer. Maria Dziembowska is a doctoral candidate in sociology at UCLA. She is working on a dissertation about political activism among recent Polish immigrants in Chicago and Philadelphia. Simmi Gandhi has been associated with the Garment Worker Center since 2004 and is currently on its board. She is also a family nurse practitioner with a specialty in occupational health and works in the Emergency Department of the L.A. County General Hospital. Since 1984, she has been active in rank-and-file workplace campaigns in a variety of industries. Susan Garea is a labor law attorney at Gilbert and Sackman, a Los Angeles firm representing labor unions. She graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 2008 with specializations in the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy and Critical Race Studies.

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Nazgol Ghandnoosh is a doctoral student in sociology at UCLA. Her research focus is on race and ethnicity in comparative perspective. She previously worked for Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, doing research in support of campaigns to unionize health care workers in New York City. Ana Luz Gonzalez is a doctoral candidate in Urban Planning at UCLA. Her research focuses on urban poverty, the labor market status of immigrants and minorities, and the role of day labor worker centers in the informal economy and in integrating immigrant workers in local communities. Delia Herrera has been associated with the Garment Worker Center since 2005 and is currently an organizer. She crossed the border to the United States as a child and has been working with projects that empower poor women since high school. Jong Bum Kwon received his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology at New York University and currently is a Lausanne postgraduate fellow in anthropology at Willamette University. He is at work on a book about the culture of labor protest in South Korea, focusing on the impact of neoliberal economic restructuring on the lives of laid-off autoworkers. Jacqueline Leavitt is professor of urban planning in the UCLA School of Public Affairs. Her research focus is on the role of labor and communitybased organizations in community development. Kimi Lee, the daughter of a garment worker, was a founder of the Garment Worker Center and served as its executive director from 2001 to 2008. Ruth Milkman is professor of sociology at UCLA and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she is also an Associate Director of the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies. From 2001 to 2008 she directed the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, which supported the research that generated this volume. Her most recent book is L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006). Karina Muñiz holds masters’ degrees in urban planning and Latin American studies from UCLA. She has worked as an advocate and researcher on low-wage immigrant labor organizing and transnational civic participation within the Latina/o community. She is currently on the staff of the Los Angeles Conservancy. Victor Narro is project director at the UCLA Downtown Labor Center where he implements leadership programs for immigrant workers and student internship projects. He also serves as a guest lecturer for the Chicano Studies Department at UCLA. He received his law degree from University of Richmond Law School in 1991. Chinyere Osuji is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UCLA and studies the ways in which interpersonal relationships structure racial inequality. She has done research on the social networks of Dominican and Puerto Rican

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immigrants and is currently working on a comparison of interracial couples in Los Angeles, California, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Caitlin C. Patler is a doctoral student in sociology at UCLA and former director of development for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA). Her research focuses on the impact of undocumented immigration status on children, families, and workers, as well as immigrant participation in the low-wage labor market. Sasha Alexandra Stern is a 2008 graduate of the UCLA School of Law and currently works as a special education attorney for foster children at the Alliance for Children’s Rights in Los Angeles. Forrest Stuart is a doctoral student in sociology at UCLA. His research focuses on identity formation, community organizing, and legal mobilization in Los Angeles’ downtown Skid Row.

Index

A-1 Building Maintenance Company campaign, 26 Acosta, Frank, 73, 251 n4 Action for Grassroots Empowerment and Neighborhood Development Alternatives (AGENDA), 171, 175, 260 n9 Administrative Services Cooperative (ASC), 111, 115 Advanced Building Maintenance (ABM), 216, 225 –26 AFL-CIO, 17, 85, 137–38, 141, 152, 236, 242– 43, 244, 257 n1 Alarcon, Richard, 133, 134 Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere, 103 Alvarado, Pablo, 143 – 44, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 234, 235 –36, 258 n13 Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, 154, 259 n1 Amaro, Javier, 223 American Building Maintenance, 213, 216 American Property Management Corporation (APMC), 207– 8 Añorve, Raul, 99, 143, 144, 148, 150, 235, 248 n24 Arvizu, John, 149 Asian Immigrant Women’s Advocates, 26 Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), 117, 157, 158

Asian workers/immigrants, 32, 33, 51, 68, 70, 104, 117, 156, 255 n15 Asociación de Jornaleros, 149 – 50, 153, 258 n22 Assi Supermarket campaign: boycotts, 46, 239, 249 n53; CHIRLA and, 79; decision to organize, 40, 41; employer tactics, 39, 42, 45, 239; funding, 44 – 45; as innovative, 42, 43; and living wage campaign, 47; miscalculations/defeat, 39, 45, 246 n1; MIWON and, 102; settlement, 23 –24, 239; suspensions, 45; as transformational, 39 – 40, 48 Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), 171, 175, 184, 260 n9 Association of Day Laborers of Pasadena, 144 Association of Filipino Workers (AFW), 57– 58, 64, 65, 67, 251 n15 Authorized Taxicab Supervision, Inc. (ATS), 111 Balter, David, 229 Bernabé, Antonio (Tony), 94, 95, 148 Bet Tzedek, 129, 130, 136, 255 n1 Blanchard-Young, Aisha, 198 Board of Taxicab Commissioners, 110, 118, 119, 120 Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act, 152, 253 n42

287

288 Bradstreet, Angela, 136 Building One Services Solutions, 218, 220, 222, 263 n26 Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA), 184, 186, 188, 190 Building Trades Council, 47 Burke, Yvonne, 145, 170, 260 n7, 260 n9 Bus Riders Union, 26, 175 California Department of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE), 128, 135, 136, 222, 227, 256 n6, 262 n2 California Dream Network, 84 – 85 California Employment Development Department, 214 California labor commission: and car wash industry, 128, 129, 131, 135 –36, 137, 256 n5, 257 n38; and garment industry, 81, 159; and janitorial industry, 217, 218, 219–20, 227–29; and supermarket industry, 43. See also California Department of Labor Standards Enforcement California Labor Federation, 132, 134 California Market campaign, 24, 47 California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal/OSHA), 128 California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), 179 – 80, 190, 260 n23 car wash campaign. See CLEAN car wash campaign car wash industry: environmental concerns, 139; in L.A., 128; labor violations, 125, 126 –29, 136, 256 n19; ownership of, 131; wages, 128; working conditions, 128 Car Wash Worker Law, 15, 129 – 40, 243, 256 n19, 257 n45 car wash workers, 125, 126, 127, 131, 133, 136 –37, 138, 140, 256 n4, 256 n19 Caravan for Justice, 101, 102, 253 n10 Cedillo, Gil, 99, 237 Center for Community Change (CCC), 64, 66 – 67, 85, 87 Century Boulevard campaign, 200, 208 Cervas, Strela, 51, 94, 96, 100, 250 n2, 251 n15 Chamber of Commerce, 43 – 44, 134, 205 Change to Win, 17, 141, 236, 257– 58 n1 Chase, Louis, 176 Chinese workers, 26, 97, 98, 100, 158 – 59, 240, 254 n14 churches, 43, 56, 160; activist, 8, 18, 73, 172, 173, 197– 98, 200; alliances, 78, 83; antiimmigration legislation and, 152; Ascension Lutheran, 175; Bethel AME, 178, 184, 189, 260 n21; First AME, 172, 177, 180;

INDEX First New Christian, 170; Hamilton United Methodist, 176; Mt. Gilead Baptist, 177; Our Lady Queen of Angels, 73; St Joseph’s, 197– 98; Ward AME, 171, 175, 177 CLEAN car wash campaign, 17, 126 –29, 138, 139, 243 Cleeland, Nancy, 221–22 Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), 177, 178, 199 –200, 202, 260 n10, 260 n21 Clergy Labor Coalition, 173, 177, 189 Coalition for a New Century, 195, 209 Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR), 86, 87 Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA): affiliates, 85 – 87; advocacy efforts, 76, 78, 81, 83; amnesty, 144; and car wash workers, 78; and CLIWA, 129; conflict resolution, 142; and day laborers, 72, 77–78, 80, 82, 142, 145 – 50, 235 –36, 258 n8, 258 n22; and domestic workers, 236 –37; and driver’s license campaign, 100, 253 n8, 253 n9; formation/evolution of, 72, 73 –74, 251 n4; funding, 73 –74, 76, 80; and garment workers, 61, 78, 81, 157, 158, 259 n10; and household workers, 77, 80; and immigrant rights, 10, 75 –76, 80 – 81, 82, 145, 153, 237, 242– 43; and immigration reform, 9, 87– 88, 96; and janitors’ campaign, 79, 228; leadership/skills development, 79, 95; legal actions/services, 76, 77, 79, 159, 236; legalization efforts, 80, 81; legislation reform, 228; and MIWON, 81– 82, 90 – 92, 252 n25; organizing by, 74, 78; popular education programs, 78, 234; rank-and-file members, 71, 79, 80, 83, 84; recruitment, 80; staff, 77–78, 146; successes/victories, 78; and supermarket campaigns, 79; and undocumented students, 80, 84 – 85; voter registration, 8, 84, 86; as worker center, 90, 95, 245 n5 Coalition of Garment Worker Advocates (CGWA), 81 Coalition of Immigrant Workers Advocates (CIWA), 129, 264 n51 Coalition of Low-Wage and Immigrant Worker Advocates (CLIWA): advocacy/ lobbying, 131, 137, 228; carne asada, 138, 139, 257 n47; formation, 127, 129 –30, 256 n3, 264 n51; hotlines, 76, 77, 80, 138; and labor commission, 257 n38; legal actions, 256 n19, 256 n29; legislative

289

INDEX reform, 229; mission, 227–28; not workercentered, 139 – 40; organizing, 138 –39, 140, 244; successes/victories, 135 Community Coalition (CC), 93, 105, 171, 175, 254 n14, 260 n9 Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), 47 Community-Labor-Environmental Action Network (CLEAN), 125, 126, 127, 139, 243, 244 Contreras, Miguel, 73 Cooper, Ronnie, 145 – 46 COURAGE Campaign, 63 – 64 Cressall, Randy, 134 Culbreath, Faith, 188, 190 Davis, Gray, 100, 101, 128 –29, 131, 132, 157, 228, 256 n5 Day Labor Fairness and Protection (DLFP) Act, 151 Day Labor Project, 149 day laborer campaign: anti-immigrant sentiment, 145, 151, 152; anti-solicitation ordinance, 15, 78, 82, 142, 145 – 46, 151, 152, 234, 236; civil/immigrant rights, 141– 42, 145, 147, 150 – 52, 153; conflict resolution, 142, 145 – 46, 147, 153; conventions, 151– 52; defeats, 150, 158; immigration reform, 151; intercorner conferences, 148 – 49, 153; in Ladera Heights, 142, 145 – 47, 233, 234; leadership schools, 149; mediation efforts, 145 – 46, 234; national network, 150 – 52, 153; organizations for, 149 – 50, 153; political agenda, 151– 52; popular education, 77, 78, 240; soccer tournament, 236; successes/victories, 15, 78, 149; unions and, 152; worker participation, 142, 145 – 46, 148 – 49. See also Asociación de Jornaleros Day Laborer Program, 145, 147– 48, 235, 236 day laborers, 142, 143, 144, 151, 152– 53, 236 Dick Dotts, 216, 217, 218 Diversified Maintenance Services, 216 Domestic Workers Association, 236 Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, 64 Domestic Workers United (DWU), 54, 259 n10 driver’s license campaign, 90, 97, 99 –101, 102, 105, 253 n8, 253 n9 Elephant Snack Corner campaign, 38, 91, 101, 238 –39, 240, 249 n36 Employment Enforcement Task Force, 214

Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC), 43 Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM), 85 – 86, 87 Fair Labor Standards Act, 154 Ferguson, Dave, 216 Filipino workers/immigrants: in California, 52; domestic workers, 56; downward mobility, 57; education level, 51, 52– 53, 57; fear deportation, 55, 59, 63; in garment industry, 56; in health care industry, 52, 61– 65; history/status, 51; income/wages, 52– 53, 64; in L.A., 53; marches, 91; in multiethnic coalitions, 94, 98, 100; parking attendants, 60 – 61; poverty among, 52– 53; in professions, 50, 51– 52; remittances, 65 – 66; undocumented, 52, 53; and unionization, 57– 59; in U.S., 50, 51 Financially Sufficient Labor Contracts Act, 228 Fine, Janice, 3, 25, 38, 39, 64, 65, 66 – 67, 82, 96, 104, 214, 245 n6 Flores, Anel, 130 Forever 21 campaign, 160, 161, 162, 240 4.29 Displaced Workers Justice Campaign, 34 Galleria Markets campaign, 24, 47 Gamez, Adolfo, 219 –20, 224, 262 n4 Garcia, Lilia, 129, 222, 223, 224 –25, 226, 227–28, 229, 263 n47 Garcia, Mike, 174, 176, 178, 216, 243 garment industry: boycotts, 160, 161, 240 – 41; declines in, 67, 155; global competition, 5; in L.A., 155, 156; labor violations, 78, 81, 128, 154, 156, 221, 227, 229, 240; laws/litigation, 155, 157, 158, 160, 162, 221, 228 –29, 240; registration required, 156, 157; structure of, 160; subcontractors, 81, 157, 160; sweatshops, 155 – 56, 161, 163, 240; unions, 8, 154 – 55, 158, 245 n2, 259 n1; working conditions, 154, 156, 160 Garment Worker Center, 9; and CLIWA, 228; exchange program, 161; formation, 81, 158 – 59, 240; goals, 158, 159 – 60, 163; and KIWA, 26; and LAWAC, 129; leadership programs, 161, 163; and MIWON, 92; networks, 163; participation/staffing, 163; retreats/workshops, 158 – 59; wage claims/clinics, 59, 159, 163 garment workers: income/wages, 156; legislation, 100, 157; organizations/unions, 81, 92, 129, 154 – 55; race/ethnicity of,

290 garment workers (continued) 56, 156; as slave labor, 129, 157; as unorganizable, 8; worker centers and, 26 Gonzalez, Javier, 218, 219 –21, 222 Gutierrez, Luis, 151 Gutierrez, Marx, 196 – 97 Hahn, Janice, 200, 201, 202–3, 204 – 5, 207, 255 n15 Harbor City Job Center, 77, 145, 147, 235 Hart-Celler Act, 51 Hayden, Tom, 128 –29, 130, 131, 137 health care industry, 52, 62 Hernandez, Antonia, 145 Hilton hotel campaigns, 25, 200, 202–3, 207– 8, 261 n20 home care campaign, 61– 65, 70 home care workers, 59, 63, 64, 123, 250 n14, 251 n15, 253 n4 Hong, Roy, 37, 247– 48 n16; on KIWA, 26, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 –37; on Korean community, 29, 30; on media, 248 n24 hotel campaign: anti-union tactics, 191, 193 – 94, 196, 202, 205 – 8; boycotts, 207– 8; city council and, 200, 201, 202, 204, 210; clergy and, 193, 197, 199, 200, 204, 205, 208, 209; coalition building for, 191, 194, 195, 209; community-based organizing, 18, 196 – 98, 209; community leaders/ members, 193, 197– 98, 200 –201, 203, 209, 210; focus on living wage, 191, 196, 197, 204 –7, 210; impact on community, 194, 195 – 96, 200; litigation, 206 –7; marches, 204 – 4, 205; ordinances proposed, 191, 196, 200, 204 – 5, 206 – 8, 210; political groups and, 199, 208; posada, 197– 98; protests, 202–3, 204, 205 – 6, 208 – 9; research, 191, 194, 195, 200, 209; suspensions, 202–3, 261 n3; terminations/firings, 192, 202, 209, 261 n3; victories/successes, 204 – 5, 207, 208, 209 –10, 192, 203 Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE): alliances/collaborations, 87, 193, 194; card checks, 193; focus on immigrants, 15; geographical approach, 193; KIWA and, 25; Local 11, 25, 33, 60, 242; media, 194; merger with UNITE, 245 n2, 259 n1, 261 n1; organizing model/tactics, 3, 7, 8, 191, 193, 196; research, 14, 194 hotel industry: anti-unionization tactics, 191, 192– 93, 207; immigrants in, 208; labor costs, 193; layoffs, 200; opposes ordinances, 205, 206; organizing/

INDEX unionization, 185, 192, 194, 195; working conditions, 201 hotel workers, 7, 197– 98, 200, 201, 202, 203, 208 Hotel Workers’ Rising (HWR), 191, 194 – 95, 242 Household Worker Equity Bill, 64 – 65 Household Workers Project, 237 Huizar, José, 204, 207 Hung, Betty, 129, 132, 133 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), 75 Immigrant Organizing Committee (IOC), 85 Immigrant Reform and Control Act (IRCA), 9, 72, 74, 73, 76, 85, 144, 251 n1, 251 n3 Immigrant Rights Platform, 90, 97– 98, 101, 105 Immigrant Women’s Taskforce, 77 Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, 173, 253 n10 Immigrant Workers Union (IWU), 23 –24, 41– 44, 249 n48 immigrants rights movement, 1, 75, 81, 194, 207; alliances, 204, 237, 242, 244; growth, 8, 9, 72, 73; immigration reform, 88; worker centers, 87, 97, 164, 254 n14; workers’ rights, 19 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), 9, 72, 73, 74, 75, 85, 144, 251n1, 251n3 immigration reform, 76, 84, 204; collaborations, 86, 87– 88, 105; national campaigns, 72, 78, 87, 237, 253 n10; not enacted, 87; union support, 85; 239; worker centers and, 92, 96 – 97, 102 Independent Taxi Operators Association, (ITOA), 113, 114, 254 n8 In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS), 63 Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA): at AFL-CIO convention, 242; Asociación, 149 – 50, 258 n22; Copa Jornalera, 236; and day laborers, 142, 143 – 44, 147, 148, 149, 151, 153, 242; and domestic workers, 242; and drivers’ license campaign, 99, 101; Encuentros Interesquinales, 148 – 49; Escuela de Cuadros, 149; and janitorial industry, 217; and job centers, 147– 48, 151, 234 –35, 258 n8, 258 n15; and MIWON, 90, 92; national networking, 150 – 52; principles/ mission, 147, 235, 258 n2; training, 236 Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA). See Institute of Popular Education of Southern California

INDEX International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 113, 114, 123, 257 n1 International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), 154, 157, 158, 259 n1 Iron Workers, 47 Jackson, Jesse, 174 janitorial industry: anti-union tactics, 224, 226, 263 n32, 263 n46; claims against, 26, 225 –26; clients of, 214; contractors, 213, 215, 222, 223, 262 n4, 263 n46; fair/unfair competition, 215, 216, 230; labor violations, 214, 215, 219, 262 n6; Latinos in, 213; laws affecting, 228 –29; “mixed” unions, 176 –77, 179, 183; relatives in, 226; unionization, 168, 169, 212, 213, 262 n4; working conditions, 211–12, 220, 222 janitorial workers: driver’s license campaign, 100; exploitation of, 213, 231; income/wages, 184, 223, 262 n2; from Puebla, 222–23, 263 n34; race/ethnicity, 169 –70, 185 – 86, 213, 262 n5; and security campaign, 175 –76, 177, 180, 186 janitors’ campaigns, 7, 13, 176. See also Justice for Janitors; Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund Johnson, Jarvis, 177, 178 Johnson, Norman S., 170, 171–73, 177, 189 Justice for Janitors campaign, 18, 212, 225, 244, 247– 48 n16; CHIRLA and, 79; focus on low-wage/immigrant workers, 7, 8; immigrant rights and, 242; industry-wide strategy, 169; union base, 168; worker centers, 18; victories/successes, 169 Khan, Hamid, 82, 117 Korea Times, 28, 36 Korean American Federation, 37 Korean American Relief Fund (KARF), 35 Korean Federation of Los Angeles (KFLA), 29, 36 Korean immigrants/workers: difficulty of organizing, 37; dismissal/suspension of, 24, 42, 43, 91; exploitation of, 237; file charges, 43; in L.A. County, 28; as model minority, 30; and multi-racial/ethnic collaboration, 97, 98, 237, 240; relief funds, 25, 35, 48, 248 n22; in restaurant industry, 91, 237, 238; working conditions for, 35 Korean Youth and Community Center, 103 Koreana Hotel campaign, 25, 33 Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA): accused of ethnic betrayal, 35 –36; boycotts/picketing, 23, 25, 33, 43;

291 coalition member, 81, 90 – 91, 92, 228, 259 n10; defeat for, 45; direct actions, 25 –26, 38, 43, 46, 246 – 47 n6; drivers license campaign, 253 n8; formation, 26, 32, 237, 247 n16, 253 n4; funding, 44 – 45; and garment workers campaign, 158; image, 37; 44 – 45, 46, 47, 48, 249 n36; and immigration reform, 96; impact on Koreatown, 38, 47; innovative actions, 25, 42, 43; legal actions, 157; living wage campaign, 47, 48; and media, 248 n24; militancy/aggressiveness, 25, 26, 35, 37, 38, 46, 47, 48; mission, 26 –27; nonprofit status, 249 n48; relief funds, 25, 35, 48, 248 n22; restaurant campaign, 35 –37, 237–39, 240; services offered, 25, 95 – 96, 159; and taxi campaign, 241; union alliances, 47; as worker center, 25; worker committees, 41 Koreatown Restaurant Owners Association (KROA), 237–38 Koreatown Restaurant Workers Justice Campaign, 35 –37, 91, 237 L. A. Greens, 199 labor law violations: adjudicating, 130; back wages, 42, 25 –26, 38, 64, 91, 239, 248 n2, 256 n5; car wash industry, 125 –26, 128 –29, 132, 135 –36, 137, 218; day labors, 141, 148; garment industry, 81, 156, 157, 159, 160, 240; homecare industry, 63, 64; hotline for, 138; janitorial industry, 212, 214, 217, 219 –24, 228 –29; in Koreatown, 35; in L.A., 4, 5 – 6; publicizing, 16, 229; remedies, 12, 15, 255 n2; restaurant industry, 237, 248 n26; settlements, 23; supermarket industry, 43, 44; worker centers and, 10, 18, 25 Labor Management Cooperation Act, 217 Laborers International Union of North American (LIUNA), 151, 152, 257– 58 n1 Ladera Heights Civic Association, 145 Ladera Heights Task Force, 146 Latino community, 3, 36, 143 Latino immigrants/workers: in car wash industry, 128; day laborers, 142; exploitation of, 35; file charges, 43; firing/dismissals, 33, 91, 238; in garment industry, 26, 156; in hotel industry, 33; in janitorial industry, 169, 180, 213; in Koreatown, 25, 27, 28, 31, 41, 43, 248 n24; in L.A., 6; multiracial/ethnic collaboration, 94, 98, 237, 240; naturalization/legalization of, 75, 94; in political office, 204, 242; poverty

292 Latino immigrants/workers (continued) among, 150; relief funds, 25, 35, 48; in restaurant industry, 27, 91, 237, 238; in security industry, 171; in supermarket industry, 35, 41, 43, 45; suspensions, 24, 42, 43; in taxi industry, 117; working conditions for, 35. See also Assi Supermarket campaign Lawson, James, 173, 174, 175, 176 LAX Democratic Club, 199 Lee, Eric, 170, 178, 179, 184, 185, 187– 88, 189, 190 Lee, Jung Hee, 37–38, 39, 41, 45 Lee, Nam Hee, 29 Lee, Paul, 40 – 41, 91, 138, 238, 240, 259 n7 Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA), 129 –30, 132, 136, 255 n19, 275 n38 legal service organizations, 73, 127, 129. See also Bet Tzedek, Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA), Neighborhood Legal Services (NLS) legalization, 73, 93 – 94, 100, 253 n4; campaign for, 80, 81, 96 – 97; as goal, 86; legislation and, 251 n1; rallies for, 104; union support for, 85. See also naturalization legislation: A.B.60, 99; A.B.633, 81, 128, 129, 130, 157, 158, 252 n15; A.B.168, 132; A.B.2060, 252 n30; A.B.2536, 64 – 65; antiimmigrant, 243; as campaign goal, 13, 130; driver’s license bill, 101; for garment workers, 157; for home care workers, 70; H.R.4437, 75, 87, 102, 152, 253 n42; for immigration rights/reform, 2, 71, 72, 74, 86 – 87, 95, 97– 98; for labor regulation, 154; to protect wages, 89; S.B.60, 99, 100; S.B.179, 228; S.B.1097, 128, 129, 131; S.B. 1569, 292 n30; undocumented immigrants and, 89 – 90; for undocumented students, 84; unions and, 14; worker centers and, 15. See also laws by name Lerner, Stephen, 185 litigation: car wash industry, 125 –27, 137, 140; garment industry, 157, 158, 160, 162, 221, 240; hotel industry, 206 –7; janitorial industry, 218, 223; police brutality, 103; supermarket industry, 23, 43, 218, 219, 221–24, 230; transportation industry, 26; worker centers and, 13; Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC), 68 – 69, 70 living wage ordinances, 191, 196, 200, 204 – 5, 206 –7, 210, 226 Lledo, Lolita, 54, 56 – 57, 250 n2

INDEX Lledo, Salvador (Dong), 56 – 57, 94, 250 n2 Logan, Lewis, II, 178, 183, 184, 185 – 86, 187, 188, 189, 190 Lopez, Lorena, 202, 208 Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), 79, 177, 191, 195, 196 –203, 209, 242, 261 n5 Los Angeles City Council: and day laborers, 145, 258 n8; and hotel workers campaign, 200, 201, 202, 204, 210; and immigrant rights, 98; and living wage ordinance, 204, 207; and security guard campaign, 174, 260 n9; and taxi industry, 109, 110 –11, 113, 115, 118, 119, 120, 122, 254 n12 Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, 3, 173, 195, 242, 243 Los Angeles Day Labor Association, 144 Los Angeles Garment Workers’ Justice Center, 158 Los Angeles Taxi Cooperative, Inc. (LATC), 115 Los Angeles Taxi Drivers Association (LATDA), 17 Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance (LATWA), 52, 109, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121–24 Los Angeles Yellow Cab Owner Drivers Association (LAYCODA), 116 –17 Los Angeles, City of: and day laborer programs, 77, 78, 147– 48, 235; garment industry in, 154 – 56; immigrants/workers in, 2, 94, 142; janitorial contracts of, 226; Koreans in, 28; low-wage jobs in, 5 – 6; manufacturing jobs in, 155; organizing/ unions in, 1–3, 6, 7– 9, 15, 18 –19, 154; political character of, 199; and taxi industry, 113 –14, 116; worker centers in, 9 –10, 16, 19 Maday, Eugene, 113, 114, 254 n11 Maguire Properties campaign, 175, 176, 184, 186, 188; actions in, 177, 179, 180 – 83, 190 Maguire, Robert, 175, 176, 181, 183 Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund (MCTF): business investment, 216, 227; and CLIWA, 129, 228; education/ leadership development, 218, 224, 226, 230; focus on civil rights, 221–22; formation, 215 –16; hires rank-and-file, 225; impact on unionization, 217, 218, 223; and labor commission, 217, 227; and labor violations, 218, 219, 221–22, 224; and legislation, 228 –30; limitations, 230 –31; and litigation, 221–24, 229, 230; media,

INDEX 221–22, 230; mission, 18, 212–13, 217–18, 241; pressures state agencies, 227–28; strategies, 220; victories/successes, 214, 218, 223 –24, 226, 230, 241 March 25 Coalition, 103, 253 n13 Mariscal, Max, 41, 42, 45 Market Workers Justice Campaign (MWJC), 25, 46, 48, 246 n1 May Day marches, 58, 90, 91, 93, 97, 101– 4, 105, 241, 243, 245 n1, 253 n11 media: black, 173; and car wash industry, 125, 132; and driver’s license campaign, 100, 108; and garment industry, 129, 156, 159, 161; and hotel industry, 202, 203, 204, 206; Korean, 23, 30, 35, 36, 43, 44, 47, 100, 248 n24; and labor issues, 248 n24; and living wage, 47; national, 204; and 1992 uprising, 33, 34, 35; outreach to, 10, 11; portrayal of KIWA, 32, 46; portrayal of worker/activists, 29; and security industry, 177, 186; Spanish-language, 100, 243; and supermarket industry, 36, 40, 43; use of, 13, 14, 16, 74, 108, 125, 194, 246 n7 Mendoza, Jay, 54, 56, 60 – 61, 91, 250 n2 Metropolitan Transportation Authority, 26 Mexican-American legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), 78, 87, 146, 221, 222, 233 –34, 236 Mobilize the Immigrant Vote, 84 Monroe, Becky, 133 –34, 255 n1, 256 n19 Montañez, Cindy, 65, 79 Multiethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Network (MIWON): administration, 92– 93, 98; African Americans in, 105, 254 n14; and driver’s license campaign, 99 –101, 253 nn8 – 9; formation, 81– 82, 90 – 91, 239, 240; funding, 96; goals, 91, 92, 93, 105, 239; and immigrant rights campaign, 9, 90, 97– 98; and immigration reform, 96 – 97; influence worker centers, 10; information sharing, 95 – 96; marches, 101– 4, 241, 252 n25, 253 n11, 253 n13; member organizations, 82, 91– 92, 240, 253 n2; noncitizen citizenship, 94, 97, 105; political campaigns, 90; worker exchange program, 96 Murray, Chip, 172 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 175, 179, 180, 184 National Council of La Raza, 86, 87, 251 n17 National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON): CHIRLA and, 82; and

293 construction sector, 142; goal, 236; formation, 141, 151, 236; as industry-centered, 9; organizations in, 82; union partnerships, 17, 141, 152, 153, 236, 257– 58 n1 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 137, 257 n41, 263 n32 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections: avoided, 177, 193; benefits, 40; hotel worker campaign and, 261 n20; legal decisions and, 257 nn41– 42; parking attendant campaign and, 60 – 61; risks, 39, 193; supermarket campaign and, 24, 39 – 40, 41, 239 naturalization, 8, 75, 83, 204. See also legalization Neighborhood Legal Services (NLS), 129, 130, 131, 136 networks, 3, 93; advocacy, 4, 12, 81, 110, 117, 246 n7; for day laborers, 150 – 52, 153; for immigrants/workers, 69, 163; social, 59, 117; worker center, 3, 4, 90 Nguyen, Vy, 24, 30, 37, 40, 41, 46, 94, 95, 97 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 1, 2, 4, 7, 9 –10, 11–12. See also worker centers nonprofit organizations/corporations, 120, 143, 195, 249 n45, 249 n48, 251 n4, 254 n8, 255 n19; coalitions of, 72, 73, 120; partnerships with, 66, 68, 70, 251 n20 Notsinneh, Wendy, 133 Oh, Angela, 34 Olivares, Luis, 73, 251 n5 ordinances: anti-solicitation, 15, 78, 82, 142, 145 – 46, 151, 152, 234, 236; living wage, 191, 196, 200, 204 – 5, 206 –7, 210, 226; service fee, 196, 200, 204 – 5, 208, 210; worker retention, 196, 200, 204 – 5, 210 organizing models, 10, 11, 16, 17, 30; L.A. model, 1– 4, 18 –19, 233 Pacific Islander workers/immigrants, 68, 70 Park, Danny, 25, 31, 32, 35 –36, 38, 39, 41, 43 – 47, 48, 247 n16 Park, Edward, 29, 35 parking attendants’ campaign, 60 – 61, 65, 70, 186 Payés, Mayron, 93, 99, 149 Pequa Jong campaign, 35 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, 75 Pilipino Workers’ Center (PWC): affordable housing campaign, 67– 69; challenges, 55, 61; as coalition member, 61, 64 – 65, 66, 90 – 93, 94, 96 – 97, 104, 241, 259 n8;

294 Pilipino Workers’ Center (PWC) (continued) and cultural/linguistic divide, 55, 56 – 57, 66; defeats, 61, 70; Filipino unions and, 54, 58 – 59; formation, 54, 241, 250 n2; funding, 251 n18; home care campaign, 61– 65, 70; and immigrant rights, 64; and immigration reform, 96; legal actions/ institutions, 57, 63, 64; marches, 104, 121; mission, 50, 54; as monoethnic, 9, 65 – 66, 69 –70; newsletter, 63, 250 n1; NLRB elections, 60 – 61; and parking attendant campaign, 60 – 61; recruitment methods, 57– 58, 61, 67, 96; services/training, 56, 58, 64, 70, 95; Western Union campaign, 65 – 67, 70; youth membership, 250 n12 Plan for a New Century, 195, 196, 199, 200, 204 Pope, Jayson, 172, 174, 177–78, 187– 88, 189 Popular Education Leadership School, 149 Proposition 187, 8, 74 –75, 83, 233 –34 Radisson-LAX campaign, 197, 200, 205, 207 ratification, 189 Recharge Plus, 67, 70 Reina, Amalia, 209 research: focus on, 10, 11, 14, 15, 246 n7; in car wash campaign, 138; on construction industry, 216; in hotel campaign, 33, 191, 194, 195, 200, 209, 261 n5; in security campaign, 169, 171, 181, 190; in supermarket campaign, 47; in taxi campaign, 118, 120, 255 n19 restaurant campaign, 40. See also Elephant Snack Corner campaign; Koreatown Restaurant Workers Justice Campaign; Restaurant Workers Justice Campaign restaurant industry: impact of campaign on, 40; in Koreatown, 25, 27, 35, 237–38, 248 n26; labor violations, 35, 227, 237, 248 n26; Latinos in, 27, 238; as unorganizable, 8; working conditions, 215, 237 Restaurant Workers Association of Koreatown (RWAK), 37, 41, 238 Restaurant Workers Justice Campaign (RWJC), 35, 48, 91, 237–38. See also Elephant Snack Corner campaign; Koreatown Restaurant Workers Justice Campaign restaurant workers, 40, 237, 253 n4 Reyes, Ed, 204, 207 Ridley-Thomas, Mark, 174, 260 n9 Rouse, Mitch and William, 111, 113, 114 –15, 120, 123, 254 n4, 254 n14

INDEX Saenz, Tom, 221 Salas, Angelica, 76, 242; on alliances, 85; leadership of, 78, 86, 237; on May Day marches, 104; on organizing/campaigns, 79, 81, 100; on Proposition 187, 75; on youth, 84 Santamaria, Marta, 208 – 9 Schmits, Reina, 219, 220 School of Education, Empowerment, and Determination (SEED), 94 – 95 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 65, 79, 108, 102, 132, 133, 134, 228 security campaign: arrests, 179, 180, 183, 187; black leaders/clergy and, 18, 169 –72, 173, 180, 183, 186, 189; CalSTRS and, 179 – 80, 190; card signing, 184; challenges, 168; charges of discrimination/racism, 180, 188, 190; community-based organizing, 18; employer tactics, 186; focus on civil rights, 174, 176 –77, 181– 82; industrywide strategy, 168; King Week activities, 172–73; leverage on owners, 190; marches/protests, 174, 179 – 80, 182, 183, 184, 187, 190; media coverage, 173, 177, 181, 186; rallies, 176, 179, 187; research, 169, 181; selection of union president, 185, 190; targets GE, 187– 88; victories/ successes, 167, 180, 183, 184, 188, 189, 244, 260 n3 security guards, 167, 168, 175, 260 n5 security industry: blacks in, 169 –70, 172, 185 – 86, 260 n5; contractors/subs in, 168, 188, 229; Latino workers in, 169 –70; unions in, 177, 260 n3, 260 n27 Security Officers United Los Angeles (SOULA), 188 SEIU: blacks’ distrust of, 169 –70, 185; criticisms of, 14; Local 1877, 175, 215 –16, 219, 222, 223; partnerships, 18, 79, 86, 87; and service workers, 59, 63, 123; tactics/strategies, 7– 8, 14, 15, 193, 216; threats to, 213; workers represented, 262 n4. See also hotel campaign; Justice for Janitors; security campaign Sensenbrenner bill, 152, 253 n42 Shaffer, Jono, 168, 171, 173, 174, 180, 185, 186 Shapiro, David, 113 Sindicato, 149, 150, 153. See also Asociación Smallwood Cuevas, Lola, 171, 172, 174, 175, 177, 187, 189 Smart, William, 177 Social Security Administration (SSA), 42, 69, 75, 239

295

INDEX social/economic justice: advocacy networks/groups, 4, 110, 117; in black community, 172, 178, 189; as campaign focus, 2, 7, 10 –11, 15, 88, 150, 194; in other countries, 56, 247; worker centers and, 8, 15, 25, 27, 199, 200, 243, 246 n7 Solórzano, Francisco Javier, 225 –26 Soriano-Versoza, Aquilina, 54, 56, 58, 66, 67, 68, 241, 250 n2 South Asian Network (SAN), 82, 93, 103, 117, 121, 241, 255 n15 South Bay Cooperative, 115 Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 170, 171–73, 175, 177, 179, 180, 182, 184, 189, 234 SpeedyWay Car Wash, 128 Stern, Andy, 184, 206, 257 n1 Sullivan, Mike, 225 Sunwoo, Elizabeth (Liz), 92, 94, 96, 97, 98 supermarket campaigns, 24. See also Assi Supermarket campaign supermarket industry, 25, 27, 36, 37, 38, 40 – 41, 43 Sweatshop Watch, 129, 157, 158, 159, 228, 240, 259 n7 sweatshops/sweatshop labor: in garment industry, 155 – 56, 161, 163, 240; in janitorial industry, 213, 222; outsourcing and, 5; in taxi industry, 109 Taft-Hartley Act, 217; trust funds, 215, 216, 217–18, 230, 241 taxi drivers: divisions among, 116, 120, 121; as independent contractors/lessees, 109 –10, 111–12, 114, 115, 116, 117, 120; protection for, 110, 114, 119, 122, 123; strikes, 114, 117; wages/income, 110 –11, 113, 114, 117, 119 taxi drivers’ campaign, 109, 110, 112–13, 116 –17, 118, 120 –21, 122, 123 taxi industry, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113 –16, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122–24 Tchakalian, Ed, 219, 220, 221, 222, 228, 263n26 Thai Community Development Center, 55, 157 Thai workers, 26, 129, 156, 157 Thomas Properties campaign, 179, 180, 183, 188 Thomas, James A., 179, 180 TIGRA (Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action), 66 transnational advocacy networks (TANs), 12, 246 n7 Tydings-McDuffie Independence Act, 51

undocumented students, 80, 84, 252 n20, 252 n33 undocumented workers: amnesty for, 242; back wages for, 42, 257 n42; in California, 89; campaign focus on, 4, 7; in car wash industry, 125, 136 –37, 140, 256 n4; CHIRLA focus on, 72, 78; criminalization of, 102, 253 n42; driver’s license campaign, 99, 101, 253 n8; Filipino, 52, 55; in garment industry, 156; hiring practices/ restrictions affecting, 74, 251; in home care industry, 63; housing for, 69; in janitorial industry, 170, 220, 230; in L.A., 2, 6, 9, 74, 94; lack access to legal remedies, 136; legalization for, 93, 97– 98, 251 n1; legislation/propositions affecting, 8, 74 –75, 83, 86, 89, 102, 133, 136, 152, 223 –34; in marches, 102, 104; organizations for, 50; political participation of, 89 – 90, 104, 105; proportion of workforce, 1, 128; of, 64, 73, 76; restrictions for, 105; in supermarket industry, 38, 42; as unorganizable, 59; in U.S., 52, 72; worker centers and, 14 union density, 245 n3; declines/increases in, 5, 6, 191, 192, 213, 223, 230; efforts to maintain/rebuild, 209, 216 –17; importance of, 193, 212, 223, 231 Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE), 158, 245 n2, 259 n1 unions: organizing drives, 2, 8, 15, 39, 50, 127, 242; strategies/tactics of, 3, 7, 18, 61, 169, 189, 194, 212; and worker centers, 14, 17. See also individual unions unions, independent, 17, 40, 60, 70, 150, 239 UNITE HERE: collaborations, 87; corporate campaigns, 15; future for, 210; hotel campaign, 191, 195, 207; innovative organizing, 191; merger with HERE, 245 n2, 259 n1, 261 n1; promotes living wage law, 8; strategies, 3, 7– 8, 14 United Garment Workers of America (UGWA), 154, 259 n1 United Independent Taxi Drivers (UITD), 113, 114 United Steelworkers (USW), 125, 127, 138 –39, 123 Vargas, Roman, 37, 41 Ventura, Rafael, 225, 226 Villaraigosa, Antonio, 174, 183, 201, 204, 206

296 Walker, Larry, 173 We Are America Alliance (WAAA), 86, 87, 253 n38 We Are America Coalition, 204 Western Car Wash Association (WCA), 132–33, 134, 257 n30 Western Union campaign, 50, 65 – 67, 70 Westside Democrats, 199 Williams, Luke, 77 Wilson, Pete, 99, 157 worker centers: adopt union strategies/ tactics, 2–3, 10, 17, 18, 19; description/ function, 1, 2, 10, 12, 15, 16, 25, 218, 224, 246 – 47 n6; exchange programs, 96, 161; Filipino, 54; focus on advocacy, 11–12, 13; funding/resources, 3 – 4, 11, 14, 15, 66 – 67, 92, 96, 105, 251 n18; geographically based, 2, 9, 25, 49; immigration and, 9; industry-based, 9; and legislation, 15; limitations, 11, 16 –17; in L.A., 2, 3, 7, 8, 245 n3; monoethnic, 9, 65 – 66, 69 –70; networks, 3, 4, 90; organizing, 13, 14, 15 –16, 17; political activism, 90, 246 n7; race/ ethnicity-based, 2, 9, 18 –19, 25, 49, 59, 61, 63, 65, 69 –70, 104; services offered, 12–13, 56, 153; short-term victories, 54 – 55; and social/economic justice, 8 – 9, 15, 25, 246 n7; staffing, 12; successes, 16; union

INDEX partnerships, 17–18; vs. unions, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16. See also centers by name Workers’ Rights Project, 77, 81, 91, 236 –37 working conditions: campaigns/strategies to improve, 139, 204, 239; in car washes, 125, 127, 128; dangerous/unlawful, 128, 212, 237, 253 n4; for day laborers, 141; employer-union collaborations and, 217–18; erosion of, 6, 212; floor for, 212, 221, 230; for Filipino workers, 54; for garment workers, 81, 154, 157, 160, 161; for home care workers, 3; in hotels, 196, 198, 205, 207, 255 n18; impact on families, 42, 201; importance of unionization, 212, 215, 224; improvements, 16, 120, 122, 139, 241; for janitors, 18, 219, 220; in Koreatown, 247 n16; laws/litigation, 64, 129, 154, 162; for low-wage workers, 1, 8, 253 n4; outsourcing and, 5; protection of, 224; religious leaders and, 199; in restaurants, 237, 238; for security guards, 173, 183; in supermarkets, 24, 35, 40, 41, 247 n16; for taxi drivers, 109, 110, 112, 119; worker centers/cooperatives and, 123, 218, 239 Yellow Cab campaign, 111, 112–16, 120, 254 n14 Ziman, Richard, 186, 187, 190