Labor-Community Alliances

Web Sites & Blogs

• Community Unionism

Community unionism is used here in the context of unions seeking to reach out to the community. Resources on this site include:

1. A series of research papers on the topic of community unionism and union-community coalitions.
2. A series of diagrams and training documents prepared to train union and community organisers and members on how to develop effective community union practice.
3. An annotated bibliography of some articles found useful in defining and exploring community unionism.
4. Contact details and research areas of several key academics in USA, Canada, UK and Australia who are working on this important topic.

Organizations

• Baltimore Neighborhood Organizers Network

A collaboration of dozens of organizations in Baltimore.

• Carolina Alliance for Fair Employment (CAFÉ)
• National Organizers Alliance

(See their Books to Support Building the Movement page.)

Papers

• Labor and Community Collaboration

Over the last decade, some unions have successfully undertaken collaborative broad-based organizing efforts, such as Los Angeles’ highly successful Justice for Janitors campaign, mobilizations to pass local living wage ordinances, and organized mass protests against global free trade policies. These trends reflect a growing realization of the strategic need to strengthen the collective voice of workers and their families through collaborative advocacy and organizing efforts that bring together organized labor and other sectors of civil society.

• There is Power in Coalition: A framework for assessing how and when union-community coalitions are effective and enhance union power

Proposals for union revitalisation suggest the importance of unions reaching out to the community and the formation of union-community coalitions. Yet, how this process of ‘reaching out’ can be most effective for building union power and advancing union renewal is little understood.

• Varieties Of Social Unionism: Towards A Framework For Comparison

The proliferation and interchangeable use of multiple terms in the union renewal literature – “social movement unionism, union-community coalitions, social unionism, community unionism, social justice unionism or citizenship movement unionism” – complicates our understanding of social unionism’s specificity.

• Strength in Networks: Employment Rights Organizations and the Problem of Co-Ordination

In recent decades, alternative organizations and movements — ‘quasi-unions’ — have emerged to fill gaps in the US system of representation caused by union decline. We examine the record of quasi-unions and find that although they have sometimes helped workers who lack other means of representation, they have significant limitations and are unlikely to replace unions as the primary means of representation. But networks, consisting of sets of diverse actors including unions and quasi-unions, are more promising.

Books

• Power in Coalition

The labor movement sees coalitions as a key tool for union revitalization and social change, but there is little analysis of what makes them successful or the factors that make them fail.