Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream

Book Review: "Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream" By Janice Fine Review by James Generic Edited by Yoni Kroll and Chris Mullen Today, unions in the US are in a weak state. More than 90% of all working people are not in unions. Does this mean that unions have become obsolete? No! The power of a worker in a union is much higher than someone without a union in terms of job security, wages, benefits, and the ability to solve grievances like harassment or discrimination. However, there have been many changes in American labor of late, such as anti-union laws, aggressive international anti-labor companies like Walmart, globalization where former union jobs are sent overseas, immigration laws aimed at keeping immigrant workers vulnerable, and the retailization of the US economy where many jobs have shifted from factories to retail and low-wage service jobs - like domestic workers, security guards, restaurant workers, agriculture, or day laborers. Most of the tactics of the labor movement have been slow to follow this shift. In addition, US unions tend to be on the conservative side (politically conservative like many building trades or craft unions, or just conservative in tactics and cautious in the case of industrial-based unions.) This huge void in the labor movement hasn't gone unfilled. A host of alternative labor organizing strategies and organizations have risen to fill this void, and one of the biggest trends of low-wage workers organizations is towards workers' centers. In "Workers Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream", Janice Fine does a very thorough study of workers centers across the US, visiting 137 in a two year span. She lays out what a worker center is, an organization that offers at least four features to workers, which outside of unions that other groups do not: 1- Services, examples being English as a Second Language, legal aid, job placement, placement to need-based service orgs, cash checking, peer counseling, and getting back wages 2- Popular Education, which would be know-your-rights classes, basic economic and globalization classes, critical skills development 3- Organizing, such as collective action for betterment of constituents, engaging in campaigns around issues, getting better conditions for their membership or constituents, bringing in alliances of groups to help, leadership development and 4) Advocacy, which is getting the message out and bringing light to low-wage communities. The majority of workers' centers are immigrant worker based, with many Latino and Asian centered groups and some African-American majority workers' centers, making race one of the key factors that these groups organize around. Often, the staff and volunteers of the workers centers come from the communities the centers work in, as well as the main point being to develop leadership within those communities. One of their big advantages over traditional unions is