Luis LM Aguiar, PhD
Associate Professor of Sociology
University of British Columbia, Canada
Lydia Savage, PhD
Professor of Geography, Geography-Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies,
University of Southern Maine
Title of Book Proposal:
Global Challenges to Labour Unions: The SEIU in Focus
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CONTEXT
Contemporary labour movements in the Global North (US, Canada, the EU) are under immense
pressure to retain organized members, change to remain relevant, innovate to make significant gains
in new membership, and gain political influence in this era of globalization, neoliberalism and
austerity (Albo, Gindin and Panitch 2010; Birch and Mykhnenko 2010; Gindin and Stanford 2003;
Myconos 2005; Lillie 2006; Frege and Kelly 2004; Panitch 2008). This pressure to change is coming
from inside and outside labor movements. Internally, socially and racially diverse memberships are
pushing for representation, inclusion, voice, and leadership roles at all levels of union structures. In
addition, they are partnering with community groups such as immigrant advocacy and fair wage
groups to push toward a broader agenda for labour unions; members are pushing their unions to do
more, go further in the workplace and beyond to protect and secure social and political gains in this
era of eroding citizenship and workers’ rights (Aguiar 2006; Mills and Clarke 2009; Tait 2005). Many
workers and union staff members want their individual unions to work toward a more expansive and
inclusive labour movement and create broader social, economic, and political campaigns for social
change.
The external pressure on
labour movements and individual unions include
neoliberalism, and renewed austerity plans pressuring, for instance,
globalization,
public sector workers for
concessions while also exacerbating economic strain on workers and their families to do more with
less at work and at home. These forces, combined with the increasing anti-union sentiment and
legislation across industrial relations contexts in the global north, have led unions to focus on just
holding ground rather than pursuing higher wages, better protections and security provisions for
their members (and communities in general) in an environment of growing uncertainty and precarity
for workers despite unprecedented gains for corporations (Harvey 2006; Sklair 2002). With rare
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exception, labour movements’ responses in the face of these pressures are disappointing and
inadequate (Gindin and Stanford 2004; Fletcher and Gapasin 2008). As a result organized labour
continues to lose ground to capital’s dominance in the politics of work (Burawoy 1995) and in
claims to social wealth across various societies (Moody 2007). Needless to say, the inability to mount
and sustain effective responses has consequences for keeping workplaces unionized, communities
healthy, organizing new workers, achieving better contracts, and addressing the changes for workers
in contemporary workplaces such as relocation, privatisation, deregulation, new technologies, forced
attrition and other workplace restructuring processes.
Workers are frequently blamed for economic crisis through their unsustainable wage gains and
demands, health benefits and pensions (Harvey 2010; Shaw 2010). Workers are pitted against each
other as private sector workers are blamed for eroding “corporate competitiveness” and public
sector workers are blamed for high taxes as shown by 2011 events in Wisconsin where the governor
was able to use a rhetoric in which private sector workers were convinced that public sector workers
with negotiated benefits are the “haves.”
For many writers, the future of the Labour Movement remains at stake (Albo, Gindin and Panitch
2010). For instance, The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2011 while organized labour
represents 37% of public-sector workers, only 6.9 % of private sector workers are union members.
And yet there is hope and a capacity for renewal in labour movements to do more and better and to
get it done even under these difficult conditions (Bieler, Lindberg and Pillay 2008; Friedman 2008;
Clawson 2003). It is against this backdrop, that we propose an edited volume examining the
contemporary crisis for labour movements in the Global North through a study of the Service
Employee International Union (SEIU).
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With approximately 1.5 million members, the SEIU is the second largest labour union in the United
States. Over the last three decades it has demonstrated the ability to grow and expand the agenda of
the Labour Movement, especially in the United States (Stillman 2010). Some argue that economic
crises “creat[es] openings and opportunities for both capitalists and workers” (emphasis in original;
Albo, Gindin and Panitch 2010: 25). What openings and opportunities is the current economic crisis
creating for organized labour and the SEIU in particular? How, and in what ways, is the SEIU reinventing itself to take advantage of the current crisis to bring workers out of this crisis in better
shape than when neoliberalism began to unravel? What role does the SEIU play in community work
to enable improvements in citizens’ social and living conditions? Answering these questions is the
rationale for this book and the underlying anchor holding together the various chapters contained
herein.
FOCUS AND OBJECTIVES
By most accounts the SEIU was the union with the best prospect for revitalizing the American
labour movement and giving it a new impetus, relevancy, and direction in late 20th century (Fantasia
and Voss 2004; Tait 2005). Much of its militancy stemmed out of its aggressive reaction to the
neoliberal induced crisis of the 1980s (Klein 2007). The SEIU, like other unions, suffered challenges
to its membership base due to economic and workplace restructuring and aggressive employer
assault on organizing campaigns and legitimacy. However, unlike many other unions in the global
north, it responded in innovative, creative and aggressive ways to the challenges of globalization,
neoliberalism, employer assault, economic restructuring and the legislative erosion of workers’ rights
(Aguiar 2006; Milkman 2006; Tait 2005). Perhaps more than any other union, the SEIU sought to
grow membership and make gains for workers even in an unfriendly and hostile labour relations
environment. The Justice for Janitors model to organizing (e.g., civil disobedience; shaming
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employers; etc) is an example. The SEIU’s membership did in fact grow at a time of rapid economic
restructuring and the shift to the post-industrial society. The union’s global outreach was also put in
motion expanding the SEIU globally.
So, in the past three decades, the SEIU persevered bringing into the union fold the marginalized
(women, and racialized and immigrant minorities), often ignored by traditional unions, and workers
like cleaners, health and home care workers and security guards (Boris and Klein 2012; Fink and
Greenberg 2009; Lopez 2004; Milkman 2006; Savage 2006; 1998). Many of these workers found a
place within the union movement through the efforts of the SEIU. These workers were at the
forefront of the SEIU battles making significant gains for themselves and in the process making the
SEIU the fastest growing union in North America (Aguiar and Ryan 2009; Delgado 1993; Milkman
2006; Stillman 2010). The general consensus was that as went the prospects of the SEIU, so would
that of the American labour movement.
As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, we are in the midst of the worse economic crisis
since the Great Depression (Harvey 2010). The credit crunch crisis is having significant impact on
working families to pay their mortgages and retain their jobs or find jobs at all. And the State claims
a fiscal crisis as a way to further dismantle the remnants of the Keynesian welfare state, while
legitimizing a new austerity programme (Albo, Gindin and Panitch 2010). At the same time, the
SEIU brand, like other union labels, is being battered in the East and West coasts by internal dissent,
rivals unions, rival labour federations, Tea Partiers and other right wing organizations (Moody 2007;
Winslow 2010; Fletcher and Lichtenstein 2009). The union does appear to have some momentum
with a new president, close ties to Obama - if not his administration – and it’s organizing campaigns
targeting security guards and public support for whistleblowers especially in the American banking
sector (Lerner 2011). It has also established a global partnership division to move “labour tourism”
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into concrete partnerships with unions outside North American for coordinated campaigns to
thwart the power of multinationals across a number of industries (Savage 2006; Stern 2006; Lerner
2007; Aguiar and Ryan 2009).
Given these changes and challenges, it seems appropriate to ask: Does the SEIU represent a model
capable of transforming the American labour movement and providing an example to other
organized labour movements for the 21st century as it did in the last two decades of the last century?
Can the SEIU take advantage of the opportunities the unravelling of neoliberalism might bring to
stand firm against the growing precarity and advanced marginality many endure (Wacquant 2008)?
What will the current crisis mean for the union and its organizing tactics and strategies, as well as
democratic openness in the second decade of the 21st century? What can we learn from this union
that will be instructive to labour movements in the global north and south? Can the SEIU re-invent
itself again to take advantage of the opportunities of the crisis of neoliberalism to work with union
members, coalitions, supporters and sympathisers to ensure that the rolling out of the austerity
programme is disrupted and opportunities to resist and change are explored? And how, in a
membership that is culturally diverse, can race and gender embolden the union to be different and
rich in the ways diversities mark this union for progressive change for the 21st century?
The growth and high level of public activity of the SEIU has led to good and important critiques of
the union and its actions (for a brief review of these critiques see Aguiar and Ryan 2009; Early 2009;
Moody, 2007; Milkman 2007). What institutional changes and innovative ideas about tactics,
strategies and collaborations is the union working through in order to remain a dynamic union in the
American Labour Movement? Though some might think this question premature given the yet
undefined features of transformations in capitalism and corporate structures and changes in the role
of the State (i.e. welfare reform, health care) (Brand and Sekler 2009; Wade, 2008; Watkins 2010;
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Peck, Theodore and Brenner 2009; Jenson 2010; Keil 2009; Dumenil and Levy 2011), we think it
needs to be asked even if in speculative form given the changing political economy and the urgency
of the political work ahead. And while this book proposes to take a closer look at the SEIU, it does
so within the context of changes and challenges (and opportunities) all unions face in the early 21 st
century. In other words, this case study seeks to provide evidence of processes that are unique to the
SEIU but that nevertheless connect with larger processes beyond this union and familiar to labour
movements in the global north.
RELATION TO OTHER PUBLISHED WORKS
The SEIU has not received the proper intellectual analysis and discussion it deserves in a full-length
book study.1 This is surprising given that it is the most prominent and visible American union of the
last 30 years. There are good articles, chapters, and even a SEIU commissioned book on the history of the
union (e.g. Moody 2007; Milkman 2007: Fletcher and Gapasin 2008; Lichtenstein and Fletcher 2010; Stillman
2010). But these writings tend to be specific and engaged with one theme only as it relates to the union. Our
edited book seeks to include a range of issues that no article, chapter or in-house produced book can tackle
comprehensively. The value of this proposed book therefore lies in its ability to cover a range of pressing
issues for the labour movement more generally through an investigation and discussion of the SEIU, and to
do so from the perspective of expert writers on the SEIU and the labor movement.
To our knowledge, no one has published a systematically study of the SEIU and its transformations
across multiple industries and locations in the context of the contemporary global political economy
and challenges to global labour movements. This edited book seeks to examine the recent history
of the SEIU and its contributions to the labour movements in the global north. It also seeks to place
Fantasia and Voss (2004), for example, discuss some aspects of the SEIU but devote their book to the wider American
Labor Movement. The same can be said of Dan Clawson and his book The Next Upsurge (2003).
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the union in both the internal changes it is undergoing (especially with a new president) and the
external forces it cannot escape from be they governments, political parties or indeed other
progressive groups and unions. Hence, this volume will undertake a study of the union through
careful examination of its recent history, key personalities and innovations the union has developed
over the latter years of the 20th century.
In addition, and most importantly, this volume will highlight and discuss the contemporary challenge
the union faces and the extent to which it is addressing them in a reasonable, productive and
progressive way. This book will not shy away from engaging with the controversies in which the
labour movement and the SEIU itself is immersed. To do otherwise would be dishonest. Our
volume also discusses the expansion of the union across borders by delineating the campaigns and
strategic involvements it is developing beyond US borders with unions and labour movements
elsewhere. Finally, it investigates the union’s increasing militancy and voice for segments of the
immigrant population in the United States as immigrants and undocumented workers are
increasingly harassed, intimidated, impoverished and expulsed to the margins of the economic and
political landscape of the United States (Wacquant 2007). The analysis and discussion will be carried
out in a manner that is accessible to the widest possible audience and that can be instructive on how
unions, workers and labour movements can move forward with better prospects for success. In this
book proposal, we invited contributors to judiciously and critically analyze the recent history of the
SEIU from the development of its famous J4J model, to gains in the health care sector, to its
breakaway from the AFl-CIO to its most recent controversies with the UNITE-HERE merger and
its solidarities with migrant communities across the United States and Canada.
We have organized the book in themed sections: the first section discusses the historical context of
the SEIU and its organizational context, the second section focuses on the SEIU’s roots in the US
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and innovation within the US political economy, and the third and final section will examine the
ways in which the SEIU has expanded its international activities. We feel this organizational
structure builds a logical framework to examine the development of the SEIU in sequential historical
and geographical contexts.
Each section tackles a series of closely related issues by the contributors assigned to that specific
section. The editors will write a general introduction to the volume and three mini-introductions
placed prior to each of the sections. The purpose of these mini-intros is to connect the sections and
outline the forthcoming issues raised in subsequent sections. We believe this approach will tighten
the book which is essential especially in an edited volume. We have assembled some of the most
knowledgeable writers on the SEIU and the global north labour movements. These writers cross
disciplines from sociology to geography to industrial relations. We recognize that edited volumes
are somewhat fluid in the subjects contributions tackle and in the form the book takes. This being
said, we expect to work closely with authors to ensure coherence in the organization and shape of
the book. The chapters present the most up-to-date research findings on the SEIU and the resulting
book contains a good balance between a new crop of labour researchers and a more established
cadre of writers. All proposed chapters are original contributions first published in this volume.2
AUDIENCE AND MARKET
We see this volume as contributing to understanding the possibilities and pitfalls the labour
movement faces in the contemporary global economy. The SEIU provides an institutional context
through which to investigate questions of social and economic justice, strategies and tactics, scale,
Possibly, the only exception to this is the Lichtenstein and Fletcher chapter, aspects of which have been published in In
These Times. However, the authors assure us that their contribution will contain new information and data on the internal
politics of the SEIU.
2
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inclusivity, union politics (internal and external) among others. These questions are not unique to
the SEIU but are faced by labour organizations everywhere. This collection will be of interest to all
those within and outside academia concerned with the future of organized labour and the working
class more generally. Though in its accessibility this volume will target undergraduates and informed
laypersons, we see the book also being adopted in graduate courses on labour and the future of the
working class. In our view, there are several academic programmes and disciplines that will find
worthwhile material in this collection. They are: the sociology of work; industrial relations;
employment and labour law; labour geography; political science; political economy; and history. In
addition, several of the contributors (e.g., Aguiar, McCallum, Savage) teach undergraduate and
graduate courses on labour and could adopt this text for their courses. Aguiar and McCallum
currently teach courses on globalization, labour and cross border organizing. A significant portion of
the course explores the globalizing of the SEIU. This edited collection on the SEIU would be a
required reading for such a course. And since there is growing interest on labour transnationalism,
others would surely also adopt this text.
TIMELINE
We have requested chapters from authors no later than 15 April 2013 and expect to have a draft of
a manuscript by 15 June 2013. Given the timeliness of the subject of the volume and the ever
changing landscape of the labour movement, our hope is to move as quickly as possible to putting
this proposal into book form.
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ABOUT THE EDITORS
Luis LM Aguiar is an Associate Professor in Sociology in the Barber School of Arts & Sciences at
the University of British Columbia. He co-edited the books The Dirty Work of Neoliberalism: Cleaners
in the Global Economy (with Andrew Herod, Blackwell, 2006) and Researching Amongst Elites: The
Challenges and Opportunities in Studying Up (with Chris Schneider, Ashgate 2012). Dr. Aguiar has
published academic articles in Antipode; The Canadian Journal of Urban Research; Geoforum; Capital &
Class; and Social Justice. In his most recent work he explores the changing economic base of the
Okanagan Valley and the recruitment of new labour forces for farms, tourism and other service
work in the post-industrial economy of the Valley. His research on Jamaicans and Mexican migrant
workers into the valley is published in the book Interrogating the New Economy and other publications
are forthcoming. A coedited book on Fantasies of Whites: Whiteness in the Okanagan Valley will be
published by UBC Press in 2013. Dr. Aguiar is a recipient of a SSHRC Standard Research Grant
award (2010-2013) for a project on global unions and transnational labour organizing, especially as it
applies to building cleaners and the role of the SEIU. He has taught qualitative methods course at
UBC and uses this methodological approaches to study of building cleaners in Canada and the
globe, and Jamaican and Mexican workers in the economy of the Okanagan Valley.
Lydia Savage is Professor of Geography in the Department of Geography-Anthropology at the
University of Southern Maine where she also is a member of the Women’s and Gender Studies
Council and a founding member of the Labor Studies Minor Program. She earned her B.A. in
geography from the University of California, Berkeley and her M.A. and Ph.D. in geography from
Clark University. Her current research examines the ways in which labor unions are reshaping union
strategies and transforming institutional cultures in light of contemporary social, cultural and
economic change. A former member of the International Association of Machinists, she is currently
a member of the Associated Faculties of the University of Maine System, MEA/NEA. She has
published on the SEIU among other labor topics, served on several editorial boards, and co-edited
two special issues on the geography of the global labour movement for the peer-reviewed journal,
Geoforum.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS (with brief abstract and name of contributor/s)
GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK (Luis/Lydia 12pp)
SECTION 1: “CREATIVE DESTRUCTION”: INNOVATIONS – brief intro (Luis/Lydia
3pp)
Chapter 1: SEIU: Background and History (Contributor: Lydia Savage, GeographyAnthropology, University of Southern Maine) (20pp)
This chapter discusses the post-war history of the SEIU and the changes the union has
undergone since then. It also raises issues of mergers, scale and affiliation/disaffiliation to
the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win.
Chapter 2: Reconciling Progressive Idealism with Centralized Structures (Contributor:
Kyoung-Hee Yu, Lecturer, School of Organisation and Management, Australian School of
Business, UNSW SYDNEY NSW) (20pp)
That large organizations develop centralized structures over time is a well-known axiom.
From Michels to Merton, scholars have associated the development of structural rigidity in
progressive organizations with a conservatization of their goals. The SEIU case challenges
this association – it embodies progressive idealism albeit in structures where power is highly
concentrated at the top. This chapter examines how centralization became a core feature of
the union even as it experimented with social movement unionism in the early ‘80s. It shows
how, paradoxically, power became even more concentrated with the success of the Justice
for Janitors. An analysis is provided of the factors that allow progressive idealism to co-exist
with centralized structures in the SEIU. Implications are drawn for a more nuanced
understanding of the iron law of oligarchy.
Chapter 3: Becoming Purple: Twelve Years of Organizational Change at the SEIU
(Contributors: Adrienne E. Eaton and Janice Fine both at the Labor Studies and
Employment Relations at the School of Management and Labor Relation, Rutgers
University) (20pp)
The growth in size and strength of SEIU in the years following the election of Andy Stern as
president in 1996 did not happen by accident. The Stern administration undertook a
program of deliberate change both in its own organization and the strategies it pursued.
This chapter will describe that change program. It will detail the change process which was
rooted in a four year convention cycle of evaluation, planning, and implementation. It will
also focus on a set of six highly interrelated, internal organizational principles that resulted in
a dramatically restructured and reengineered union at all levels: increased resources at all
levels of the union; strengthened divisions for industry focus; restructured local unions for
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industry focus and power; leadership change; a single, unified identity; and new models of
unionism at the local level.
Chapter 4: Organizing the Fragmented Unorganized? SEIU’s Role in the Fast Food
Movement (Contributors: Tashlin Lakhani, Max. M. Fisher College of Business, The Ohio
State University and Maite Tapia, School of Human Resources and Labor Relations,
Michigan State University) (20pp)
Over the past few decades, industry and ownership structures have changed significantly,
requiring new strategies of organizing and representing workers. The fast food industry is
one of the fastest growing sectors in terms of employment in the United States, as well as
one of the lowest paid. It is also highly fragmented, with over 150,000 establishments and 3
million employees in franchise businesses. This presents both opportunities and challenges
for organizing low wage workers. Through an in-depth examination of the fast food
movement in two cities, New York City and Chicago, we examine the role of the SEIU and
discuss whether the strategies and tactics of the movement represent a new sustainable
model of organizing in low wage, fragmented industries.
Chapter 5: The J4J and its implications for the larger labour movement (Contributor: Steven
Lerner, SEIU/Public Intellectual) (12pp)
The story of the J4J has been told. What has been less developed is the ways in which this
model/campaign resonated ideologically and practically in the larger labour movement. A
discussion of this with concrete examples of the J4J migrating outside the SEIU will be the
focus of this chapter.
SECTION 2 – The SEIU’s Roots in the US – brief intro (Luis/Lydia 3pp)
Chapter 6: Coast to Coast Organizing: The Strengths and Drawbacks of Organizing Across
Borders (Contributor: Khayyam Qidwai, Sociology, Ohio State University) (20pp)
In the mid 1980’s the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) made waves with a
new model of organizing, often referred to as Justice for Janitors. This model was
considered innovative for its time due to its success in organizing across entire cities, rather
than just site by site. The success sparked numerous discussions among academics and even
a Hollywood film. Since the 1980’s multinational corporations have hastened the pace of
subcontracting. As a response to the increase in number of national and global
subcontracting firms, SEIU has recently engaged in a national organizing campaign. This
chapter will delve into this new national organizing strategy in order to better understand the
effectiveness and drawbacks of a national campaign. Particular emphasis will be placed on
the organizational challenges for conducting a national campaign against an international
employer and the challenges such a campaign poses for worker solidarity.
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Chapter 7: Competing Conceptions of Member Representations in the "New" Union
Movement (Contributors: Teresa Sharpe, Independent Scholar and Adam Reich (Sociology,
UC, Berkeley) (20pp)
Previous scholarship demonstrates how leaders in some American labor unions have
successfully revitalized union bureaucracies. While these cases challenge Michels’s “iron law
of oligarchy,” they leave a theoretical void for thinking about how transformational union
leaders represent their members. This paper uses Pierre Bourdieu’s and Antonio Gramsci’s
theories of political representation to analyze and critique competing conceptions of
representation within the “new” union movement. Consistent with Bourdieu’s
understanding of power and politics, leaders in SEIU seem to consider politics an
autonomous sphere in which they work as delegates to win power for the working class; in
Gramscian fashion, leaders in HERE see their role as organic intellectuals, educating
workers to win power for themselves.
Chapter 8 Betting on the State: SEIU and the Politics of Home Care (Contributors: Eileen
Boris, Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara and Jennifer Klein, History,
Yale University) (20pp)
This essay analyzes the trajectory of SEIU organizing of home care. During the last decades
of the 20th century, neoliberal elites sought to restructure and privatize government,
deregulate business and finance, and expand free trade. How could unions retool to operate
in this new environment, with the shift away from manufacturing to service and knowledge
sectors? SEIU thought it had the answer. Generating political clout in the states and
“neutrality agreements” with employers, winning new legislation and classifications of
eligible workers, and engaging in coalition and community-based organizing, SEIU
mobilized home-based workers, predominantly immigrant and female. But ironically this
expansion came from building a labor movement of poor people whose very jobs depended
on a welfare state under assault. The precariousness of union strategies became apparent
with the Great Recession. Subsequent slashing of public budgets and turn against collective
bargaining called into question the SEIU model, already cracking from fissures within the
union. In this context, home care workers have come to stand for the low-waged and underrecognized future that reinforces racial and gender inequalities of the past.
Chapter 9: Rank and File Leadership Development and its Implications for Education
Justice and Immigrant Incorporation (Contributor: Veronica Terriquez, Sociology and
American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California) (20pp)
Some SEIU Locals have devoted significant resources to developing the leadership capacity
of rank and file members by directly engaging them in worksite problem solving, organizing
campaigns, and other political activity. This leadership development has important
implications for the civic and political engagement of members. Drawing on survey and
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interview data gathered from the largely Latino immigrant membership of various SEIU
Locals in Los Angeles, this chapter describes how rank and file members draw on their labor
union experience to independently address concerns at their children’s schools. The findings
indicate that the experience of mobilizing for protests and participating in worksite
campaigns allows immigrant and other union members to overcome barriers to civic
participation, including educational, linguistic, or other immigration related barriers. This
research suggests that SEIU’s social movement unionism has the potential to benefit
children’s schools in low-income and working-class communities, especially when locals
provide their members additional support and training on how to effectively intervene in
educational reform. SEIU’s member leadership development efforts extend beyond the
benefits of the union contract, and can have long-term effects on the civic, political and
educational incorporation of immigrant and other working families.
Chapter 10: How To Make And Use A Boomerang: SEIU And The Implementation Of
Global Framework Agreements In The USA (Contributor Dimitris Stevis, Department of
Political Science, Colorado State University) (20pp)
This contribution will examine how the SEIU developed a transnational strategy articulated
around GFAs, Global Union Federations and union capacity building in other countries and
then used it to implement GFAs in the USA. The first and shorter part – making the
boomerang- will examine how the SEIU conceived and developed its transnational strategy
with particular attention to the nodal role of UNI Property Services. In the longer second
part – using the boomerang- I will examine the application of the strategy in the USA in the
process of implementing Global Framework Agreements in the property services sector. I
will close by commenting on the key lessons that emerge from the making (the challenges of
building relatively supranational transnational institutional arrangements - such as global
union federations) and the lessons that emerge from the use of the boomerang (how to
engage multinationals without legitimating their human resource practices). The chapter is
based on numerous interviews with local, national and global unionists involved in the
making and use of strategy.
SECTION 3 – A Union with Global Ambition - brief intro (Luis/Lydia)
Chapter 11: A Globalizing Union: Global Work, Global Partnerships (Contributor: Luis LM
Aguiar, Sociology, UBC, Okanagan) (20pp)
In this chapter I briefly describe the SEIU’s history in coalition building with international
unions from labour tourism to an analysis of the union’s contemporary engagement with
global unions in specific sectors and well as broader engagements. I’m interested in the role
of the JfJ in this broadening of the union as well as in the meanings of “partnerships,” and
“negotiations” in such cross union relationships. The data for this chapter is from recent
interviews with key SEIU officials.
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Chapter 12: A Global Partnership? (Re)scaling capital, labour and unions: the SEIU
Australasian partnership (Contributor: Shaun Ryan, School of Management and Marketing,
Deakin University, Australia) (20pp)
This chapter is an analysis of SEIU activities in the Australian region. The SEIU has formed
important organising partnerships with unions outside of North America. More recently the
SEIU has turned it gaze to Australasia, negotiating ‘partnerships’ with kindred unions in
Australia and New Zealand. Since the adoption and introduction of the J4J ‘CleanStart’
campaign in Australia and New Zealand, attempts have been made to spread this model in
other market segments and into South-East Asia. The chapter examines the international
nature of the commercial cleaning industry and how unions have up-scaled to respond to the
neo-liberal agenda on a national and increasingly international basis. It also examines the
context against which the SEIU were able to negotiate their partnership and the close links
between unions in Australasia and North America.
Chapter 13: Gender and the Union Organizing Strategies: the Missing Link (Contributors:
Urvashi Soni-Sinha, Labour Studies, McMaster University and Charlotte A.B. Yates, Labour
Studies and Political Sciences, McMaster University) (20pp)
The chapter is an analysis of the organizing strategy of the SEIU for a cleaning companyPluto- in 2006 as a part of the J4J movement in Toronto and of the ongoing campaign by
UNISON to organize the kitchen workers in Sheffield, UK, as a part of the three companies’
project, initiated in 2009. Organizing by UNISON under the three companies’ project is in
collaboration with the SEIU which is training the UNISON members on the tactics of the
Blitz. We note that despite a majority representation of women in the campaigns, 70 percent
in Toronto and 95 percent in Sheffield, the recruitment strategies are not women centered
and women are not articulated as social subjects. There is some recognition of the
constraints faced by women in both the campaigns and an effort to provide child care.
However issues around pay equity are not raised. The study is based on participant
observation and interview methods. The key questions we explore are: How do unions
justify the absence of women’s issues such as pay equity from their organizing strategies in
women dominated work-places? How fragile are the collectivities produced in the context of
the organizing drives by the unions, by ignoring the gender issues? What is the future of the
labour movement if it continues to be led by white male agenda? How will the growing
numbers of women and racialized minorities in the unions transform the culture of the
unions?
Chapter 14: Global Unions, Local Power: SEIU's Labor Transnationalism from North
America to the Global South (Contributor: Jaime McCallum (City University of New York
Graduate Center) (20pp)
Recent debates about transnational labor activism provide a point of entry for a deeper
discussion on union strategy in the global era. This chapter describes the campaign to win
and implement a global framework agreement between UNI Global Union, SEIU, and G4S,
the world's largest private security firm. It first traces the influence of SEIU's "organizing
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model" through the industrialized countries. The case study that follows is an ethnographic
examination of one of the most extensive global campaigns ever undertaken. Through over
100 interviews with unionists, workers, and managers, I show how the campaign takes shape
in different ways in South Africa and India. I conclude that, in contrast to much recent
scholarship, global unionism can have important mobilizing effects for local unions in
various ways.
Chapter 15: ‘Brillando con Justicia’: Innovative Global Unionism connecting Immigration
and the Low Wage Service Sector (Contributor: Elizabeth O’Connor, Independent scholar)
(20pp)
In 2009, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), initiated a project in Mexico
City, called Brillando con Justicia, (shining with justice) designed to address sub-standard
working conditions in the janitorial industry. As a union representing over 250,000 members
of Mexican origin in the United States, the majority of which work in the cleaning industry,
this was an attempt to construct a global program based on addressing the working
conditions in the country of origin of its immigrant members. While short-lived (it was
suspended in 2011), Brillando con Justicia was a unique experiment in global trade unionism,
exploring a model with low-wage service sector and immigrant workers on both sides of the
US-Mexico border, resulting in some important lessons about what strategies may or may
not be successful. The proposed paper will analyze these lessons and present conclusions
which may serve other unions in developing future global programs to connect workers
across borders and build global power.
Chapter 16: Conclusions. The SEIU: Back to the Future (Contributors: Luis/Lydia (12pppp)
17
BIOS OF CONTRIBUTORS
Eileen Boris is Hull Professor and Chair of the Department of Feminist Studies at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. Among her writings is the prize-winning Home to Work: Motherhood and the
Politics of Industrial Homework in the United States (Cambridge University Press, 1994). She is on the
editorial board of The Journal of American History and on the Executive Committee of Labor and
Working Class History Association (LAWCHA). Her latest book is Caring for America: Home Health
Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State (co-authored with Jennifer Klein, Oxford 2012).
Adrienne E. Eaton earned her PhD in Industrial Relations from the University of Wisconsin. She
is chair of the Labor Studies and Employment Relations department at Rutgers University. She’s the
co-author along with Tom Kochan, Paul Adler and Robert McKersie of the book, Healing Together:
The Kaiser Permanente Labor-Management Partnership, editor with Jeff Keefe of Employment Dispute
Resolution in the Changing Workplace, and author of numerous articles published in journals like
Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, Labor Studies Journal, and Advances in Industrial
and Labor Relations. She is currently researching the impact of unionization of graduate student
employees. Prof. Eaton recently stepped down as Editor-in-Chief of the Labor and Employment
Relations Association, a position she held since September 2002. She is also a member of the
editorial board for Labor Studies Journal. She is currently President of the Rutgers Chapter of the
AAUP-AFT.
Janice Fine holds a PhD from MIT in Political Science and is Assistant Professor of Labor Studies
and Employment Relations at the School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University
where she teaches and writes about low wage immigrant labor in the U.S., historical and
contemporary debates regarding federal immigration policy, dilemmas of labor standards
enforcement and innovative union and community organizing strategies. Fine serves as faculty
coordinator of the Program on Immigration and Democracy at the Eagleton Institute of Politics and
is a member of the graduate faculty in Political Science as well as the Department of Latino and
Hispanic Caribbean Studies at Rutgers. She is author of the ground-breaking book Worker Centers:
Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream. Her recent articles have appeared in the journals
International Migration Review, Labor Studies Journal, Politics & Society, Studies in American Political
Development and New Labor Forum. Prior to coming to Rutgers in 2005, Fine worked as a community,
labor and electoral organizer for more than twenty-five years.
Jennifer Klein is Professor of History, Yale University, and senior editor of ILWCH (International
Labor and Working Class History). She is the author of the prize-winning For All These Rights:
Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State (Princeton University Press,
2005). Her latest book is Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State (coauthored with Eileen Boris, Oxford 2012).
Stephen Lerner
18
Tashlin Lakhani attended the ILR School at Cornell University for her PhD. She is currently an
Assistant Professor of Management and Human Resources at the Max M. Fisher College of
Business at The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on strategic human resource
management, employment relations, and the impact of ownership structures on work organization,
particularly in the service sector as well as internationally. Her most recent work examines
employment relations and job quality in global value chains and franchise businesses. She has also
conducted research on union revitalization strategies in the US and UK. Her work has been
published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations.
Jamie McCallum is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Middlebury College. His book, Global
Unions, Local Power: The New Spirit of Labor Transnationalism, will be published by Cornell ILR Press.
He began his professional life as a healthcare organizer for SEIU.
Elizabeth O'Connor has spent over 18 years working with labor and social movements in the US,
Mexico and Central America. Most recently she has worked with the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU), a union which represents 2.2 million workers, among which are
250,000 immigrants from Mexico. She has spent the past 3 years in Mexico City, where she opened
SEIU’s Mexico office with the goal of starting a campaign to improve working conditions for
janitors and service sector workers in that city.
Khayyam Qidwai is an advanced Sociology PhD student at The Ohio State
University.
His areas of focus are labor and social movement.
He is
currently
examining
the
strength
and
weaknesses
of
organizing
on
a
national
level
with
particular
focus
on
the
ramifications
for
worker
solidarity.
Adam Reich is a graduate student in the sociology department at UC Berkeley. He is the author of
the book Hidden Truth: Young Men Navigating Lives In and Out of Juvenile Prison (University of California
Press, 2010).
Shaun Ryan is a senior lecturer in management in the School of Management and Marketing at
Deakin University. His doctoral thesis in work and organisational studies, at the University of
Sydney, examined employment relations and organisational culture in the New South Wales
commercial cleaning industry. He continues to research and publish on work in commercial
cleaning, and has recently published on the application of the Justice for Janitors campaign in
Australasia.
Teresa Sharpe received her PhD in the sociology department at UC Berkeley in 2010. Her
dissertation explored organizational change in the U.S. labor movement through a comparison of
SEIU, HERE, UFCW and AFSCME.
Urvashi Soni-Sinha is a postdoctoral fellow in Labour Studies at McMaster University in Canada.
She has done her doctorate in Women and Gender Studies from University of Warwick, UK. Her
research interests include women and unions, women, gender and work, women and globalization,
feminist methodologies, and gender, race and precarious employment. She has published in several
19
peer reviewed journals including Feminist Economics, Qualitative Research, Global Labour and Contributions
to Indian Sociology.
Dimitris Stevis is Professor of Political Science at Colorado State University. In broad terms his
research examines the social governance of the world political economy in the areas of labor and the
environment. He is currently involved in a number of research projects. One project investigates
Global Framework Agreements between multinational companies and labor unions. A second
project investigates the environmental politics of labor unions and the labor politics of
environmental organizations. A third project examines Colorado’s New Energy Economy within
global production networks. His recent publications include Globalization and Labor: Democratizing
Global Governance. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008, with Terry Boswell) and Global
Framework Agreements in a Union-Hostile Environment: The Case of the USA. (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and
Hans Bockler Stiftung 2013, with Michael Fichter).
Maite Tapia holds a PhD from Cornell University in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations
and is Assistant Professor at the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State
University. She has published some of her work in the British Journal of Industrial Relations and is,
along with Lee Adler and Lowell Turner, co-editor of the forthcoming Cornell ILR Press book
"Mobilizing against Inequality: Unions, Immigrant Workers, and the Crisis of Capitalism." Her
research revolves around strategies of trade unions, civil society organizations, and collective
representation in the US and Europe, as well as work and migration.
Veronica Terriquez received her Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA, a Masters in Education from
U.C. Berkeley, and her B.A. from Harvard. Her research focuses on educational inequality,
immigrant integration, and organized labor. Her work is linked to education justice and immigrant
rights organizing efforts in Los Angeles. Dr. Terriquez has also worked as a community organizer on
school reform and other grassroots campaigns. Her forthcoming publication in the American
Sociological Review focuses on the labor union and school-based civic engagement of the Los Angeles
membership of the SEIU janitor’s union. Dr. Terriquez is currently working on a book manuscript
on Latino Parental School Involvement in Los Angeles. She is also the principal investigator of the
California Young Adult Study (CYAS), a Gates Foundation funded study that aims to identify
factors contributing to the post-secondary educational enrollment, quality employment, and civic
participation of young adults in California. Smaller collaborative projects that Dr. Terriquez is
working on include a study of women leaders in the Los Angeles immigrant rights movement, and a
study of multi-racial organizing strategies employed by community-based, labor, and youth
organizations.
Charlotte Yates is a full professor in the Department of Political Science and Labour Studies, and
the Dean of Social Sciences at McMaster University, where she has served as a full time faculty
member since 1987. Dr. Yates has worked to combine her social activist and anti-poverty work with
her responsibilities as Dean to become a leader of change in the community. While serving as Dean
of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charlotte Yates has kept up an active research agenda. She has
20
published widely in the areas of unions, automotive industry in Canada and labour markets and
work, and regularly appears on TV and radio to comment on issues related to these subjects. She has
a new book forthcoming provisionally entitled Negotiating Risk, Seeking Security, Eroding Solidarity: Life
with Manufacturing Work in Two Border Regions. She currently holds research grants in the areas of
global shifts in women’s union membership; and how precarious work impacts immigrant women.
Dr. Yates sits on a number of editorial boards for academic journals and is involved in several
international and national research networks including the Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur
la mondialisation et le travail (CRIMT). She has years of experience working with and speaking to
unions and community organizations on industrial relations, unions, shifting labour markets and
diversity and representation.
Kyoung-Hee Yu is a lecturer at the Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales.
Her dissertation at MIT examined the radical organizational process that SEIU went through in
adopting social movement unionism as well as factors that determine the sustainability of activism
across four Justice for Janitors sites. Kyoung-Hee’s research interests are on institutional change that
affects work and employment structures and practices. Her ongoing projects examine, inter alia,
institutional change in the American labor movement, changes in professional work, and
immigration and work.
21
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