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Alienation and Resistance:
New Possibilities for
Working-Class Formation
Margaret Zamudio
A
THEORETICAL LOGIC HAS ALWAYS INFORMED AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE STRUCtural economic conditions and the practice driving union organization.
The transformation of the labor process under capitalism created the
conditions for class formation (Tucker, 1978; Kautsky, 1971). Marx and many
socialist thinkers believed that the objective conditions of exploitation predisposed the working class toward class-consciousness and ultimately led to class
formation (Ibid.). According to this view, class relations determined both the
objective and subjective conditions for working-class resistance (Kautsky, 1971).
It was the recognition of human degradation through exploitation that sparked the
workersʼ consciousness (Braverman, 1974). In the United States, however, the
objective conditions that forced men and women to the city and factory failed to
produce sufficient conditions for national class-consciousness and resistance. In
fact, the period of industrial capital that promised to transform a class-in-itself
into a class-for-itself in the U.S. has run its course, leaving behind only rumbles
of working-class resistance.
Two related structural economic processes have emerged that directly affect
the shape and possibilities for working-class formation in the U.S. First, the transformation from a goods-producing to a service-producing economy has created
new class relations in which service jobs are central. The internationalization of
U.S. financial capital that underlies the new global economy and fuels economic
restructuring in the U.S. also plays a major role in determining who fills these new
service jobs in the global cities. Second, more than any other push or pull factor,
globalization has played a major role in diversifying the working class as capital
breaks down the boundaries of the nation-state and makes the internationalization
of labor and capital a fundamental process fueling the economy of the global cities
(Kasarda, 1989; Sassen, 1991; Wilson, 1987). To the extent that service workers make up the largest segment of working class, and women, immigrants, and
MARGARET ZAMUDIO is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Wyoming
(Ross Hall 401, 1000 E. University Avenue, Laramie, WY 82071; e-mail: mzamudio@uwyo.edu).
She has conducted research on the relationships between ethnicity, citizenship, and labor and is the
author of The Making of a Latina/o Working Class (Boulder: Lynne Reiner Publishers).
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Social Justice Vol. 31, No. 3 (2004)
Alienation and Resistance
61
people of color occupy these positions in the large urban areas, it is important to
reconsider the process of working-class formation in this new context.
The purpose of this article is not to question the viability of the objective condition of class under which resistance is possible and likely; rather, the goal is to
pose two additional challenges to our understanding of class formation. How does
the transformation of the labor process from industrial manufacturing to service
production affect the possibilities for class formation? How does the subjective
rather than objective condition of alienation rooted in racism and nationalism
inform the process of class formation? In other words, does it matter who fills
the slots of the class structure in the low-wage service economy? Both questions
are relevant during this historical moment in which service workers outnumber
industrial workers, and in which those at the center of exploitation in the new
global economy experience race/ethnicity, gender,1 citizenship, as well as class
as salient aspects in their alienation as workers (Zamudio, 2001; 2002). Given the
increased flow of workers across borders, which has more completely diversified
the workforce in the global cities, the role of race/ethnicity and citizenship on
class formation processes in cities like Los Angeles has become more important
to understand, especially since immigrant Latina/o service workers have already
shown a propensity to unionize within traditionally unorganized industries.
Various union campaigns in Los Angeles are telltale signs of the salience of
race/ethnicity and citizenship in the class-formation process. Immigrant Latina/o
workers organizing in the service industries of Los Angeles represent a snapshot of
the social relationships that form under conditions of a global economy, in which
the ethnic/racial and citizenship status of the workers in the low-wage service
sector reflects the international commodity flows between the U.S. and Latin
America, particularly Mexico and the Central American countries of Guatemala
and El Salvador. The narratives workers use to explain why they organize suggest
that issues of “dignity and respect” far outweigh the traditional “bread and butter”
campaign waged by white industrial workers. This concern with “dignity and
respect” supports an understanding of alienation, in contrast to classical exploitation as a basis for resistance. Beyond the theoretical implications, the salience of
race/ethnicity and citizenship has implications for strategies employed by labor
organizers seeking to reverse decades of declining union membership. Specifically,
the theoretical logic that informs the practice of labor organizing must take into
consideration the lived experiences of the workers involved in the union project.
Which factors in todayʼs “shop floor” foment resistance? What is the role of race
and citizenship in the labor process? The answer to these questions points to
the need to renew our efforts to link traditional labor rights with the civil rights
movements that emerged in the 1960s. As labor scholar Dan Clawson (2003:
13–14) notes, “the failure of labor and those movements to connect weakened
both labor and those movements. Labor lost a chance to reinvigorate itself and
to make advances on issues that are central to workersʼ lives; as a consequence,
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it tended to become narrow, bureaucratic, and insular.” The leadership immigrant
Latinos workers have displayed in the labor activity of the 1990s also puts to rest
generalizations claiming that immigrants or Latina/os are reluctant to organize.
This last implication is particularly relevant as globalization processes shape a
fluid international labor force in Los Angeles.
In this article, I examine data from the hotel industry in Los Angeles to establish trends in the process of class formation in a service economy. Data from the
hotel industry come from 40 interviews with either the hotelʼs general manager
or human resource director. The 40 hotels were randomly selected from the Los
Angeles County area. Interviews lasted approximately two hours and followed a
78-item questionnaire. The questions focused on the typical entry-level job. In the
hotel industry, the largest segment of workers is concentrated in “the back of the
house” — housekeepers, housemen, laundry, and kitchen workers. The questions
focused on skill requirements, recruitment methods, employment criteria, mobility,
composition of the workforce, and diversity issues. Interviews with employers
are significant since they reveal several processes unique to the service industry.
They suggest significant differences between exploitation in the industrial sector and exploitation in services, particularly the emphasis on image over simple
skill. In addition, the interviews suggest the salience of race, ethnic, and citizenship categories that employers rely on to hire and describe and/or explain the
workforce. Hotel employers overwhelmingly stated a preference for immigrant
Latina/o workers, especially over native black workers. Given the centrality of
categories of race/ethnicity and citizenship to the way in which employers made
sense of their workforce, it is reasonable to assume that employees will somehow
respond to these categories and incorporate the meaning of race/ethnicity and
citizenship into the work context.
Beyond the data from hotel employers, I examine a case study of union organizing among predominately immigrant Latina/o workers at the New Otani Hotel
in Los Angeles. Data from the workers come from interviews and participant
observation of workers and union organizers from Local 11 of the International
Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees Union (HERE), which is participating
in an organizing drive to unionize the New Otani Hotel and Gardens. The ethnographic data was collected in 1995, during the peak of the organizing campaign.
Although this union campaign has not been resolved, the New Otani case is ideal
for an examination of class formation in the service industry. Interviews and
participant observation of service-industry workers in the process of resistance
provide insight into how work and alienation shape the consciousness of a segment of the most exploited workers in modern society. In the Los Angeles hotel
industry, this segment of “back of the house” workers originates mostly from
Mexico, with a significant minority from El Salvador and Guatemala. Thus, the
focus is necessarily on the process rather than the outcome of union workersʼ
struggles in a service economy. The process indicates possibilities for solidarity
Alienation and Resistance
63
among an international labor force and may even provide insight into how to
influence socially just outcomes in the future.
Processes in the Los Angeles hotel industry highlight the transformation of a
class-in-itself into a class-for-itself when categories of citizenship and ethnicity
and race are prominent. This study examines the features of a service industry
work process that influence workers to organize and suggests that alienation,
not exploitation, is the better predictor of working-class resistance when race,
ethnicity, and citizenship are especially salient. Specifically, alienation, driven
by nativism and racism, provokes working-class resistance. Thus, the subjective
experience of exploitation is crucial and issues of alienation are central to working-class resistance.
Alienation and Working-Class Formation
When Marx first coined the concept of alienation in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, he described it as the objectification and commodification of the worker in industrial society. He suggested that the labor process
under capitalism demanded that workers no longer have control over the product
of their labor or over the production process itself. This estrangement from the
fruits of the workerʼs labor, from the workerʼs human nature to produce, meant
that the object of production now confronted the worker as a “hostile and alien
force.” The loss of control over the product and process of production led to two
other aspects of alienation, estrangement from ones true human nature, the species being, and from other species beings. This estrangement from self and others
robbed workers of their true human nature and reduced all relations to relations
between commodities. In essence, Marxʼ version of alienation suggested that the
very essence of humans, not only their labor, but also their identity, nature, and
their very being were reduced to mere commodities (Tucker, 1978).
In Marxʼ later work, the concept of alienation lost its centrality and was replaced
with the quantifiable concept of exploitation. The development of the labor theory
of value in Capital (1976) made exploitation central to Marxist thought and has
posed one of the greatest empirical challenges to liberal political economy. Marx
demonstrated that the creation of capital came directly from the exploitation of
workers rather than through the exchange relation. This exploitation could now be
measured and quantified (Marx, 1976). As Marxism became more of a “science”
in the 20th century, the concept of alienation was relegated to the realm of philosophy. The notion of alienation was considered part of Marxʼ humanism rather than
science. These trends further devalued the concept of alienation as first proposed
by Marx, a process that accelerated even among Marxists with the dominance of
economic deterministic views of class formation, in which exploitation became
the preeminent factor in generating resistance (Przeworski, 1977).
The centrality of exploitation made more sense during the industrial period.
Labor, rather than oneʼs identity or humanity, was the basis for exploitation.
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Although workers of color earned less than white workers did in the factory,
the basic commodity was still oneʼs labor in the physical sense. Yet the transformation of work has altered the conditions of classic exploitation in the labor
process, where oneʼs labor and identity are commodified to create and sell a
product. Contemporary management in the service industry, interviewed for this
study, clearly articulate that immigrant Latina/o workers are ideal labor for the
hospitality industry, in which “attitude” and “interaction with customers” are the
required skills. This emphasis on soft skills paves the way for a greater role of
oneʼs racial/ethnic identity in the labor process. Thus, with the transition from
a goods-producing to a service-producing economy, it may be useful to dust off
the concept of alienation to understand working-class resistance
Although exploitation retains a universal significance in promoting workingclass resistance, in itself it is not a sufficient condition for resistance. Instead,
the condition of alienation is a powerful force in influencing resistance. In this
context, alienation is simply the human degradation that results from the commodification of the qualities central to human identity. Specifically, at the core
of the concept of alienation is the notion of the degradation of the self in modern
society through the objectification not only of oneʼs labor, but also of key aspects
of modern human identity, race/ethnicity, citizenship, and gender. Though gender
is a particularly salient aspect of human identity that is objectified, this article
will only focus on race/ethnicity and citizenship.
Alienation and the Commodification of the Self
Image adds value to personal services in a service economy. In the hotel industry, commodification of the self is taken to new heights and employers attach the
meanings of race/ethnicity, gender, and citizenship to the job. Employers prefer
immigrant Latina/o workers for jobs in the back of the house because their status
as noncitizens implies subservience, the image desired when the commodity is
personal service. The patriarchal meanings attached to gender further enhance
images that rely on inequality. Citizenship signifies abstract equality under the
law and it carries cultural connotations about hierarchy that fit well when the
product of service is deference and servitude. In this sense, employers value not
so much skills that are learned, but a meaning that is attached to the image of the
immigrant Latina/o. Employers also assume that immigrant status makes Latina/o
workers more controllable and compliant to the degrading demands of the job
than are citizen workers. Lack of citizenship also magnifies prevailing unequal
social relations that revolve around race and gender and have implications in terms
of status and hierarchy. Due to their profound position of structural inequality,
immigrant Latina/o workers, particularly women, are prime candidates for having their physical labor exploited. In addition, their lower status as immigrants,
Latina/os, and sometimes as women is often used to package their labor and to
sharpen the image of inequality between worker and client.
Alienation and Resistance
65
The notion that jobs in the back of the house require workers to present a
particular image, in this case a subservient one, is similar to Arlie Hochschildʼs
description of emotional labor in her study of airline stewardesses. According to
Hochschild (1983: 7),
this labor requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain
the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others — in this case, the sense of being cared for in a convivial and safe
place. This kind of labor calls for a coordination of mind and feeling,
and it sometimes draws on a source of self that we honor as deep and
integral to our individuality.
The demands of the hotel industry on their service workers are similar to
those experienced by airline stewardesses. As in Hochschildʼs findings, employers emphasize the importance of the workerʼs style of interaction as part of the
job. One employer I interviewed, who was representative of the majority of
employers, stated the need for a certain style of “interaction with people because
weʼre a service industry, so we need people with smiles and good attitudes for a
harmonious work environment.” Hotel workers not only engage in the physical
labor of cleaning rooms, handling baggage, and waiting on customers, they are
also expected to maintain a particular attitude as part of the service. Employers
often stressed that in a competitive environment, clean rooms are no longer enough
— the service must make the customer “number one.” For customers to feel that
way often means putting up with their unreasonable demands. One employer
stated the importance of acting skills in doing the job. He states,
You almost have to be an actor or actress in the hotel business because
youʼre playing a role to a great extent. You know you had a bad day.
But when you go to work youʼve got to leave that at the door and put
on this face. You have to put on a face and listen to others who have
gripes and complaints. And a lot of times it doesnʼt have anything to do
with you. So to have the ability to diffuse a negative situation is a plus
in this business.
The type of “acting” required of service workers in the hotel industry is often
thought to come naturally to some folks and not others. For example, in the sexual
division of labor, women are relegated to positions that involve nurturing, such
as nurses, elementary school teachers, and airline stewardesses, to name a few.
The underlying assumption is that women are “natural” caretakers. In the hotel
industry, a similar principle applies and employers look for employees with hospitality skills. As one employer put it, they have “the natural inclination to want
to please, help, and serve others. Something that you canʼt train someone to be.”
The notion that immigrant Latina/os are more inclined to serve than to be served,
and the expectation that they act accordingly, sets the context of oppression that
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these workers experience. As Hochschild (1983: 7) incisively observes, “if we
can become alienated from goods in a goods-producing society, we can become
alienated from service in a service-producing society.”
Since part of the commodity in the hotel industry is an abstraction of the self,
the alienation of the worker is central to understanding the context of oppression
and resistance. Interviews with employers reveal the extent to which immigrant
workers are stripped of their real selves and expected to operate as robots, or, as one
employer described them, as “soldiers.” Such expectations of immigrant workers
and the notion that they can be easily controlled appear to be the main reason
immigrant Latinos are preferred over native workers. In the eyes of employers,
the reluctance of native workers to be treated as anything but equals makes them
undesirable workers. The disinclination to hire black workers and the use of
racist justifications demonstrate employersʼ preferences for workers without the
entitlements of citizens. For example, the main employer complaint about AfricanAmericans was that they had a bad attitude and “felt entitled.” Employers view
African-Americans as a less compliant labor force. In a sense, they see them like
whites. In this view, the real distinction becomes not a racial one, but one between
citizens and noncitizens. An employer in one of L.A.ʼs most exclusive hotels
captures this distinction. She states, “I would not group the blacks with Hispanics;
I would group them with whites. They donʼt have a very high work ethic either.”
Another employer adds, “realistically, a guy who hops the border is willing to bust
his butt.... Most of the Hispanics and Asians have a solid work ethic. Canʼt say
that for the natives in this country.” The role of employer attitudes is confirmed by
earlier studies in terms of the hiring process, particularly the meaning employers
attribute to the race of African-American workers (Kirschenman and Neckerman,
1991; Braddock and McPartland, 1987; Moss and Tilly, 1991).
The notion of immigrants as naturally subservient, docile, and maintaining
a superior work ethic contrasts remarkably with the notion employers hold of
native workers, particularly African-Americans. Employersʼ comments about
various ethnic/racial groups often conflated their work ethic with the extent to
which workers would submit to exploitive work conditions. “My experience is
that most Latinos have a much better work ethic than the whites and blacks Iʼve
employed here,” noted a downtown Los Angeles employer. “There is less complaining. More or less tell them what has to be done and they do it in a rather happy
manner.” Another employer states, “immigrants are good workers. They do the
job. They are like soldiers — work and go home without knowing whatʼs going
on around them.” Thus, for employers the main issue is not so much skills and
wages, as the image of the happy-go-lucky worker with the control of a soldier.
A black employer at a large hotel near the airport expressed the industry view
of immigrants: “I have to say that employers tend to think that theyʼll be good
workers and keep quiet. It is what it is, I have to say.... People think that way.
Hire them and there wonʼt be no problems.”
Alienation and Resistance
67
A close interconnection exists between the image of the happy, servile
worker that employers sell to clients seeking hospitality and the need to control
the workforce. Central to the new service economy is control of physical and
emotional labor, since emotional labor today adds value to the goods of service.
As one employer put it,
In the hotel industry we sell service. People come to sleep and all hotels
provide beds. The only thing we can provide them is to come in contact
with competent individuals who want to serve them and take care of their
needs. A room attendant who does not speak to a guest in the hallway
after he requests something is not going to remember that housekeeper
in a kindly manner. You can teach skills. You cannot teach someone to
be pleasant.
Interviews with employers suggest how changes in the labor process have
increased aspects of alienation. Basic skills requirements such as “on the job
know-how” and “interaction with customers” were ranked as the most important
skills for entry-level workers, but employers overwhelmingly emphasized soft
skills, particularly attitude. As one employer emphasized, “we can train them
to do technical tasks. But we cannot train a service attitude.” Another employer
states, “itʼs important that they are friendly because we can train to clean.” Another
employer felt that attitude was everything. Once interviews developed beyond
specific questions on skills, soft skills such as ability to please, good attitude, and
servitude emerged as key aspects of the work process. Employers were not always
blatant about the meanings they attached to soft skills, yet workers were quite open
about their interpretation of how their social identity, rooted in race/ethnicity and
citizenship, was used to further degrade them. Next, I discuss how the soft skills
that lead to the alienation of workers facilitate the process of exploitation.
Alienation and Extra-Economic Exploitation
Preventing labor from determining the conditions of work is central to the
process of exploitation. For employers, citizenship status makes a difference in
their control over labor and hence in compliance with the intensification of the
labor process. One employer felt that immigrants tend to comply and do so in a
“rather happy manner.” In a luxury hotel, an employer reported: “because of economic conditions, we have situations where we need to get rooms done efficiently.
We realigned the schedule last month. Housekeepers need to take two minutes
less to clean a room. We eliminated a half hour of unproductive time that way.”
Housekeepers work a seven and one-half hour day and are expected to clean 15
to 20 rooms a day. When a Latino employer was asked why he felt immigrants
made up such a large segment of their labor force, he responded, “my bottom
gut answer is that theyʼll accept any condition to work, to make money, to feed
their families.” Another employer reported that without immigrants, “we would
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probably have to hire more individuals to do the same amount of work. Generally
youʼll find that immigrants would do one and a half times the work.” A Beverly
Hills employer stated: “Hispanic workers are willing to go out of the way and put
in that extra effort for you. Whereas not just blacks, but generally anybody born
in the U.S., Iʼve never really viewed as [having] a work ethic. Immigrants are
willing to do more work for me as part of some general work ethic.... I get more
compliance out of immigrant workers to work harder, to work overtime.”
Such are the conditions in which immigrant workers find themselves and that
serve to define the struggle at the New Otani Hotel. Exploitation of physical work
defines the struggle, but so, too, does the alienation experienced when race/ethnicity,
gender, and citizenship status facilitate exploitation. Immigrant Latina/o workers
do not cry for bread and butter, but for dignity and respect — making race/ethnicity and citizenship central. Not surprisingly, blacks, who once filled positions in
the back of the house, are no longer considered ideal candidates for the job. Their
disappearance from these roles resulted not from competition with immigrants,
but from the citizenship rights they gained through a civil rights movement that
the 14th Amendment failed to fully realize. The attributes of citizenship give
employers one more marker to stratify the labor force. For immigrant Latinos,
citizenship inequality sets the stage for a struggle that addresses their conditions
of oppression and transforms the struggle into its class form.
Resistance at the New Otani Hotel
The activities of the New Otani Hotel workers give insight into the relation of
ethnicity/race and citizenship to class formation. Although the structure of exploitation provides the basis for class formation, that is not what motivates workers to
come together. Workers experience their exploitation differently, and citizenship
and racial/ethnic status inform these experiences. With the intensification of the
labor process, the condition of exploitation has worsened in the hotel industry.
Most employers reported that the business environment demanded that they get
more out of their workers. The New Otani management was not among those
interviewed, but workersʼ comments suggest that the same process of increasing
the workload is going on at the hotel. According to a houseman, “Chuey [the
housekeeping manager] has really increased the workload. She calls our attention
when we donʼt finish the work. But the problem is the time. She wants more done
in the same amount of time. Itʼs impossible. She increases the amount of work,
but not the time or money.” Housekeepers also complained that the hotel added an
extra room to their workload and made large rooms with more than one large bed
count as one room instead of two as was previously the case. Similarly, housemen
are expected to clean the public areas of four instead of two floors.
Intensification of the labor process was not the most dominant theme in my
interviews with workers. Workers distinguished between good and bad workers,
as had the employers. After a house visit with a reluctant union supporter, I asked
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Alienation and Resistance
the carload of workers about the man we had just visited. One woman said, “Oh,
heʼs a bad worker. He moves so slowly. Watching him work is like watching a
movie in slow motion.” Good versus bad labels applied even to workers who had
signed a union card. For workers in the New Otani case, the issue is not necessarily that they are exploited. Rather, they see the problem in terms of how they
are exploited, and their notions of rights and respect determine how they will
experience their exploitation. When one laundry worker was asked why she was
interested in unionizing the hotel, she replied: “No respect. Thatʼs why we need
a union. Respect is how we are told to do something. From my point of view you
say, please do this, not you have to do this.” This worker pointed out how the
objective condition of exploitation can be experienced in two different ways. It
is this combination of feelings of alienation with concrete forms of exploitation
that influences class formation.
Citizenship and Ethnicity
Understanding how the subjective notion of alienation is constructed is crucial
for understanding the process of class formation. In the case of the New Otani
workers, alienation is often experienced in response to their citizenship status,
gender, and ethnicity/race, and working-class resistance is expressed as a product
of alienation. When workers talk about their alienation, their struggle for rights
and respect, they often couch their work experience in terms of their immigrant
or ethnic status rather than in class terms. The fact that employers treat workers
according to the immigrant stereotype they hold of them has pushed workers to
organize. For example, a Latina worker from Mexico who has been here for nine
years says, “If youʼre a person, regardless of your race or where youʼre from, you
deserve respect. But here they see youʼre from somewhere else and they disrespect
you. They donʼt care about the worker. They want robots. They donʼt care how
we feel. They intimidate us. They tell us if weʼre not satisfied with our job, there
are plenty of others who want it, and then they show us a stack of applications. I
rebel when I get treated like that.”
The process of coming over to the union side often begins with a recognition
of one's exploitation based on ethnic/racial, gender, and citizenship status. The
experience may be more directly related to their class position of powerlessness,
but workers perceive it as rooted in racism and/or nationalism. For example, a
dominant theme in the union campaign is the capricious manner in which privileges
are allotted. The culture of favoritism promoted in the hotel undermines a standard
system of designating rewards that workers relate to, such as seniority. Workers feel
that ethnicity/race often plays a role in who receives privileges and rewards. Latina/o
workers at the hotel feel that since the New Otani management is Asian, favoritism
is directed toward Asian workers. Favoritism is not always on ethnic/racial grounds.
When it is, it serves as a rallying point and Latina/o workers add it to a series of
incidences of discrimination and injustices the hotel has imposed on them.
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For example, a longstanding pattern for immigrant workers is to return to
their home of origin for vacation or to update their visas. Once, a Japanese and a
Salvadoran worker returned home to update their status. Immigration rules had
changed, forcing them to stay over longer than expected. The Salvadoran worker had
his embassy send a letter to the hotel explaining his predicament. Upon returning,
the Japanese worker was allowed to keep her job, while the Salvadoran worker
was dismissed. The dismissal of the Salvadoran worker prompted a contingent
of workers to demand a meeting with the general manager, Kenji Yoshimoto, in
hopes of resolving the matter and securing the dismissed workerʼs job. Beyond this
pressure, the Salvadoran Embassy attempted to intervene. Ultimately, Yoshimoto
promised to give the worker a job, but failed to keep his word. This prompted
outrage in the hotel. I interviewed a leader of the organizing effort and she cited
this event as one of the major incidents that influenced the receptiveness of workers toward the union. This view is echoed in other interviews and suggests the
formation of a collective outlook in which the inequalities of ethnicity/race and
citizenship are firmly imprinted.
The reified version of the role of ethnicity/race and citizenship, which depicts
them as disruptive to class formation, fails to capture the extent to which they
inform class relations (Bonacich, 1972; 1973; 1976). For example, labor leaders
often justified the virulent racism that overshadows the history of labor in the
U.S. According to labor scholar Nelson Lichtenstein (2002: 76), “socialists like
Jack London, not to mention AFL stalwarts like Samuel Gompers, argued that
Asians, African Americans, and other nonwhite people represented a sort of vast,
worldwide lumpen proletariat, unschooled in the ethics of solidarity, eager to
serve capital, and thus subversive of white wages and living standards.” The New
Otani case suggests that ethnicity/race and citizenship, rather than undermining
union organization, often facilitate it. Similar to the oppression they feel as immigrants, workers sense discrimination against them based on their ethnic/racial
background. Analogous to their sense of solidarity based on immigrant status,
New Otani workers often talk about their struggle in ethnic terms. Rather than
expressing the need to unite as workers, one more often hears them addressing
the need to unite as Latina/os or immigrants. At face value, the notion of organizing based on ethnicity appears antithetical to class formation, yet the point
is that ethnicity is fluid and is often used as a way of experiencing exploitation.
For example, a Latina housekeeper explained that when she started working, the
manager only gave her three days of training and had her cleaning the 16-room
load by her fourth day. The experience in itself was exploitation that came with
the territory of being a worker. However, a week later a Filipina worker was
hired. She received two weeks of training and a month before she had to clean 16
rooms. The Latina worker sensed the underlying assumptions that her ethnicity
did not entitle her to the same considerations other women received. Now that
unequal treatment based on ethnicity, gender, and race entered the picture, her
Alienation and Resistance
71
class experience was intensified and she joined the union leadership committee
before her probationary period was over.
The salience of ethnicity/race and citizenship in influencing the organization
of New Otani workers was evident during a petition-signing campaign that took
place outside Belmont High School. The New Otani hotelʼs majority stockholder
is the Kajima Corporation of Japan, one of the world's largest development companies. Kajima had submitted a bid to the Los Angeles Unified School Board
to construct the new Belmont High School. A previously successful Local 11
strategy was to petition local governments and political bodies to prevent the
granting of licenses or contracts to the enemy corporation. Local 11 had brought
the owners of Hollywood Park to the bargaining table after persuading several
local governments to deny the corporation a license to set up a casino. In the
case of Kajima, the strategy was to have the school board accept a competing
bid because Kajima lacked community support and Local 11 had the signatures
to prove it. The petition documented Kajimaʼs infamous history, including war
crimes and more recent bribery convictions, and asked the school board to give
the new high school construction contract to a more reputable firm.
Ethnographic notes taken on the day of the petition drive show a group of
workers, organizers, and Local 11 volunteers converging in front of the school
building a few minutes before the last bell of the school day sounded. Some
organizers stood behind ironing boards propped up as tables. Others stood by a
display of large posters with blown-up newspaper headlines announcing the conviction of Kajima executives for bribery. The studentsʼ rides arrived and parked
along the street as students began to trickle out the front gates. At the sound of
the school bell, the trickle turned into a rush of students. The front of the school
was transformed as groups of youth spilled out onto the sidewalk and the street.
Some youth waited for their rides in small groups along the main sidewalk,
others jumped into waiting cars and drove away. The sounds of music and Spanish-speaking voices filled the air. The petitioners approached groups of hurried
students and requested their signature, all the while explaining that the purpose
of the petition was to demand that the school board deny Kajima the contract to
build their new school. Petitioners explained Kajimaʼs history of racism, particularly against the Latino community. The accusation of racism usually elicited the
first signature from one of the youth and the petition made its rounds through
the small group. The request for signatures usually started more formally, with a
more thorough explanation of the petition, i.e., it asked the school board to vote
against Kajima; Kajima had a history of war crimes; they had been convicted for
bribery; they owned the New Otani Hotel and treated their Latino workers badly.
As the rush of students turned into a stream, petitioners worked more quickly and
only highlighted Kajimaʼs racism against Latinos. It is the most effective line in
eliciting a signature and the view workers first articulate when describing their
grievances against the company. Besides charges of racism, one petitioner added
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that Kajima is anti-immigrant and probably supported the then-infamous governor of California, Pete Wilson, who provoked widespread protest in the Latina/o
community with his attempt to deny education and health care to undocumented
children and women with Proposition 187. Latina/o students and parents alike
are most sensitive to the plight of the New Otani workers when the situation is
couched in its racial and immigrant context.
The tactics of the petition drive reveal the prominence of the race and citizenship discourse in the New Otani campaign. These issues also appear to capture
the attention of the surrounding community. In casual conversation with a worker,
I noted the ease with which signatures were gotten once racism was mentioned.
She agreed and recalled a scene in which she was gathering signatures outside a
market. Upon mentioning the companyʼs racism, residents called out to others to
sign the petition against the anti-Latino company. Scenes like this were repeated
outside the school. Students listened, heads tilted to the side in an effort to make
sense of the global conglomerateʼs role in the lives of a few hundred workers.
Once the word racist was used, students quickly nodded in understanding and
reached over to sign the petition.
One can argue that highlighting ethnic/racial oppression is merely a tactic that
plays on the most base of instincts and sidelines the universal experience of class
exploitation that brings workers of all backgrounds together. Indeed, raising the
issue of racial/ethnic oppression is a strategy that the union and New Otani leadership rely on to recruit workers and to gain community support. The effectiveness
of this strategy, however, stems from the fact that race/ethnicity and citizenship
make up a central part of the working-class experience for the New Otani workers. A derogatory comment by the hotelʼs general manager, Kenji Yoshimoto,
concerning Latina/o workers illustrates the prevalence of the relationship between
class and ethnicity/race and citizenship. To City Councilman Richard Alatorre,
he wrote that the New Otaniʼs Latina/o workers “are of Hispanic origin, born in
other countries, and not yet as sophisticated perhaps as some others.” Such views
provoke the resistance of workers and the community and fuel drives to organize
the hotel. Given the inseparable link between ethnicity/race, gender, citizenship,
and class, it is not surprising that the passion to fight for oneʼs rights as workers
is often justified in non-class terms. For one worker, “unionizing is the only way
weʼre going to gain respect. We fall and get up because itʼs the only way to get
something for our families. Itʼs the way to show Yoshimoto that although we came
from different countries, we are not ignorant.” He continued,
After Anna [a vocal union organizer] got fired, Councilman Richard
Alatorre sent a letter to him in protest. Yoshimoto wrote back saying we
come from unsophisticated countries and that we are ignorant Latinos
from unsophisticated countries. Alatorre was very upset. Heʼs also Latino.
Those words, rather than bringing us down, bring us up so that we can
demonstrate how wrong he is. They all feel the same way about Latinos,
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Alienation and Resistance
but Yoshimoto actually put it on paper and signed it.... In another meeting, I asked him what he meant by saying unsophisticated and ignorant.
He replied by saying that I misunderstood what his letter said. Alatorre
said that this was a double offense. First he insults us, and then he says
we donʼt understand the insult.
The language of ethnicity/race and citizenship shapes the collective consciousness
of the group and facilitates a shared basis for solidarity for groups as distinct as
Mexicans and Salvadorans.
Conclusion
This essay has focused on the theoretical basis for understanding the workingclass resistance of immigrant Latina/o workers. In a previous article, I elaborated
on several factors that facilitate the organization of immigrant Latina/o workers
(Zamudio, 2001; 2002). Though I focus here on the transformation of the labor
process and its implications for alienation and resistance, several other historically
specific factors also come into play. Regardless of the degree of worker alienation,
a political force is necessary to rein it in and channel it into resistance. Just as
past immigrant groups came to this country and became the backbone of the labor
movement, immigrant Latina/o workers in Los Angeles demonstrate that citizenship
status represents prior political experiences that translate into an understanding
of class interests. With U.S. capital expanding into “enterprise zones” in Central
America and particularly in Mexicoʼs borderlands, immigrant Latina/o workers
will likely have experienced U.S. exploitation, with its particular variety of racism, before encountering it at the core of the global economy. Thus, U.S. capitalʼs
expansion into underdeveloped regions characterized by established migrant flows
will foster a more politically seasoned immigrant labor force at the core.
The transformation of the labor process that accompanied the shift from a
goods-producing to service-producing society has created new conditions for
resistance. Commodification of workersʼ identity rather than simply their labor
intensifies the experience of exploitation and provides a basis for working-class
consciousness. The labor process that reduced the industrial worker to a mere
instrument in the process of production depended only on the workersʼ physical
abilities in the creation of commodities. For “back of the house” hotel workers,
exploitation takes on a more personal meaning as employers rely on ethnic/racial
and citizenship inequality to package the commodity of service. The exploitation
of workers beyond their physical labor and the degradation of the self for the purpose of commodity production provide the basis for working-class resistance. It is
the subjective experience of alienation rather than of exploitation that facilitates
class-consciousness.
For New Otani workers, the rallying point is not bread and butter, but dignity
and respect. The structure of the service economy and increasing competition in
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the hospitality industry pave the way for intensification of the labor process and
the increased exploitation of service workers, yet the accompanying alienation
triggers the resistance of workers. In the context of alienation, race/ethnicity and
citizenship status become central forces in fostering the resistance of workers.
For workers are not resisting the physical aspects of their jobs, no matter how
routine and exploitive. Rather, workers resist the emotional work added to the
job by virtue of the workersʼ citizenship and ethnic and racial status. Part of this
work includes maintaining an image of servitude and deferring to the customers,
to management, and to the imposed hierarchy. This imposed image reflects the
culture of racism, which artificially inflates the value of whiteness and the status of
being “American” to the point that immigrants and racial minorities are expected
to accept a position of subordination without question. In this robotic aspect of
the job, immigrant workers are kept in “their place” and treated as if they have
no feelings, emotions, or even a life outside the job.
The most alienating aspect of the job is the centrality of race/ethnicity and
citizenship status in employersʼ expectations of workers. That workers often feel
employers make unreasonable demands upon them stems not from their workingclass position, but from employer racism against immigrant Latinos and from the
expectation that immigrant Latinos as noncitizens are less entitled to the rights
of citizens. Dehumanization of immigrant workers rests upon their class position
and citizenship status, coupled with their racial/ethnic minority status. Thus, as
interviews with New Otani workers show, the impetus for class formation and the
rallying point of the union drive revolve around the alienation workers experience
as immigrants and Latina/os, rather than from the exploitation they experience
as workers. In this sense, the subjective experience of alienation, rather than the
subjective experience of class, influences class formation.
The data from the New Otani Hotel, then, suggest several theoretically significant points for understanding class formation in the service industry during
a period of massive immigration. First, exploitation in itself is not sufficient in
determining class formation. Workers must be alienated. Thus, class formation
is only partially determined at the level of relationships to production. Second,
citizenship status and ethnicity embody elements of alienation that facilitate mobilization along class lines. Along these lines, the larger theoretical goal of this
study is to understand how these salient social categories intersect to determine
class formation.
The case of the workers at the New Otani hotel challenges dominant assumptions about the relationship between immigration and class formation. Workersʼ
activities could be construed as dominated by the price they get for their labor
on the market. Yet this case offers a broader and more complex view of class
formation and situates the role of race/ethnicity and citizenship as central to the
organizing process. Workers may act on behalf of economic interests, but in the
end these interests are informed by cultural and political factors. This study there-
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fore shares the view E.P. Thompson (1966) developed in his landmark study of
working-class formation in England. For Thompson, class embodies a historical
process in which productive relationships are embedded in a cultural and political
context. Class may be an objective relationship, but it is formed within a social
context. “The working class made itself as much as it was made.” Thompsonʼs
work discarded the economic determinism of earlier Marxism and “treated class
as a dynamic social relation, a form of social domination, determined largely
by changing relations of production, but shaped by cultural and political factors
(including ethnicity and religion) without any apparent logic of economic interest” (Katznelson, 1986: 9). In a society in which non-class factors have largely
determined the boundaries of group solidarity, the new social history mode of
analysis seems fitting and provides a framework for understanding the dynamics
of class formation in a multicultural setting.
NOTES
1. Though my research indicates that gender plays a central role in the class formation of immigrant Latina/o workers, this article focuses on the two categories of race/ethnicity and citizenship
status in understanding class formation. Gender, which at times plays a far more complex role, will
be examined in a later paper.
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