New Immigrants, Old Unions

New Immigrants, Old Unions PDF Author: Héctor L. Delgado
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781566390446
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
A steady depletion in the ranks of organized labor has often been blamed on the influx of undocumented immigrant workers. Their fear of apprehension and deportation by immigration authorities has fostered the belief that they "cannot be organized." Hector Delgado challenges this view in an intricate case study of a successful union campaign waged by undocumented workers in a Los Angeles waterbed factory. Relying on rich intensive interviews and personal observation, the author relates the story of a plant where undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America voted for union representation by a two-to-one margin. He describes how they negotiated a collective bargaining agreement in the face of stiff employer opposition. Despite conventional wisdom about the ability to organize such workers, Delgado finds that factors other than citizenship status determine the outcome of unionization efforts on behalf of undocumented workers. He cites the following as primary factors that promote or retard unionization: the commitment of unions to organize undocumented workers, their length of residency in the United States, their roots and social networks, the demand for their labor, and the relatively visibility of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles. New Immigrants, Old Unions contributes to our understanding of the experiences of contemporary American and Central American immigrants, their relationship to organized labor, and the meaning of undocumented status in their lives. Delgado's interviews with workers, labor organizers, and management reveal how and why this attempt to unionize was successful, and his findings confront the American labor movement's view of immigrant workers.

New Immigrants, Old Unions

New Immigrants, Old Unions PDF Author: Héctor L. Delgado
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781566390446
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 186

Get Book Here

Book Description
A steady depletion in the ranks of organized labor has often been blamed on the influx of undocumented immigrant workers. Their fear of apprehension and deportation by immigration authorities has fostered the belief that they "cannot be organized." Hector Delgado challenges this view in an intricate case study of a successful union campaign waged by undocumented workers in a Los Angeles waterbed factory. Relying on rich intensive interviews and personal observation, the author relates the story of a plant where undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America voted for union representation by a two-to-one margin. He describes how they negotiated a collective bargaining agreement in the face of stiff employer opposition. Despite conventional wisdom about the ability to organize such workers, Delgado finds that factors other than citizenship status determine the outcome of unionization efforts on behalf of undocumented workers. He cites the following as primary factors that promote or retard unionization: the commitment of unions to organize undocumented workers, their length of residency in the United States, their roots and social networks, the demand for their labor, and the relatively visibility of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles. New Immigrants, Old Unions contributes to our understanding of the experiences of contemporary American and Central American immigrants, their relationship to organized labor, and the meaning of undocumented status in their lives. Delgado's interviews with workers, labor organizers, and management reveal how and why this attempt to unionize was successful, and his findings confront the American labor movement's view of immigrant workers.

Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development

Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development PDF Author: Gwendolyn Mink
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501742698
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Why have American politics developed differently from politics in Europe? Generations of scholars and commentators have wondered why organized labor in the United States did not acquire a broad-based constituency or form an autonomous labor party. In this innovative and insightful book, Gwendolyn Mink finds new answers by approaching this question from a different angle: she asks what determined union labor's political interests and how those interests influenced the political role forged by the American Federation of Labor. At bottom, Mink argues, the demographic dynamics of industrialization produced a profound racial response to economic change among organized labor. This response shaped the AFL's political strategy and political choices. In her account of the unique role played by labor in politics prior to the New Deal, Mink focuses on the ways in which the organizational and political interests of the AFL were mediated by the national issue of immigration and links the AFL's response to immigration to its conservative stance in and toward politics. She investigates the political impact of a labor market split between union and nonunion, old and new immigrant workers; of dramatic demographic change; and of nativism and racism. Mink then elucidates the development of trade-union political interests, ideology, and strategy; the movement of the AFL into established state and party structures; and the consequent separation of the AFL from labor's social base.

Rebuilding Labor

Rebuilding Labor PDF Author: Ruth Milkman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801489020
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
In Rebuilding Labor Ruth Milkman and Kim Voss bring together established researchers and a new generation of labor scholars to assess the current state of labor organizing and its relationship to union revitalization. Throughout this collection, the focus is on the formidable challenges unions face today and on how they may be overcome.-publisher description.

Welcome to the United States

Welcome to the United States PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Immigrants
Languages : en
Pages : 4

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Book Description


L.A. Story

L.A. Story PDF Author: Ruth Milkman
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610443969
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Sharp decreases in union membership over the last fifty years have caused many to dismiss organized labor as irrelevant in today's labor market. In the private sector, only 8 percent of workers today are union members, down from 24 percent as recently as 1973. Yet developments in Southern California—including the successful Justice for Janitors campaign—suggest that reports of organized labor's demise may have been exaggerated. In L.A. Story, sociologist and labor expert Ruth Milkman explains how Los Angeles, once known as a company town hostile to labor, became a hotbed for unionism, and how immigrant service workers emerged as the unlikely leaders in the battle for workers' rights. L.A. Story shatters many of the myths of modern labor with a close look at workers in four industries in Los Angeles: building maintenance, trucking, construction, and garment production. Though many blame deunionization and deteriorating working conditions on immigrants, Milkman shows that this conventional wisdom is wrong. Her analysis reveals that worsening work environments preceded the influx of foreign-born workers, who filled the positions only after native-born workers fled these suddenly undesirable jobs. Ironically, L.A. Story shows that immigrant workers, who many union leaders feared were incapable of being organized because of language constraints and fear of deportation, instead proved highly responsive to organizing efforts. As Milkman demonstrates, these mostly Latino workers came to their service jobs in the United States with a more group-oriented mentality than the American workers they replaced. Some also drew on experience in their native countries with labor and political struggles. This stock of fresh minds and new ideas, along with a physical distance from the east-coast centers of labor's old guard, made Los Angeles the center of a burgeoning workers' rights movement. Los Angeles' recent labor history highlights some of the key ingredients of the labor movement's resurgence—new leadership, latitude to experiment with organizing techniques, and a willingness to embrace both top-down and bottom-up strategies. L.A. Story's clear and thorough assessment of these developments points to an alternative, high-road national economic agenda that could provide workers with a way out of poverty and into the middle class.

The Jewish Unions in America

The Jewish Unions in America PDF Author: Bernard Weinstein
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783743565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Newly arrived in New York in 1882 from Tsarist Russia, the sixteen-year-old Bernard Weinstein discovered an America in which unionism, socialism, and anarchism were very much in the air. He found a home in the tenements of New York and for the next fifty years he devoted his life to the struggles of fellow Jewish workers. The Jewish Unions in America blends memoir and history to chronicle this time. It describes how Weinstein led countless strikes, held the unions together in the face of retaliation from the bosses, investigated sweatshops and factories with the aid of reformers, and faced down schisms by various factions, including Anarchists and Communists. He co-founded the United Hebrew Trades and wrote speeches, articles and books advancing the cause of the labor movement. From the pages of this book emerges a vivid picture of workers’ organizations at the beginning of the twentieth century and a capitalist system that bred exploitation, poverty, and inequality. Although workers’ rights have made great progress in the decades since, Weinstein’s descriptions of workers with jobs pitted against those without, and American workers against workers abroad, still carry echoes today. The Jewish Unions in America is a testament to the struggles of working people a hundred years ago. But it is also a reminder that workers must still battle to live decent lives in the free market. For the first time, Maurice Wolfthal’s readable translation makes Weinstein’s Yiddish text available to English readers. It is essential reading for students and scholars of labor history, Jewish history, and the history of American immigration.

Integration Nation

Integration Nation PDF Author: Susan E. Eaton
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 1620971429
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
“Eaton has done invaluable work in documenting the revitalization of communities across the U.S. by immigrants and refugees” (David Bacon, author of Illegal People). In recent years, politicians in a handful of local communities and states have passed laws and regulations designed to make it easier to deport unauthorized immigrants or to make their lives so unpleasant that they’d just leave. The media’s unrelenting focus on these ultimately self-defeating measures created the false impression that these politicians speak for most of America. They don’t. Integration Nation takes readers on a spirited and compelling cross-country journey, introducing us to the people challenging America’s xenophobic impulses by welcoming immigrants and collaborating with the foreign-born as they become integral members of their new communities. In Utah, we meet educators who connect newly arrived Spanish-speaking students and US-born English-speaking students, who share classrooms and learn in two languages. In North Carolina, we visit the nation’s fastest-growing community-development credit union, serving immigrants and US-born depositors and helping to lower borrowing thresholds and crime rates alike. Giving a voice to people who choose integration over exclusion, who opt for open-heartedness instead of fear, Integration Nation is a desperately needed road map for a nation still finding its way beyond anti-immigrant hysteria to higher ground. “This useful book provides models for civic organizations that want to tackle immigration challenges, and it paints a vivid picture of some real successes.” —Publishers Weekly “Presents in discrete essays an array of compelling and persuasive regional efforts across the country . . . From Indiana to Georgia to Maine, these intelligent model programs should inspire others.” —Kirkus Reviews

Undocumented Migration

Undocumented Migration PDF Author: Roberto G. Gonzales
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509506985
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Undocumented migration is a global and yet elusive phenomenon. Despite contemporary efforts to patrol national borders and mass deportation programs, it remains firmly placed at the top of the political agenda in many countries where it receives hostile media coverage and generates fierce debate. However, as this much-needed book makes clear, unauthorized movement should not be confused or crudely assimilated with the social reality of growing numbers of large, settled populations lacking full citizenship and experiencing precarious lives. From the journeys migrants take to the lives they seek on arrival and beyond, Undocumented Migration provides a comparative view of how this phenomenon plays out, looking in particular at the United States and Europe. Drawing on their extensive expertise, the authors breathe life into the various issues and debates surrounding migration, including the experiences and voices of migrants themselves, to offer a critical analysis of a hidden and too often misrepresented population.

Work's Intimacy

Work's Intimacy PDF Author: Melissa Gregg
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745637469
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the knew "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforseen ways. This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically-mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way.

Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics

Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics PDF Author: Terry Golway
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871407922
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 511

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Book Description
“Golway’s revisionist take is a useful reminder of the unmatched ingenuity of American politics.”—Wall Street Journal History casts Tammany Hall as shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft and patronage personified by notoriously crooked characters. In his groundbreaking work Machine Made, journalist and historian Terry Golway dismantles these stereotypes, focusing on the many benefits of machine politics for marginalized immigrants. As thousands sought refuge from Ireland’s potato famine, the very question of who would be included under the protection of American democracy was at stake. Tammany’s transactional politics were at the heart of crucial social reforms—such as child labor laws, workers’ compensation, and minimum wages— and Golway demonstrates that American political history cannot be understood without Tammany’s profound contribution. Culminating in FDR’s New Deal, Machine Made reveals how Tammany Hall “changed the role of government—for the better to millions of disenfranchised recent American arrivals” (New York Observer).