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Organizing Temporary and Immigrant Workers: Lessons from Change to Win’s Warehouse Workers United Campaign

Mon, August 18, 2:30 to 4:10pm, TBA

Abstract

Since 2008, Warehouse Workers United (an affiliate of Change to Win) has organized thousands of low-wage warehouse workers in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties in California, using innovative organizing methods. Warehouse Workers Resource Center (WWRC), a non-profit workers’ center formed in 2011, has also helped to provide additional legal services and other resources to warehouse workers. Combining protest tactics with an innovative legal strategy, WWU and WWRC have helped warehouse workers to win back millions of dollars of stolen wages by 2013. The success of this campaign is particularly remarkable given its uneven and, at times, limited funding. The decentralized structure of the warehouse industry along with the heavy reliance on labor subcontracting and temporary and immigrant labor also complicated the use of traditional union organizing and collective bargaining strategies and made workers highly vulnerable to employer intimidation and retaliation. The Republican domination of regional politics also constrained what could be won at the local level. In this paper, we examine the strategies employed by WWU and WWRC in this campaign and their outcomes drawing on participant observation, information provided to us by staff and student interns, and media and internet sources. This campaign provides important lessons for those seeking to organize other low-wage temporary and immigrant workers who are a growing share of the U.S. workforce and highly vulnerable to employer intimidation and retaliation. Yet, it also reveals the need for greater union investment in organizing the logistics industry, a critical sector of the contemporary global economy.

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