Associational Power: The Deployment of Strategic Capacity among Precarious Workers

• In Event: 20881 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3: Precarity and Beyond

Abstract

This paper examines the rise and fall of a union campaign formed through an alliance between a worker center, Warehouse Workers for Justice (WWJ), and a union, Port Division. Contrary to assumptions in precarity literature, the campaign’s challenges were not due to precarious workers being unorganizable. Over five years and six strikes, these workers—supported by deep organizing efforts—united to secure a union contract.
I address two questions: How do workers’ social identities shape their engagement in labor campaigns? and How do labor organizations navigate these identities during organizing efforts? Drawing on 51 interviews and 15 months of participant observation with WWJ, I analyze decision-making processes, worker experiences, and collective action. My findings challenge the precarity literature’s homogenization of marginalized workers and assumptions about their political passivity.
The data reveal how oppressive conditions—job instability, harsh labor practices, and racialized exclusion—normalized exploitation for all workers. For formerly incarcerated native-born Black and Latino workers, these conditions were further naturalized as inevitable outcomes of their carceral pasts. While literature links economic insecurity to submission, workers’ attitudes toward submission were not fixed. Effective organizing built trust, fostered solidarity, and addressed vulnerabilities, enabling collective action. WWJ’s deep organizing strategies, emphasizing associational power, were central to this success. My research highlights strategies for organizing diverse precarious workers, the role of labor hierarchies, and the long-term implications of leadership approaches on worker engagement and perceptions of labor movements.

Author

• Paula Winicki Brzostowski, University of California-Los Angeles