“Making the Impossible, Possible”: Coalitional Movement Infrastructures and the Fight for the NY Excluded Worker Fund

• In Event: Labor-Community Solidarity

Abstract

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. government, with the passage of the CARES act, offered an unprecedented expansion of the social safety net. Nevertheless, many workers – particularly undocumented, contingent, irregular, and recently incarcerated individuals – were excluded from these protections. Across New York State, an assortment of workers centers, immigrant organizations, service organizations, and community groups formed a coalition and successfully pressured the state legislature to pass the Excluded Workers Fund. This fund was a one-time $2.1 billion infusion of economic relief for largely undocumented and other excluded workers. These funds provided $15,600 dollars in relief to 130,000 New Yorkers. The victory was not only surprising for its dollar amount and its focus on politically and economically vulnerable workers but because the organizations pushing for these funds were not large powerful labor unions but, rather, workers’ centers with undocumented immigrant memberships, small staffs, and limited budgets. Worker centers typically have an urban or regional place-based focus that makes it hard for them to move policies at the state or national level. Additionally, due to their financial dependence on foundation funding, these groups often find coalition work difficult as they are in competition with each other over the same small pots of money. Coalitions have been noted as important source of labor’s power resources and social movement scholars have long been interested in when and under what conditions coalitions are successful. Drawing upon over three dozen interviews with the leaders, organizers, researchers, lawyers, and members from the core organizations behind this coalition, this paper explores how these organizations constructed their coalitional power resources and overcame the traditional weaknesses of these groups to obtain a massive victory. We argue that the FEW coalition’s success relied on their construction and commitment to decision-making infrastructures that: reduced inter-group conflict; ensured adequate information structures from the membership to the leaders; produced powerful symbolic movement frames and complementary escalation tactics; and combined insider-outsider strategies that simultaneously built internal and external mobilization.

Authors

• Andrew Wolf, Cornell University

• Gretchen Wren Purser, Syracuse University

• Adolfho Romero, Cornell University

• Sergio Saravia, Syracuse University