Community Organizing, Welfare Rights Activism, and the Origins of New Labor

• In Event: 056 - Regular Session. Labor: Beyond the Workplace

Abstract

Community Organizing, Welfare Rights Activism, and the Origins of “New Labor”

The influence of the United Farm Workers on the labor revitalization efforts of the late twentieth century is widely recognized. This paper argues that a second ancestral line running from radical social worker and welfare rights mobilization to community organizing (e.g.ACORN) and then to social movement unionism was also formative. This occurred through the migration of personnel from welfare-rights-influenced community organizing to union staff positions and through the influence of the organizing model they carried with them, as indicated, for example, by the careers of three individuals who went from ACORN-type organizing to important SEIU staff positions to the Directorship of the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Institute. In addition to the use of house calls and house meetings, the Fred Ross model shared by the farm worker and welfare rights movements, continuities include an orientation to compliance-based, state-centered organizing. Given this, the paper considers the interaction between the model’s roots in welfare rights mobilization and its subsequent use in organizing low-income service workers, disproportionately women of color doing feminized, racialized service work. It concludes by pointing to the possible contradiction between traditional ideals of union-building and a more client-like relationship to the union and the state in an economy characterized by precarious labor in which mobilization to obtain state benefits may be the most effective way to improve living standards for many workers.

Author

• Mary Ann Clawson, Wesleyan University