Social Movement Spillovers and Teachers' Union Revitalization in Los Angeles

• In Event: Labor and Labor Movements Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable 7: Labor Movements, Protest, and Political Contestation

Abstract

In recent decades, the landscape of U.S. labor politics has been defined by the battles between the institutional forces of neoliberalism and their radical opponents at the grassroots level. Since the Great Recession, teachers’ strikes have become prominent manifestations of the renewed resistance against the neoliberal policies that had undermined unions and exacerbated inequalities. How did teachers’ unions emerge as the leaders of this new movement? This historical sociological analysis of intersecting labor and social movements in Los Angeles argues that teachers’ union revitalization can driven by inter-generational movement spillovers. I show how the tactical innovations in worker education and coalition-building developed by (1) an ascendent Latino-led labor movement in the 1990s, (2) rank and file teacher caucuses that emerged since the 2000s, (3) and the broad social movements that erupted after the Great Recession, provided the "common good" model for Los Angeles teachers’ unions’ broad mobilizations against neoliberal and carceral policies in the past few years.

Author

• Hakan Yilmaz, CUNY-Graduate Center