Overcoming the Obstacles: Forging Effective Labor-Community Alliances

The coalition's overarching message is that public investment should be accountable to community benefit--including good jobs with health coverage. "Our project," says Madeline Janis-Aparicio, LAANE's director, "is to create a powerful base from which working people have a s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:New labor forum 1999-10 (5), p.59-67
Main Authors: Blackwell, Angela Glover, Rose, Kalima
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Building trades
Child care
Collaboration
Communities
Community associations
Community organization
Community relations
Economic conditions
Employment
Inner cities
Labor
Labor sector
Labor unions
Nonprofit organizations
Organizations
Organizing activities
Poor
Public investments
Retirement communities
Social justice
The Difficulty and Promise of Labor and Community Alliances
Trade unions
United States
Urban conditions
Wages
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Summary:The coalition's overarching message is that public investment should be accountable to community benefit--including good jobs with health coverage. "Our project," says Madeline Janis-Aparicio, LAANE's director, "is to create a powerful base from which working people have a say in what the economy looks like. They pay the taxes, and they should have a say in where subsidies go and for what." Other partner-groups like SAJE (Social Action for a Juste Economy), AGENDA, Community Coalition, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union and the Service Employees International Union locals strengthen LAANE's hand in this mission by raising similar issues of corporate account-ability on government investment within their own organizing contexts. Six years into the building of these partnerships, the coalition has tangible proof that it can shape several growth sectors of the "new economy" in Los Angeles--tourism, entertainment, light manufacturing, health care, and others-into good jobs for working families. Similarly, Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) has focused on building living wages across a broad range of employers into their city's newly redeveloped inner harbor--the gateway to Baltimore's regional economy. Faith communities were BUILD's foremost allies in winning the increase. In another partnership with the faith community, the Cleveland Central Labor Council convened a coalition initially to respond to draconian welfare reform provisions in Ohio. The group is now working to pass a comprehensive living wage ordinance, which addresses the reality of city residents--25% of whom are below the poverty line. The Council's next goal is to garner the United Labor Agency's resources to work with the redevelopment goals of community-based organizations. WHILE LABOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE entire history of institutional exclusion of communities of color in the U.S., it can play an important role in healing the legacy of exclusion. This task will take attention, good will, and creativity to address in its contemporary manifestations. For example, labor faces particularly difficult challenges in partnering with African American leaders of organizations because of that community's long history of exclusion from labor markets where its members were well-qualified. For example, the best jobs for African Americans in the past forty years have been unionized manufacturing and public sector jobs. The loss of man
ISSN:1095-7960
1557-2978