Poor Workers' Unions

Rebuilding Labor From Below

By Vanessa Tait

From the Back Cover:

Domestic workers. Undocumented immigrants. Workfare laborers.

Long regarded by traditional trade unions as "unorganizable," these and millions of other poor workers are becoming the new face of labor. An essential primer to the "other labor movement," Poor Workers' Unions presents the community/labor partnerships, workers' centers, and independent caucuses that are revitalizing labor for the twenty-first century. Making extensive use of organizational archives and interviews with organizers, activist-writer Vanessa Tait deftly illuminates key connections between the social justice movements of the last fifty years and today's most innovative labor organizing.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Organizing in the Margins
1. Unionizing the Movements: Economic Initiatives in the Civil Rights, New Left, and Women’s Movements
2. The Fight Within: Trade Unions Respond to the Movements
3. Building Economic Justice for All: A National Network for No-Wage and Low-Wage Workers
4. Community Organizing Goes to Work: ACORN’S United Labor Unions
5. “Organizing Where We Live and Work”: The Independent Workers’ Center Movement
6. Knocking at Labor's Door: Organizing Workfare Unions in the ’90s
7. Reviving an Activist Culture: The AFL-CIO’s Turn Toward Organizing
Conclusion: Imagining a New Movement

What people are saying

"Poor Workers’ Unions makes a critical contribution to the current debate about union restructuring and reform. While some labor strategists are arguing for mergers and consolidations that would leave workers with even less of a voice in their own unions, Vanessa Tait emphasizes the importance of building workplace power through grassroots organization and rank-and-file control. This book reminds us that participatory democracy—a concept that animated progressive activism in the 1960s—should not be abandoned in today’s labor movement."

— Steve Early, Assistant to the Vice-President of Communications Workers of America, District 1

"Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic won’t revive the labor movement. Poor Workers’ Unions examines some of the most exciting and impressive attempts to develop new forms to incorporate workers whom unions have largely neglected. Vanessa Tait makes a valuable contribution to the new impulse by showing us the struggles already underway."

— Dan Clawson, Author of The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements

"Vanessa Tait has made a critical contribution to broadening our understanding of who and what is the labor movement in the USA. With detail, analysis, and a compelling writing style, Tait captures the dynamism of alternative forms of working-class organization that have long been ignored. In formulating a new direction for organized labor in the USA, the history Tait addresses must become a recognized part of our foundation."

—Bill Fletcher, Jr., President, TransAfrica Forum and former Assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney