Worker Centers Forge Alliances with Unions

Desai notes that CLC membership will also give NYTWA members access to organized labor’s resources, such as classes and training. The benefits for New York unions, says Desai, are also clear: “There are 40,000 taxi drivers in New York, and that’s 40,000 working families that have joined the labor movement.” 

In Southern California, organizations like the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA) that work with day laborers are hoping to forge similar local agreements, possibly with central labor councils or state federations. 

IDEPSCA Executive Director Raul Arnove believes that cooperation between unions and worker centers will move them closer on the contentious issue of immigration reform. When NDLON and the AFL-CIO began talking, says Arnove, NDLON folks “were clear that we needed political help to push for comprehensive immigration reform that includes day laborers. Unions understand now that it’s not fair that we’re excluded from the discussion.” 

Bridging The Gap 

G etting worker centers and organized labor talking has not been easy. Due to cultural and political differences, any collaboration involves overcoming difficult challenges. 

Day laborers and immigrant workers are sometimes regarded as problems for organized labor, or worse, as scabs. Day laborer organizer Nelson Motto says IDEPSCA fights this image by supporting union struggles, including joining recent hotel and grocery worker pickets. 

Motto says, “We’ve been able to change the mentality that day laborers are scabs. The fact that we get paid lower than union workers is not because we want to. Employers are in control of the wages that they pay day laborers.”  

Unions and worker centers also come into conflict over jurisdiction. Nguyen admits that KIWA has had turf battles with unions, but says that things are changing. In the past, KIWA tried to organize independent unions in Koreatown grocery stores. Nguyen says that KIWA changed its focus “to industry-wide living wage campaigns in part to help raise the floor of the low-wage, non-union employers that are undercutting union supermarkets.” This also helped them avoid conflict with grocery unions. 

Yet another challenge is the perception immigrant workers have of organized labor. Worker centers report that many of their members have had negative experiences with unions—from racist or anti-immigrant unions in the United States to corrupt, dysfunctional unions in immigrant workers’ home countries. To combat these negative associations, worker centers educate their members about the U.S. labor movement. 

In New York many taxi drivers were cautious about joining the Central Labor Council because they feared they’d lose their autonomy and independence. Desai says, “We waited eight years to join the CLC. It was important to us make sure we went in as equals.” For the taxi drivers, knowing that NYTWA already functions as a union helps edge out concerns. Says Desai, “It’s backwards that the labor movement lets the NLRB decide what a union is. You have to build what you think is best capable of fighting the power of the bosses, and we’re doing that.”