Worker Centers, Worker Center Networks, and the Promise of Protections for Low-Wage Workers

In response to the growing absence of unions from the private sector, community-based organizations known as worker centers have emerged as a new front in protecting and organizing workers. Scholars generally argue that worker centers have converged on a model of combining service provision with organizing and advocacy, supported primarily by funding from foundations and government agencies. I draw on interviews conducted with worker center staff, a dataset compiled from their public materials, and secondary research to add to the existing literature and to argue that a clear categorization of worker centers can be derived by attention to their primary workplace strategies. First, worker centers can be meaningfully distinguished by whether they attempt to raise standards in specific industries versus responding to problems in individual workplaces. But they can also be distinguished based on the extent to which they view public policy or winning agreements with employers as the primary route to systemic improvements. These divergences in strategy echo Progressive-era debates about the role for the state in redressing workplace ills. Similar to that era, strategic differences among today’s worker centers are driven less by ideology and more by the distinct structural challenges facing workers in particular political and economic contexts.

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The Development of Sectoral Worker Center Networks

The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science ◽

10.1177/0002716212474647 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 647 (1) ◽

pp. 102-123 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán ◽

Pamela A. Izvănariu ◽

Victor Narro

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Social Movement ◽

Labor Market Institutions ◽

Social Movement Organizations ◽

Market Institutions ◽

Market Outcomes ◽

Worker Centers ◽

Worker Center ◽

Movement Organizations ◽

The Impact

In this article, we argue that understanding the impact of economic structures on low-wage workers requires the study of emerging worker centers and networks and that individual labor market outcomes and experiences are mediated and impacted by the work of these institutions. We focus on the formation of sectoral worker center networks and address three key issues: (1) What are some of the reasons why worker centers and worker center networks have developed? (2) How do these organizations manage their roles as labor market institutions and social movement organizations? and (3) Why did worker center networks focus on employment and in particular sectors of the low-wage labor market? We find that sector-based organizing (1) facilitates the development of worker- and sector-targeted service strategies, thereby enabling low-wage worker groups and organizations to better achieve their service and policy goals; (2) maximizes opportunities for the organizations to obtain national resources; and (3) expands the reach of organizational networks by bringing organizations together to share resources and best practices. By providing a range of worker-, employment-, and labor market–centered services in specific labor market sectors, worker centers and their networks solidify their role as labor market institutions and become more effective advocacy and social movement organizations.

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Immigrant Worker Centers, Technologies of Citizenship, and the Duty to Be Well

Critical Sociology ◽

10.1177/0896920518761783 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 45 (4-5) ◽

pp. 647-666

Author(s):

Erika Denisse Grajeda

Keyword(s):

San Francisco ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

Self Esteem ◽

Immigrant Workers ◽

Labor Movements ◽

Immigrant Labor ◽

Immigrant Worker ◽

Worker Centers ◽

Worker Center

Although worker centers have reenergized immigrant labor movements in the U.S., recent research points to their potential deradicalization as they expand and institutionalize. This article builds on emerging critiques of the nonprofit worker center model by interrogating this organizational form through the analytic lens of governmentality, particularly efforts to shape immigrant workers’ subjectivities, proclivities, and comportment to capacitate them for the exigencies of responsible citizenship. How do worker centers set out to make ethical subjects out of “illegal” immigrant workers? What technologies do centers rely on to redeem populations marked as criminal, deviant, and deficient? I explore these questions through a case study of a worker center in San Francisco, California, which serves immigrant day laborers and domestic workers. I focus on its “feminist wing” to highlight the technologies of empowerment and self-esteem aimed at reforming Latina immigrant women, a group historically deemed “neither ideal laborers nor ideal women.”

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Visions of Community at Worker Centers

The Fight For Time ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190459338.003.0006 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 187-230

Author(s):

Paul Apostolidis

Keyword(s):

Ethnic Identity ◽

Work Ethic ◽

The Political ◽

Day Laborers ◽

Worker Centers ◽

Democratic Action ◽

Worker Center ◽

Racial Ethnic ◽

Shed Light

Two thematic strands characterize day laborers’ conceptions of their worker center communities. Many workers stress the need for order and efficiency backed by strong authority aimed at distinguishing worthy participants from the unworthy, providing security to migrants with a stout work ethic, and ensuring members’ unity as a disciplined workforce. Many others highlight convivial and mutualist practices through which day laborers assist suffering compañeros, govern centers autonomously and democratically, and mobilize politically. Day laborers thus manifest modes of democratic action grounded in mundane habits of reciprocity, enlivened through intercorporeal resonances, and catalyzing politicization within precaritized conditions. Workers’ community-making activities further shed light on the temporalities of transformative practices conceptualized by Raymond Rocco, Romand Coles, and Anna Lowenhaupt-Tsing, whose writings in turn illuminate the political significance of worker center cultures. Day laborers also rearticulate racial-ethnic identity according to temporalities that counter neoliberal permutations of the Latino unity ideal criticized by Cristina Beltrán.

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Wage Theft and Work Safety: Immigrant Day Labor Jobs and the Potential for Worker Rights Training at Worker Centers

10.21203/rs.3.rs-1173751/v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Kara Takasaki ◽

Matt Kammer-Kerwick ◽

Mayra Yundt-Pacheco ◽

Melissa I.M. Torres

Keyword(s):

Work Experiences ◽

Work Safety ◽

Worker Rights ◽

Worker Centers ◽

Informal Labor ◽

Wage Theft ◽

Labor Exploitation ◽

Precarious Labor ◽

Worker Center

Abstract Immigrant day laborers routinely experience exploitative behaviors as part of their employment. These experiences are understood in the context of their immigration histories and in the context of their long-term goals for less precarious labor and living situations. Using mixed methods, over three data collection periods in 2016, 2019, and 2020, we analyze the work experiences of immigrant day labors in Houston and Austin, Texas. We report how workers judge precarious jobs and respond to labor exploitation in an informal labor market. We also discuss data pertaining to a worker rights training intervention conducted through a city-sponsored worker center. We discuss the potential for worker centers to be a convening and remediation space for workers and employers. Worker centers where immigrant day labors meet employers offer the potential for informal intervention into wage theft and work safety violations, by formalizing the context where laborers are hired.

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Whose Movement Is It? Strategic Philanthropy and Worker Centers

Critical Sociology ◽

10.1177/0896920516661857 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 44 (4-5) ◽

pp. 645-660 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Courtney Frantz ◽

Sujatha Fernandes

Keyword(s):

Workforce Development ◽

Work Conditions ◽

The United States ◽

Contentious Politics ◽

Worker Centers ◽

Financial Investment ◽

Alternative Funding ◽

Strategic Philanthropy ◽

National Organizations ◽

Worker Center

The nonprofit worker center model has been heralded as a promising development, given union decline and the rise of low-wage service jobs in the United States. Yet rather than challenging exploitative work conditions, some of the national organizations developed by worker centers have embraced neoliberal rationalities through projects such as workforce development, employer alliances, and entrepreneurial ventures. In the same period, strategic funding, which applies the logic and techniques of financial investment to grantmaking, has become standard practice for American foundations. As national worker center grantees adopt neoliberal rationalities through their interactions with funders, we argue that these grantees become less inclined to engage in contentious politics. We analyze the projects of two national worker center organizations, contrasting these groups with three local centers that still organize confrontational campaigns. We suggest that by emphasizing worker leadership, involving members in decision-making, and finding alternative funding sources, they have been able to maintain their confrontational politics.

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