CASE STUDY #5: AN EMERGING PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN LABOR AND CO

CO at Work: How CO groups play a role in the living wage movement.

There has been a recent upsurge in working relationships between some unions and labor leaders, and some CO groups and networks. The work of Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) in Baltimore, leading to the nation's first living-wage ordinance, was accomplished in partnership with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). ACORN has been forging alliances with local labor federations, internationals of unions and locals in some cities for a number of years. IAF and the Gamaliel Foundation are working with public-sector unions to challenge efforts that seek to discredit public services and to increase the quality of public agencies. Independent CO groups are also working closely with some union locals. Leaders of the AFL-CIO and a number of its affiliated unions are using community organizers as consultants and trainers in their work to organize low-wage workers.⁴⁶

No one can forecast how the CO-labor partnership will evolve. It may be possible to overcome the many challenges to forging common agreements and cooperative action necessary to move forward on a large scale. Clearly, some results to date are quite significant and have captured public and media attention for CO strategies. Here is one recent example as reported in The Los Angeles Times:

In Los Angeles and elsewhere, a small but increasing number of employers who do business with the government are suddenly finding themselves required by local ordinances to grant big raises and benefits to their low-wage workers. Forty cities and counties in 17 states, particularly those with large constituencies of low-wage workers have enacted such wage laws since the movement began five years ago.

As one follows another, lately at the rate of a new ordinance a month, the movement has begun to broaden from a simple emphasis on higher wages into a wide range of requirements involving health insurance, vacations, sick pay, job security, and incentives to unionize.

"You have to look at the living wage movement in the context of the utter failure of federal labor law, now so stacked against workers," said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, director of the Los Angeles Living Wage Coalition. She cited what she said was Washington's failure to raise the national minimum wage to keep pace with the needs of the working poor or to strengthen labor's bargaining power.

Wage ordinances have become a goal of such national groups as the Industrial Areas Foundation and ACORN that seek to bring community groups together in social action campaigns. And with increasing frequency, the ordinances are becoming big issues in local politics.

The first such ordinance was passed in December 1994, largely through the efforts of a community organization called BUILD. Last November, BUILD got thousands of residents of poor neighborhoods to the polls. Most voted for the re-election of Gov. Parris N. Glendening of Maryland, who is increasingly using the city's ordinance as a model for contracts that the state makes with private companies.

Here in Los Angeles, Mayor Richard J. Riordan tried to block the measure, but his veto was overridden by the City Council. Mayor Riordan said, however, that he agreed with supporters of the wage ordinance that income inequality had increased in part because of the decline in union bargaining power. Several ordinances try to reverse that trend through an "opt out" loophole that lets companies partly off the hook if they agree to let their workers organize - a central goal of Ms. Janis-Aparicio's coalition.

"Whenever you rely on legislation solely, the gains can be lost," she said, noting that the Los Angeles City Council's pro-labor bent could disappear in a future election. "So we need to build union agreements that have community support and will last."

While running a refugee center here, Ms. Janis-Aparicio, 39, was recruited into her present line of work in 1993 by Miguel Contreras, now the powerful secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Mr. Contreras, who had worked with Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers, was mindful of the public support - the consumer grape boycott - that had brought such success to the farm workers. So he asked Ms. Janis-Aparicio to set up a nonprofit organization that could foster similar community support for labor. She founded the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), which operates with a $1 million annual budget and 18 salaried staff members. The wage issue soon became the central cause.

"The question of job inequities in the public sector, if we address it as a union, people say we are self-serving," Mr. Contreras said. "But if it has the cloak of religious leaders and community activists, then it becomes a community issue."⁴⁷

For a listing of labor and community collaborations see The New World Foundation's Phoenix Fund web site at www.phoenixfund.org.