“Move over Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. … Unionism characterized by heavy manufacturing is giving way to a new labor movement built by service-sector employees,” according to The Christian Science Monitor. This is particularly acute in Los Angeles, due to the number of immigrants, a shrinking middle class and a new model of activism.

In yesterday’s Industrial Market Trends e-newsletter, we attempted to address the current state of the auto labor unions in one fell swoop. Thus far, readers have had quite a bit to say about the once-mighty labor union movement, weighing in on both sides of the precarious issue.

We discussed how union leaders, trying to mitigate the erosion of organized labor, are looking beyond their core auto and steel industries to recruit service workers making low wages and professionals worrying about losing their health care. For one, The Associated Press recently pronounced the following:

The new faces of unions are immigrants working at construction sites, hospital nurses, parking lot attendants, mechanics and casino dealers — all groups who are unlikely to lose their jobs to overseas workers.

In addition to workers at auto parts plants, for instance, the United Auto Workers (UAW) signed up 2,500 new members in Ohio at county jails and a juvenile courthouse in the last year alone. The national union voted last year to move $60 million from its strike fund into recruiting new members.

Anyhow, yesterday’s edition of The Christian Science Monitor reported a rather interesting labor movement in Los Angeles, one that may have huge implications for the future of unionism in the United States:

The labor movement’s center of gravity is shifting from the older Rust Belt cities of the east to a newer, energetic, immigrant-rich Los Angeles. They see nothing short of a rebirth of union organizing, based on a West Coast model of coalition-building, decentralized leadership, and a speak-to-the-people approach to delivering their message. Unionism characterized by heavy manufacturing is giving way to a new labor movement build by service-sector employees: janitors, grocery workers, security guards, hotel workers and truckers who haul goods to and from area seaports.

“Such workers have proven difficult to organize in the past, say national labor analysts, but activists in Los Angeles seem to be having more success than anywhere else,” writes Daniel B. Wood.

Because L.A. is a major entryway for immigrants, who tend to work at low-wage jobs in numbers large enough to have a collective impact and who have active environmental and religious communities that are increasingly taking up the causes of the poor — not to mention the fact that the middle class is waning due to the sharp contrast between Hollywood’s mega-rich and South Central’s slipping poor — the L.A. area has seen a number of labor victories over the past several years.

“What is now happening in Los Angeles represents the future of the labor movement in America,” Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., tells The Christian Science Monitor. “I would contrast this new look of unionism to that of autoworkers and steel workers, which had long been the face of the movement to most Americans.”

Characterizations of L.A.’s new unionism include the following:

• Increased use of coalitions — groups that formerly faced off as opponents now coming together to support causes of mutual interest;
• So-called “blue-green alliances” — cooperation between “blue-collar” unions and “green” environmentalists; and
• Reflections of America’s changing political mood — moving back to equality, justice, fairness, poverty, social rights and workers’ rights.

As with responses to yesterday’s “Burning Question” on IMT, not everyone is cheering the rise of L.A. union organization — “or even acknowledging that it will amount to much” in the long-term.

Nonetheless, the labor organizing in L.A. “may mark the development of a new model of activism” — one that is under close study by organizers elsewhere in the U.S.

Check out yesterday’s “The State of the Auto Union” and “Burning Question” and weigh in.

Sources:

The Christian Science Monitor

AP