New "Unity Unions" Self-Organize to Confront Workplace Abuses

The last five years have been grim and isolating ones for immigrants and working people, right? Overall, this may be the case, but if you talk with organizers at Fuerza Laboral, an independent workers' center in Rhode Island founded in 2006, you might get a different impression.

Despite difficult times, the group has taken on some bold and determined organizing. And they have some important victories to show for their efforts.

"Fuerza's roots are really and truly the essence of what the labor movement is: workers organizing themselves and getting together with their communities to identify some real injustices that are systemic throughout the country," says Josie Shagwert, the group's executive director. "They got together to say, 'How can we put a stop to this? Because the system is failing us.'"

Not long ago, workers' centers were seen as service providers, staff-driven organizations where individuals could go to have caseworkers help with their problems. That has changed over the past decade, and the Rhode Island group is part of the transformation. "Fuerza Laboral builds worker power," the organization's web site explains. "[We] organize to end exploitation in the workplace. We train workers in their rights, develop new community leaders, and take direct action against injustice to achieve real victories."

This work sounds a lot like what unions do. And, yet, Fuerza Laboral is not formally affiliated with the labor movement. Instead, it is an affiliate of National People's Action (NPA), and shares with other NPA members an organizing model rooted in communities. Fuerza Laboral's campaigns show two things: why organizing among workers remains essential, and how the labor movement still has work to do in bridging the gap between its traditional practices and new groups doing cutting-edge organizing, especially among immigrants and low-wage workers.

What Good Are Laws Without the Power to Enforce Them?

When Fuerza Laboral first started organizing, it focused on the abuses of temp agencies in Rhode Island, "employers who were underpaying, not paying, taking illegal deductions," Shagwert says. Having first coalesced around this industry, the group soon moved to take on other businesses with unjust labor practices - notably a local manufacturer called Colibri. On a cold morning in January 2009, some 280 workers showed up for work at the Colibri jewelry factory, a nonunion shop in East Providence. They found a handwritten sign taped to the factory door reading, "Plant Is Closed. Go Home."

"Shock turned to anger pretty quickly," says Shagwert, "with people asking, What kind of treatment is this? People had worked there for 5, 15, 20 years." One of the workers called a local Spanish-speaking radio station and complained on the air about the closing. The radio host suggested that he get in touch with Fuerza Laboral.

"For the first meeting they had 12 people," Shagwert says. "By the time they got together for a second meeting there were 60 people in the living room of one of the workers, crowded in to talk about what to do and what an organizing campaign would look like."

The group discovered that Colibri's closing violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), which mandates that any business with 100 or more employees must give 60-days notice before closing. (The WARN Act was in the news during the December 2008 occupation of the Republic Windows factory by the Chicago company's laid-off workers, which Kari Lydersen chronicles in her book "Revolt on Goose Island.") The law affords an important protection for employees. Unfortunately, there is no federal agency to enforce it. The Colibri workers decided that they would take it upon themselves to make the company obey the law.