Organizing for Keeps: Building a Twenty-first Century Labor Movement Introduction to the Special Conference Issue
Abstract
Organizing for Keeps: Building a Twenty-first Century Labor Movement Introduction to the Special Conference Issue SAGE Publications, Inc.1999DOI: 10.1177/0160449X9902400101 KateBronfenbrenner New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University Cornell University, Guest Editor In the last several years a great deal of discussion has taken place both inside and outside the labor movement about the need for American unions to organize massive numbers of unorganized workers. Who exactly this target workforce should be, ranging from low-wage contingent workers in home care, janitorial, or food service occupations, to the legions of unorganized clerical workers in business services, to the expanding professional and technical workforce in our "high tech" economy; to both skilled and unskilled production workers in the light manufacturing plants which have sprouted up across the South and rural Midwest, remains a topic of debate. Agreement has also not been reached as to which strategies are most effective to organize which workers. Nor is there a clear understanding of what it takes to move beyond the initial certification election or recognition campaign to build lasting, vital unions in these newly organized workplaces- to organize for keeps. But in one area there seems to be near