This paper examines ways that labor educators have modified global value chains to teach workers about their industries, and uses two case studies to illustrate the application that global value chains have to comprehensive organizing campaigns. The paper argues that labor organizers should go one step further by using global value chains to conceptualize global plans to stabilize employment for workers after the end of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement, and to raise wages in this context.

This report documents the disproportionate number of Blacks holding low-wage, dead-end jobs, and assesses responses to this crisis from activist organizations nationwide. The author reviews the wide range of activities of Black-oriented non-profits, generally, and the geared towards work and employment issues, specifically. The author notes the lack of programs directly targeting the transformation of bad jobs, and discusses reasons for this state of affairs. The report weighs the effectiveness of race-based organizing, and discusses collective action strategies to combat the problem of bad jobs.

This article discusses the impact of globalization on workers in the garment industry, and shows that the international mobility of capital threatens the jobs of workers in Thailand and other low-wage countries in the South as much as it does the United States. Quan finds that international labor solidarity is difficult to sustain, especially without a widespread understanding based upon a class analysis – an approach necessary to overcome divisions across national boundaries. She traces the history of the AFL-CIO’s attitudes toward immigrants and foreign workers and reports that the new policies under the leadership of John Sweeney provide an important opening for more class-based organizing.

In 2002, Sweatshop Watch – the antisweatshop coalition known for garment worker organizing and policy advocacy – shifted its attention to global organizing, reflecting a new understanding of the integral relationship between domestic organizing and global organizing. This paper analyzes the strategic choices that Sweatshop Watch faced, discussing the nature of labor-management conflict in the apparel industry and showing that different economic conditions have called for different strategies to attain worker power.

Chronicle of the difficulties faced by young student-workers, illustrating the burdens of the work-school balance, and the funneling of such workers into highly exploitative, low-wage service jobs. The authors argue that traditional solutions emphasizing upward mobility through education are inadequate, and call for actions directed toward the improvement of worker conditions. The article concludes with fronts for future organizing.

In 1996, the Canadian Labour Congress adopted a resolution that called for youth to become a central outreach and organizing priority for all union affiliates. This article explores what led up to the CLC resolution, what has happened in the years since, and what lessons the Canadian labor movement’s youth project has for the labor movement here in the United States.

Article examines recent struggles to unionize the state’s homecare workers and collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions. The authors survey campaigns in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Alameda counties, noting the obstacles to success and highlighting future issues of concern. The authors find a strategy of worker organization, policy intervention, and coalition building as the key to success in all cases.

This book chapter describes the current state of unionization in California, painting a picture of union membership in the state using available quantitative data. The article then turns to an analysis of the emerging strategies California unions are using as they attempt to rebuild and grow, documenting new directions and innovative practices.

A survey of multi-stakeholder coalitions on today’s progressive landscape. The authors explain “social dialogue” as formal partnerships between labor, employers, and government in shaping social and economic policy. Finding this to be largely absent in the US, the authors examine various cases of labor in alliance with management alone, and with other social actors. Case studies are culled from across the nation, and range from local to national to international action.

Brief commentary on the unique 1996 collective bargaining agreement between United Airlines and its flight attendants' union, in which a single set of terms applied to a global workforce of more than 24,000 flight attendants from 40 different countries. The author considers the consequences for United employees, and implications for other unions with the potential to organize on the international scale.