Forming More Perfect Unions: What Organizing Success Among Latino Workers in Southern California Means for the Future of the American Labor Movement.

UNITED States; SOUTHERN California

The article discusses the future of labor movements in the U.S. in relation to their ability to harness Latino organizing power in Southern California. Due to a growing, low-wage Latino workforce, southern California became "ground zero" for labor organizing of the United States in the 1990s. Labor has scored three of the decade's biggest private sector organizing victories among Latino workers there. Latino workers have played vital roles in the U.S. economy for at least 150 years. Three types of strategies are responsible for Latinos' organizing success, which include, building organizing efforts from the grass-roots level, but with the financial and technical support of organized labor; drawing on the expertise of sympathetic members of the academic community; trying assorted home remedies, culled from Latino folk traditions. There are three serious challenges that confront the labor movement in general and a Latino-led labor movement in particular. The task of labor organizing has a long way to go before it is in a position to help even half of the low-wage workforce.