Race, gender, and the rebirth of trade unionism

Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University ILR School
Dorian T. Warren

Abstract

Recent non-Board and public sector campaign victories include the 49,000 home child care providers who won recognition in Illinois, and 5,300 mostly immigrant janitors who won recognition in Houston, both through SEIU in 2005; 40,000 child care providers organized by AFSCME and the UAW in Michigan in 2006; and earlier this year, the 4,000 mostly African-American male security officers organized by SEIU in Los Angeles.7 The overwhelming majority of these new union members are workers of color, primarily women of color.\n We are not suggesting that unions stop devoting resources to workplaces where white men predominate (even if they do have the lowest win rates in NLRB elections, and represent the minority of those organized outside the board process).