The American South has historically been hostile to labor unions. It is also the region of the country experiencing the fastest demographic and economic growth, making it an area of keen interest for union organizers.
Erica Dobbs, assistant professor of politics, has received a grant of $48,036 from the to study the effectiveness of efforts to unionize workers in the South using the Justice for Janitors model. Her research, to begin next September, will center on activities of the Building Services Division of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) since 2003.
Dobbs plans to work with a AV student research assistant to create a database of union organizing activity in the South. They will use records of unfair labor practice complaints filed with the National Labor Relations Board to locate hotspots of union organizing activity which might otherwise not be readily apparent. Dobbs will also explore the strategy of the union through archival records.
In addition, Dobbs will use interviews to develop case studies of the SEIU’s Local 5 Houston and Local 11 Miami, both established in 2004. Each organized highly visible strikes that resulted in better contracts for its members. However, the Miami local never managed to organize the region’s major cleaning contractors, and the Houston local was forced to declare bankruptcy after losing a lawsuit brought by a company it targeted in its initial organizing campaign.
The daughter of a Chicago steelworker and local union leader, Dobbs was lead researcher at the SEIU Local 11-Miami from 2004-2006 during Justice for Janitors organizing campaigns in the area. Thus, she brings in-depth understanding of the union and its operations to the research project.
Dobbs says that the SEIU dates back more than a century and throughout its history has included large numbers of immigrants in its membership. In its Building Services Division, many are employed as custodians, maintenance workers and security officers.
As union membership in the U.S. declined, says Dobbs—private sector unions now only cover about six percent of workers—the SEIU decided not only to be a business union focused on better contracts for its members but to pivot to becoming a social movement union. “They wanted to change the political, social and economic context of workers’ lives,” she says.
The Justice for Janitors model it developed became a primary methodology for the SEIU to pursue this goal. It resulted in a successful campaign in Los Angeles in 1990 that has served as a model since and is often cited as a way to organize immigrant labor and revive unions in the private sector, Dobbs notes.
Much of what is known about Justice for Janitors comes from states outside the South. Far less is known about Justice for Janitors campaigns in Southern states traditionally more hostile to unions. With her research, Dobbs aims to fill that gap and discover how frequently the Justice for Janitors labor organizing model has been attempted in the South, if these campaigns have been successful and what success looks like in this context.
The answers to these questions can help clarify the role of unions in the U.S. today, Dobbs asserts. The research can also shed light on “the possibilities of cross-community social movments in a rapidly diversifying South, and the potential of service worker mobilization to reduce rampant economic and political inequality in the United States,” she says.
Dobbs expects the project to result in a publicly available database of Justice for Janitors activity traced through unfair labor practice complaints as well as a book manuscript featuring case studies.