ON THE JOB

Monforton, director of the Beyond OSHA Project, and journalist Von Bergen tell the neglected story of the “nationwide worker center movement” that champions the rights of immigrants and others.

In 2018, when a Texas poultry plant gave its workers too few bathroom breaks, diaper-wearing protesters showed up carrying a sign that said, “Let My People Pee.” Organized by the Centro de Derechos Laborales in Bryan, the demonstration led to an immediate improvement in conditions at the plant, and it’s among the surprisingly effective tactics described in this well-reported survey of many of the 225 community labor organizations known as “worker centers,” which fight “exploitation and oppression” on the job. Unlike labor unions that serve members in related trades, worker centers educate and advocate for workers “marginalized because of language, because of immigration status, because their jobs as domestic workers isolate them, or because their employment status is murky as gig or temp agency workers.” With less government regulation than unions, worker centers have won political victories or performed services that have often flown under the radar. In Chicago, Arise Chicago and other groups successfully lobbied the city to create the Office of Labor Standards to enforce minimum wage and other laws, and in Los Angeles, the Pilipino Workers Center rented houses for workers who had to quarantine during the pandemic. In New York, the Gig Workers Collective, a virtual center for Instacart and other shoppers, teamed up with Amazon warehouse workers for a protest in which activists posed next to body bags outside Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office, urging him to do more to protect Amazon workers. A work of journalism rather than history, the book offers little about the precursors of the centers, such as mutual aid societies, but it more than makes its case that “labor activism is not a quaint notion from days gone by.”

These are not your parents’ labor unions—an excellent introduction to a burgeoning and necessary movement.