Labor-Community Coalitions Through an Urban Regime Lens

Abstract

This paper examines labor-community coalitions through an urban regime framework and focuses on three theoretically derived questions: (1) Do labor-community coalitions build “power to” in similar ways as more typical urban regimes? (2) Does the resulting policy adoption promote social change and, more conjecturally, (3) Does cooptation or ideology better explain the modest scope of change associated with labor-community coalitions? This examination of labor-community coalitions suggests partial support for urban regime theory’s assertion that power building advances through the institutionalization of cross-sectoral relationships that permit resource sharing. Relational power-building strategies have certainly helped labor-community coalitions diffuse a stable policy agenda across cities. Nonetheless, the impacts of the labor-community agenda have been modest and in line with the status quo, an outcome that may reflect more than pragmatic “going along to get along” by activists motivated to maintain access to regime-provided resources. Instead, the paper argues for maintaining the concept of ideological constraint in the explanation and practice of building power from below.

Keywords

urban regime theory high road development ideology

With Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, Clarence Stone popularized urban regime theory as a predominant way to understand policy making in cities. Writing about the failure of African-American civil rights advocates to displace a pro-growth agenda in Atlanta, Stone posited the urban regime as a main institution structuring the consolidation of urban policy agendas biased against the needs and interests of what he terms the lower class. At the same time Stone was arguing against the likelihood of an urban politics inclusive of the poor and working class, the streets were erupting with protests organized by labor unions and certain community organizers pushing for greater income equality, social inclusion, and a different sort of urban politics. Over 20 years, this activism has matured into labor-community coalitions organized around a defined urban agenda. Scholars are beginning to describe them as regimes.

This paper examines labor-community coalitions through the lens of urban regime theory and centers on three theoretically derived questions: (1) Do labor-community coalitions build “power to” in similar ways as more typical urban regimes? (2) Does the resulting policy adoption promote social change, and more conjecturally? (3) Does cooptation or ideology better explain the modest scope of change associated with labor-community coalitions? This analysis suggests that labor-community coalitions build power largely as urban regime theory predicts: Leaders use “selective incentives” mobilized through institutions that consolidate relationships pushing the creation and implementation of a policy agenda focused on workers and the poor. Contrary to urban regime theory, protest is a resource for compelling business and government participation in new sets of policies, praxis, and relationships.

Adoption of labor-community policies is diffusing across cities and some states; however, the scope of policy change is incrementalist and the nature of social change more modest than transformational. Cooptation is Stone’s preferred explanation for why agendas focused on equality ultimately fail to predominate. However, the case of labor-community coalitions suggests that capitalist ideologies should at least be considered a constraint on the imaginative thinking that might be necessary for “truer” equality and opportunity. Urban regime theory has much to offer as both an explanatory and prescriptive framework. Yet, this paper affirms an ideational turn in urban regime scholarship, especially if that scholarship is to more fully understand and inform the project of social change.

Labor-Community Coalitions and Power in the City

Labor-community coalitions are more or less stable alliances of organizing-focused unions and community-based activist organizations coming together to promote economic and social justice. Simmons and Harding (2009) argue that contemporary labor-community coalitions are deeper and less ad hoc than similar coalitions of the recent past. Despite awareness of place-based variations in their quality and composition,¹ scholars are beginning to use regime language to describe labor-community coalitions (Dean and Reynolds 2009; Narro 2009; Simmons and Harding 2009). Economic restructuring has been a catalyst of such coalitions since, in Cornfield’s (2007) terms, “coextensive operation of product and labor markets in the service economy may lessen the work-community divide” (p. 236). Under these conditions, labor and community are joining to permeate the policy and practice of government and markets.

Stone’s classic work is concerned with a similar dynamic: Why did racial justice or a reversal of African-American inequality and segregation fail to materialize as the predominant plank of Atlanta’s policy agenda? As Stone (1998) laments, the interests of working-class and poor African-Americans were systematically pushed aside over decades coinciding with African-American electoral mobilization, organization into the civil rights movement, and demographic change making Atlanta a majority–minority city. Why did such demographic and political transformations fail to produce policies committed to racial and class equality? Stone’s answer, of course, was the urban regime that he defines as stable but informal arrangements of public and private actors that coalesce to get things done. Given their extraordinary control of resources, Atlanta’s large businesses held a privileged position in an urban regime that included government officials, business elites, and the civic institutions of middle-class African-Americans. This coalition established a long-standing policy agenda focused on growth and benefits or patronage for Atlanta’s black middle class.

Stone’s great contribution with Regime Politics was to draw attention to what he calls a social production model of power. The social production model of power posits power as “power to” rather than “power over” (Stone 1989, p. 229). In the United States, according to Stone, city governments lack the sorts of resources and capacities to pursue public policy on their own, so stable regime partnerships produce resources for officials endeavoring to manage and develop their cities. In other words, regimes are attractive because they afford local governments the “power to” craft and make good on policy agendas. They solve a perennial “collective action” problem (Stone 1989, p. 236) unaddressed in competing theories of urban governance.

Poor and working-class people largely lack the resources and institutional capacity that Stone relates to relational power building, and they do not figure substantively in urban regime theory. While Stone (1993) concedes a “lower class opportunity expansion regime” is theoretically possible, he sees it as improbable in the United States (p. 20). This is not only because elites oppose the principles that Stone associates with lower-class opportunity expansion but also because of motivational and leadership deficits in the lower class itself. “A lower class population is conditioned to restricted opportunity and is skilled in coping with disappointment and frustration,” he writes (Stone 1993, p. 21). Urban history, in the terms of urban regime theory then, is driven by business and, secondarily, the middle class.

While working and poor people do not figure in urban regime theory as causal agents, Stone is clear to explain that this is not the result of social control or ideological hegemony. Business elites do not dominate thought, in Stone’s view. Indeed, his notion is that preferences are not fixed but fluid and emerging through social bonds and interaction (Stoker 1997; Stone 1993). At the same time, he acknowledges that regimes are imbalanced. Business elites supply the bulk of coalitional resources and, therefore, enjoy greater influence over agenda-setting processes. Nonbusiness actors, in contrast, “go along to get along” or otherwise defer to maintain access to resources; for Stone, this is pragmatism rather than domination.²

Stone’s great insight from Regime Politics, then, is that resistance does not build power. Groups challenging corporate-centered agendas should avoid protest and contestation since, ultimately, that isolates, separates, and chokes off the scope of support available across societal sectors (Stone 1989). The worry for challengers is establishing independent control of selective incentives to build broad unity, cohesion, and sustained interaction around a set of ideas (Stone 1989). Independence is the extraordinary hurdle to establishing power from below.

Extensions and Criticisms of Stone’s Regime Politics: From Structures to Ideas

Social scientists examine the world as is, says Joel Rast (2005), so that “regime theory has provided a conceptual lens with which to understand the prevalence of business-government partnerships and corporate-centered development strategies” (p. 54). Much of the literature is dominated by empirical studies on city-center or alternative regimes (Bailey 1999; Kilburn 2004; McGovern 2009; Rast 2005; Sites 1997) or theoretical work to make urban regime theory more appropriate for metropolitan or cross-national analysis (DiGaetano and Strom 2003; Hamilton 2004; Klein and Tremblay 2009; Mossberger and Stoker 2001; Pierre 2005; Ward 1996).

Attention to theory development, operationalization, and empirical testing are certainly the province of academic inquiry. Nonetheless, the exclusive pursuit of this type of knowledge renders a distance between urban regime theory and the social actors it aspires to inform. “Urban regime analysis is about more than why economic development so often occupies a priority position in agenda setting,” Stone asserts. “It is also what it would take to build and maintain a different priority agenda” (Stone 2005, p. 328).

Certain Marxist, regulationist, and other critics push urban regime theory on this front as they work through, theoretically, what they see as inconsistencies between Stones’ concepts and his normative vision of a more equal and democratic polity (Davies 2002; Imbroscio 1998b; Rast 2005). One key area of critique centers on identifying the line between structure and agency as the driver of policy change. Scholars in the regulationist, Marxist, and other critical traditions suggest Stone’s formulation of regime theory is not “structural” enough (Davies 2002, p. 7; Lauria 1997, p. 2).

Furthermore, some critics charge that global capitalism and other factors external to cities have been omitted from urban regime theory, and this omission fails to take seriously the ways that choices are constrained and closed off (Lauria 1997) or how urban regimes help capitalism maintain itself (Painter 1997). Separately, Imbroscio (1998a), Brenner (2009), and Davies (2002) fault Stone for too rigidly distinguishing state and market. Moreover, Stone’s conceptualization precludes the idea that urban governments, de facto, may express class interests (Davies 2002), thus leading to an optimistic conclusion that power in cities can be reallocated without any challenge to the national state (Brenner 2009) or to capitalism itself (Davies 2002).

Imbroscio, more than regulationist or Marxist critics, is hopeful about agency as a “causal” factor in policy change, although he does not specify who the change agents might be. Instead, he advocates for greater attention to how ideas propel regimes and offer some potential for getting around the structural and institutional limits on transformation (Imbroscio 1998a). Stone’s theory is blind to the alternative accumulation arrangements available to cities, Imbroscio argues, whether that involves the use of eminent domain, public ownership of profit-making ventures, or city investments in real estate (Imbroscio 1998a). Here, of course, Imbroscio assumes the accumulation process as the driver of social equality/inequality (Stone 1998). While it may be arguable that changing accumulation processes results in social change, Imbroscio’s attention to substantive choices corrects for Stone’s notion that regimes function through participants’ pragmatism and (boundedly) rational reactions to selective incentives (Rast 2005). Such a point echoes the arguments of the regulation theorist Joe Painter (1997) that “habitus” or the nexus between the social structure and an actor’s mind should replace selective incentives as the main mechanism of relational power building (p. 135).

Painter and Imbroscio’s turn to ideas was persuasive enough that Stone later acknowledged his omission. “I see that my analysis understated the importance of purpose,” Stone (2005, p. 316) reflected. With this, ideas have become a more explicit part of regime theory, with some scholars attempting to understand the proper weighting of interests and ideas as explanations of regime dynamics (Rast 2005) or their intersection (McGovern 2009).

Examining the intersection of ideas and interests in urban regimes certainly extends the explanatory power of urban regime theory, but I wish to make the argument that it also helps push on the normative and prescriptive dimensions as well. Remember, with Regime Politics, Stone was motivated not only to understand the structure of power but also why racial justice was eluded in Atlanta. His answer, ultimately, was cooptation of the racial justice movement, a voluntary reframing of racial justice as middle-class advancement that was accepted by civil rights activists motivated to “go along to get along” with business elites providing material resources, patronage, and prestige (Stone 1989, p. 241).

Social change scholarship at its best helps or facilitates self-reflection among the actual agents of social change. With his dual notion of selective incentives and “going along to get along,” Stone certainly contributes to this process. For groups interested in change, both isolation and collaboration are pitfalls as collaboration opens the possibility of being co-opted. Cooptation through resource dependence, through an urban regime lens, is the most likely reason why radical or not-so-radical social transformation so frequently fails to materialize.

The turn to ideas promoted by Stone’s friendly critics, however, offers a competing hypothesis about the elusiveness of social change: that the ideas circulating within a regime, city, or broader polity may not be up to the task of social change. Urban regime critics highlight how the range of policy ideas is circumscribed by the economic structure, with the implication being that challenging the status quo likely requires more than self-generated revenue and the institutionalization of networks. Instead of resources, the recommendation yielded here is for community organizations to be self-critical about the content of their ideas.

Of course, paradigmatic approaches to social science may pit these hypotheses against each other, but practicality requires no such thing. Maintaining interest and ideas as heuristics may encourage urban regime theorists to help communities follow through on Stone’s prescription in a deliberative way, as well as produce richer explanations of power in the city.

Power Building Through Labor-Community Coalitions

Just a year after Regime Politics was published, the Service Employees International Union (2011) “Justice for Janitors” (JfJ) campaign in Los Angeles erupted into a series of militant demonstrations and eventually a strike. Quickly, JfJ in Los Angeles was viewed as an iconic struggle and as a symbol for the future of the labor movement, propelled by immigrant workers organized toward militancy. In a paper coauthored by several luminaries of urban immigrant labor scholarship, JfJ was hailed as an end to the scholarly view of the quiescent immigrant worker (Waldinger et al. 1998). Scholars began placing severely disadvantaged groups like contingent workers, undocumented immigrants, and poor African-Americans at the center of their analyses of urban power. Over two decades, reconstituted labor-community coalitions have emerged as vehicles of power building around the concerns of the disadvantaged, calling into question Stone’s claims about the role of the “lower class” in urban history.

Urban regime theory offers a framework for making sense of contemporary labor-community coalitions, as well as power-building efforts from below. In Stone’s estimation, a regime—or coalition with the “power to” actualize visions—is centered around a comprehensive agenda or set of guiding principles and goals to advance the group’s interests. “Power to” is oriented toward outputs, and the key output for Stone is the agenda.

The Labor-Community Agenda

The evidence suggests that a clear “labor-community agenda” has emerged, functioning at multiple scales and centered on two flanks: (1) “high road” development and (2) civil rights expansion, particularly for immigrants and people of color. High road development is an alternative to the “all growth is good growth” principle associated with corporate-led regimes. The notion of “high road” development can be traced to the early 1990s and Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development’s (BUILD) pioneering living wage campaign rooted in “deep seated anger around issues of subsidy in the city” (Camou 2010, p. 68). Since then, the high road concept has continued to diffuse and evolve through an analysis of the pro-growth agenda as “state sponsored parasitism” (Robinson 2004, p. 253) or “Robin Hood in reverse” (Pollin and Luce 1998, p. 167). Labor and community activists see the conventional “low road” as subsidizing low-wage jobs, poverty, and welfare dependence (Robinson 2004, p. 257).

In contrast, the “high road” reframes urban economic development in terms of higher wages/benefits and curbing rising inequality by placing strings on corporate subsidies and promoting collective bargaining. Taking the high road in urban development has occurred via the creation of policy instruments including living wage ordinances, contract and transparency provisions attached to tax abatements or tax increment financing (TIF), and community benefit agreements (CBAs). The latter are relatively recent innovations that attach living wage and local hiring provisions, job training support, collective bargaining rights, affordable housing set asides, and sometimes other social welfare provisions to specific development projects (Parks and Warren 2009). While extra-regulatory and privatist in logic (Parks and Warren 2009), CBAs synthesize various elements of the high road concept into a comprehensive policy position where the bottom line is job access, job quality, and community benefit.

Civil rights for minorities and new immigrant communities constitute the second major flank of the labor-community policy agenda, made possible when AFL-CIO President Jon Sweeney reversed a long-standing anti-immigrant policy frame within the AFL-CIO (Scanlon and Harding 2005). The shift in perspective allowed for convergence between labor and communities on immigrants’ rights such as amnesty/comprehensive immigration policy reform, official identification, (fighting the) REAL ID Act, the DREAM Act, shoring up labor protections, and many more state and local issues.

As Stone makes clear, merely having an agenda is not the same as “power to.” “Power to” involves capacity to translate agenda into practice over and over. The record indicates that labor-community coalitions are making strides on this front in several cities and that building capacity for collective action has advanced largely as Stone theorizes: through institutions that mobilize resources to carry out an agenda. Contrary to the expectations of urban regime theory, however, protest appears as a resource compelling consensus around policy and praxis.

Institutional Reinvention, Selective Incentives, and Labor-Community Coalitions

Reinvigoration of labor and community institutions characterizes the civic response to the economic and demographic currents of the 1990s and 2000s, and this has also been a catalyst of recent labor-community coalitions. A handful of unions (i.e., Service Employees International Union [SEIU], Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union [UNITE HERE], American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees [AFSCME]) reconstituted central labor councils, and certain community organizing groups (i.e., Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now [ACORN]) (Dean and Reynolds 2009; Levi, Olsen, and Steinman 2002) have been at the helm of allying labor and community around political/policy work. Labor-community coalitions are decentralized structurally (Nissen 2009), lacking hierarchical command but propelled by innovative institutions that continue to reinvent and unfold. Moreover, key institutions have developed new institutions, such as “think and do tanks,” that foster coalitional identity and standardize messages across locales (Greer, Byrd, and Fleron 2007, p. 112).

Key actors in labor-community coalitions control and manipulate resources to compel action. Key among these resources are interpretive frames and exportable strategies, members to mobilize in campaigns or projects, and wider social networks to demonstrate solidarity. Below are some examples of the use of such resources to build joint capacity around shared goals.

1. Interpretive frames and exportable strategies. Social conditions are not experienced objectively but are perceived and interpreted through frameworks and may be exported from situation to situation. The Los Angeles JfJ campaign is considered a model “comprehensive campaign” (Waldinger et al. 1998, p. 114) giving shape to the analytical and strategic components undergirding labor-community coalitions more broadly. JfJ was born out of the SEIU’s contention that flexibilization in janitorial and other industries (Cranford 2005; Savage 2006) combined with hostility for unions written into the case law of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) (Clawson and Clawson 1999; Gross 1995) demands new analysis.

Facing wage erosion and dramatic declines in union density, the SEIU devised a strategy capable of (1) functioning outside of NLRB jurisdiction and (2) compelling janitorial contractors—through pressure from building owners—to agree to wage increases and other benefits (Merrifield 2000; Waldinger et al. 1998). Community allies were brought into labor struggles through dramatic actions, rallies, moral persuasion, and street theater. The Los Angeles JfJ has served as an exportable model for countless other JfJ campaigns, as well as other unions and community-based organizations concerned with workplace issues. Among the most high-profile replicators is UNITE HERE’s Hotel Workers Rising (Turner 2007), and the availability of the SEIU analysis of power building has inspired collective action around bargaining and nonunion workplace organizing that may not have otherwise occurred.

It has also produced momentum for relaxing institutional boundaries when that relaxation expands the tools available to each partner. A partnership between the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON) and the AFL-CIO illustrates this dynamic. The AFL-CIO sought to formalize a partnership with NDLON, a 501(c)(3) organization not currently subject to the secondary boycott provisions of the National Labor Relations Act that limit unions (Ruckelshaus 2008). NDLON, willing to picket at the behest of unions, gained new status as an AFL-CIO affiliate as well as the ability to serve as a nonvoting member of central, state, or other local labor councils (Greenhouse 2006). Here, the different tools available to unions and community-based organizations help draw them together and reinforce and refine their shared frameworks.

2. Sharing the Membership. Given interpretive frames centered on the strategic value of organizing, mobilizable memberships are vital resources to compel joint action across labor and community. This is because organizations alone sometimes lack the membership base needed to react to opportunities for pushing the agenda. This was evident in New York, for instance, when Governor Eliot Spitzer reclassified home child care providers as eligible employees under the NLRA. The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) sought to seize the moment but had no way of accessing child care providers isolated and scattered in private homes. ACORN, with its presence in neighborhoods, allowed the UFT to overcome this organizing challenge, and it shared its membership lists for use in a door knocking campaign that ultimately achieved union authorization (Cornell University 2009). This was not unprecedented for ACORN. Working in concert with unions, ACORN (when still active domestically) co-handled the unionization of home child care providers in several cities (Rathke 2009).

The case of the United Workers Association (UWA 2008) is a second example of how membership sharing has compelled the partnership of community-based organizations and labor unions. The UWA spent three years organizing stadium “temp” workers as part of a campaign to expand Baltimore’s living wage. It finally won when, on the eve of a planned hunger strike, Governor Martin O’Malley directed the Maryland Stadium Authority to require living wages in all stadium supplier contracts (Camou 2010). While this ultimately resulted in a living wage, other grievances persisted. The UWA members discussed alternatives including starting their own temporary staffing firm but ultimately decided to certify as part of AFSCME (Coke 2010). This led AFSCME and the UWA to enter a “community-based partnership” based on principles of dual membership allowing stadium cleaners to remain part of both organizations (2008). Similar to the ACORN/UFT example, membership drew a labor union to a community organization and, by combining resources, each was able to improve labor conditions.

3. Wider Social Networks. Many initiatives planned to promote the ideals of labor-community coalitions rely on building solidarity with broader publics. In some cases, community-based organizations have particular social networks that they have been willing to share with unions as part of that endeavor.

One example concerns the Koreatown Immigrant Workers’ Association (KIWA) enlisted by (then) HERE Local 11 to fight deunionization after the Koreana Wilshire Hotel was acquired by a Korean corporation. KIWA was willing to offer its ethnic and transnational allies to Local 11, and these allies brought community and even transnational pressure on hotel management through multisite protests and boycotts at the Koreana Wilshire, the Korean Consulate, and Korean Airlines among others (Chung 2007). The pressure resulted in union recognition at the Koreana Wilshire, a rehiring of unionized workers, as well as lasting ties between HERE and KIWA that have been activated in other struggles (Chung 2007; Omatsu 2010).

As these examples illustrate, labor-community coalitions are deepening through institutionalization shored up by “selective incentives” or resources mobilized in the spirit of refining shared interests or values, often beyond the confines of a single campaign. Yet, as Stone points out, unification or reciprocity in the civil sector is not enough. Power in Atlanta came through cross-sectoral coalition leading to shared perspectives and practice. How do labor-community coalitions work to build co-capacity across sectors? I turn to this in the next section.

Collective Action Across Civic, Business, and Government Sectors

Cross-sectoral collaboration, from the standpoint of labor-community coalitions, is a dilemma of compliance. Changing urban practice demands government and business participation, while government or business may perceive collaboration as against self-interest.

The case of ACORN and H&R Block illustrates how protest has been used to resolve this dilemma. In 2004, ACORN began a campaign to pressure H&R Block from offering high interest advances on Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) disbursements as part of its tax preparation service. During a two-month period in tax season, ACORN coordinated 402 pickets, protests, and demonstrations against H&R Block in 54 cities (Fisher, Brooks, and Russell 2009).

Contrary to the expectations of urban regime theory, there were relational objectives behind ACORN’s protest of H&R Block. The community organizing group aspired to institutionalize a long-lasting relationship with the company through the vehicle of protest. An organizer explained ACORN’s use of protest as “a question of what hurts, but doesn’t hurt so much that people won’t meet and start talking about signing an agreement and making some changes” (Fisher, Brooks, and Russell 2009, p. 218). Ultimately, ACORN got H&R Block to agree to change business practices on EITC advances, as well as contract with ACORN to do tax preparation and tax literacy outreach (Fisher, Brooks, and Russell 2009).

Protest followed by contracts has been a common way for labor-community coalitions or constituent organizations to institutionalize new business or government practices consistent with the labor-community agenda. The UWA, discussed previously, is one example of protest followed by contract securing the living wage for a new class of workers. Los Angeles Associated for a New Economy (LAANE) secured a city contract to do living wage education and outreach (Dean and Reynolds 2009) after a contentious fight to overturn a mayoral veto of the ordinance (Levi, Olsen, and Steinman 2002). The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is another example of protest-then-contract securing corporate participation in new practice. The CIW is known for its militant consumer boycotts but created the Fair Food Program to solidify corporate commitments to humane agriculture. Fast food conglomerates or grocery chains sign Fair Food agreements, promising pay increases, compliance with a code of conduct, grievance procedures, workers’ rights outreach, new harvesting practices, and ongoing farm audits. With this, the CIW uses contracts to forge ongoing cooperation between corporations, farmers, and the CIW.

While contracts have been an important route to cross-sectoral collaboration initiated by labor-community coalitions, there are other routes as well. In a small number of cases, labor-community coalitions have run candidates; in California, for instance, labor either ran or endorsed 13 winning candidates for local, statewide, or national offices between 1994 and 2004 (Frank and Wong 2004). Short of electoral politics, members of labor-community coalitions have taken board appointments. The JfJ campaign in 1990, for instance, benefitted from having a key ally on the Community Redevelopment Board (Waldinger et al. 1998). Policy briefing has been another means of enlisting government officials in the labor-community agenda (Dean and Reynolds 2009; Fine 2005). In several cities including Cleveland, the labor-community coalition has asked candidates to endorse policy stances before throwing political support (Dean and Reynolds 2009).

In summary, labor-community coalitions are advancing in many ways that urban regime theory would predict. They are not functioning as mass organizations (Nissen 2009) but advance through the institutionalization of relationships held together by resource sharing and reciprocity. Reciprocity is reflected in the policy agenda, that is, community-based organizations take unionization as a policy good while unions push high road development and social inclusion. Cross-sectoral collaboration has been an emphasis of labor-community coalitions aware that their policy agenda depends on compliance from business and government. Contrary to the expectations of urban regime theory, combined insider/outsider strategies have been key to securing this compliance, and protest has appeared as an important resource for labor-community coalitions in compelling action and new practices from business and/or government.

Adoption of the Labor-Community Coalition Agenda

Power, as Stone conceptualizes it, means getting things done. Capacity building, the utilization of selective incentives, and forging consensus around values mean little without translation into policy and practice. Space precludes a full examination, but this section briefly sketches the record on adoption of the labor-community policy agenda. I find evidence of widespread policy adoption, yet more limited impact on target populations.

1. Living Wages, Job Quality, and Corporate Accountability. The living wage is the most diffused element of the high road concept. By the mid-2000s, there were about 140 living wage policies in effect in numerous cities and counties (Swarts 2008). Implementation problems dogged early living wage ordinances but, since the earliest ordinances, improvements in monitoring and oversight are evident. In Oakland, for instance, compliance mechanisms are strong: The Office of Contract Compliance monitors payroll and fringe benefits, employees can initiate anonymous complaints, and there are harsh penalties for noncompliance (Neumark 2002). Stephanie Luce (2004), in a study of living wage laws in 2002, found 8 cities blocking enforcement, 42 with narrow enforcement, 20 with moderate enforcement, and 11 cities with expansive enforcement mechanisms in the vein of Oakland.

Other sorts of accountable growth policies are also making headway. Around 46 states require public hearings for the authorization of TIF districts, as opposed to the four with no such requirement. This suggests some measure of state validation of community power ideals in economic development. Nonetheless, far fewer states require public hearings for TIF project approvals. Only 18 states have taken this extra step to strengthen accountability (Kerth and Baxandhall 2011). CBAs, a market-based instrument of accountable growth, are also diffusing. CBAs are present in 10 cities (Dreier 2009), with between 17 and 50 CBAs in effect in 2009 (Parks and Warren 2009).

2. Unionization. Expanding collective bargaining for flexible or contingent low wage, private-sector workers is a key part of the high road agenda. The unions using “comprehensive campaigns” are making gains. JfJ, for instance, has secured master contracts in more than 30 cities in the United States and Canada and covers 225,000 janitors (SEIU 2011). Similarly, Hotel Workers Rising added 44 new hotels and 11,000 nongaming hotel workers for UNITE HERE (Getman 2010), bringing the union to 19% market share in full service hotels and 48% market share in the gaming industry in multiple cities (Moberg 2009). As just one final example, LIUNA, the union of unspecialized, general construction workers, added 17,500 members in 2006 and 2007 (Raine 2008).

3. Laws to Regulate Contingent Work. Since the mid to late 2000s, labor-community coalitions have focused on labor regulations, mostly at the state and local levels. Wage theft and employee misclassification (i.e., wrongly classifying workers as independent contractors to avoid Fair Labor Standards Act provisions) are two areas of emphasis. Currently, 21 states have new wage theft or misclassification laws on the books, with the majority of these laws passed after 2007. These include eight states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, Washington) with laws to prevent and better define employee misclassification generally, seven states (Delaware, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Tennessee, Wisconsin) more narrowly preventing misclassification in the construction industry, and nine states (Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Texas, Washington) with new wage theft regulations.³ Miami-Dade, San Francisco, Seattle, and Broward County, Florida passed wage theft ordinances to establish protections in the first instance or complement state efforts against wage theft; New Orleans, Palm Beach, Houston, Shelby County, Florida, and Kalamazoo, have wage theft campaigns in progress.⁴

In the most recent years, labor-community coalitions have begun making strides in passing various workers’ bills of rights that articulate basic standards for employees in particular occupations. Illinois was the first state to pass such a bill of rights, when it established the Day Labor Bill of Rights in 2005. In 2010, New York passed a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights and then, in 2012, Massachusetts followed with a Temporary Workers Bill of Rights and California with a Warehouse Workers Bill of Rights.

4. Immigrant Incorporation. Unionization and new wage/labor laws promote wide economic integration, while labor-community coalitions also advance the social integration of immigrants, including undocumented ones. Partly through the advocacy of labor-community coalitions, approximately 50 cities instituted a sanctuary ordinance or resolution by 2006 (Aoki et al. 2008), preventing government agencies from excluding immigrants from receiving public services or schooling due to immigration status.

Official identification has been another focus for labor-community coalitions. In 2007, New Haven became the first city to issue identification cards to undocumented immigrants, and the idea has continued to diffuse. Eight cities currently issue identification cards, including Trenton, Princeton, and Asbury Park in New Jersey; Oakland, San Francisco, Richmond, and Los Angeles in California; and Washington, D.C.⁵ In this vein, states are beginning to reconceive state residency; Utah, Washington, and New Mexico allow undocumented immigrants to test for driver’s licenses. And, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 13 states have authorized a state-level DREAM Act since 2001, while five have barred it.⁶

5. Impacts. As this brief sketch shows, the core ideas of labor-community coalitions are diffusing, yet the known impacts have been modest to date. By manner of brief and nonexhaustive illustration, city ordinances to produce job quality and corporate accountability have proliferated yet cover small numbers of workers. In Baltimore, the nation’s first living wage ordinance raised wages by about $2.00 per hour and covered approximately 1,000 people (Pollin and Luce 1998). Since Baltimore, living wage provisions have strengthened considerably but still cover only about 1% of urban labor forces (Swarts 2007). CBAs, because they are normally tied to specific development projects, also produce narrowly targeted impacts. For instance, LAANE’s first CBA deal resulted in 20% of the project’s construction jobs being filled by local hires; 68% of the 2,000 permanent jobs slotted for local hires; and half of the new permanent jobs hired at the living wage (Wolf-Powers, Reiss, and Stix 2006). In Denver, an unrealized CBA at Cherokee Gates Development promised 350 affordable housing units, with 200 of those units for rentals; 1,000 construction jobs paying prevailing wage and benefits; and local hiring on 10,000 temporary and permanent jobs (Larsen 2009).

While unionization efforts through comprehensive campaigns have added to private-sector unionization, the resulting collective bargaining agreements have delivered modest gains. The 1990 JfJ campaign in Los Angeles, for instance, yielded a contract including a pay raise of 25% and full health benefits (Narro 2009) lifting covered workers to 106% of the poverty threshold for a four-person household. By 2000, unionized janitors made $3.38 more on average than nonunion janitors (Pfuntner 2003), putting them at 147% of the poverty threshold and squarely in the lower middle class.⁷ Unionization in hotels has produced similar results. In 2000, unionized hotel workers made $10.00 per hour or $1.50 more per hour than nonunion hotel workers (Wial and Rickert 2002). Such a wage premium provided unionized full-time hotel workers an income amounting to 118% of the poverty threshold for a family of four but still close to poverty.

The impacts of the misclassification, wage theft, and Workers Bill of Rights statutes pushed by labor-community coalitions are difficult to assess given their newness, as are some of the new statutes on immigrant incorporation. An exception concerns day labor centers that have been particularly active on wage theft. Case study work suggests that day labor centers, by discouraging more secretive employers, may depress employment, so monthly earnings are less than those of day laborers finding work in the street (Gonzalez 2007). This negative outcome may be offset by the elimination of wage theft and other safety violations resulting from monitored hiring (Camou 2010). The capacity for handling wage theft claims is not great, however. In 2003, in Denver and Baltimore, for instance, nonunion labor organizations were able to handle an average of 156 to 166 wage or other claims but were able to settle only 39% of those on average (Camou 2010). Moreover, impacts are further limited by the proportionally small numbers of immigrants joining worker centers. While advancements have certainly resulted from programs and policies centered on immigrant casual workers, much like high road development, the impacts of worker centers to date have been of modest scale (Fine 2006).

As this case evidence indicates, labor-community coalitions have made strides in building power from below. They are altering the policy discourse and practice in cities. Nonetheless, the scope of change is incremental rather than dramatic or even moderate. The paper concludes by exploring, at first pass, how the ideology orienting labor-community coalitions might stymie the realization of more radical equality.

Labor-Community Building Power from Below, Domination Revisited

Urban regime theory in the tradition advanced by Stone makes urban history a story of corporate and, sometimes, middle-class agency. The case of labor-community coalitions runs contrary to such an interpretation. Policies to advance low-wage workers and communities are increasingly accepted and adopted in American cities, not through the mass mobilization Stone postulated as necessary for a “lower class opportunity expansion regime” but through familiar power-building activities associated with more typical regimes. Power building toward the adoption of a labor-community agenda advances through the institutionalization of mutualist, cross-sectoral relationships that facilitate the mobilization of resources toward shared goals. The major difference from elite power-building concerns protests serving to compel cross-sectoral collaboration initiated by labor-community coalitions. Protest, then, appears as a key “selective incentive” under labor-community control that enhances independence in relational power building from below.

This raises a conundrum from an urban regime perspective. Stone argued the sort of independence apparent in labor-community coalitions could support the realization of more transformative change driven by actors able to avoid the “going along to get along” that stymied racial change. Stone rejected domination or hegemonic ideology as a compelling explanation of the small scope of change associated with progressive reform movements on the grounds that plenty of disagreement was evident in Atlanta’s urban regime. Yet, the case of labor-community coalitions may give reason to reexamine this argument. While there is inadequate space for elaboration, to my mind, some preliminary evidence against cooptation explaining the modesty of change produced by labor-community coalitions is how little patronage figures into the policy agenda. While policy adoption brings unions some members and 501(c)(3) organizations some allocations, the focus remains on people facing profound structural disadvantages. This is in stark contrast to patterns evident in many other efforts to reallocate urban power centered on benefits for new organizations or the more privileged members of a class or group.⁸

Of course, there is little doubt that pragmatism underlies the decision making of labor and community organizers (Gapasin and Bonacich 2002; Swarts 2008), and cooptation as a heuristic should not be dismissed. Nonetheless, the ideational turn in urban regime theory suggests reasons to consider the possible role of capitalist ideology in labor-community’s incrementalist approach to social change, as cooptation and ideology are not mutually exclusive as phenomena. While certainly creating a counter-narrative to neoliberal capitalist ideology, labor-community coalitions have been faulted for limited imaginative or innovative thought (Dobbie 2009). As discussed earlier, labor-community coalitions advance social spending, contracts, regulation, and law as the main instruments for realizing social change. These policy ideas are largely recoveries, reinforcements, and extensions of New Deal and Great Society policy (Dreier 2007; Dean and Reynolds 2009). In other words, they are borne out of social-liberalist capitalist ideology that took root in various forms internationally in the twentieth century and took welfare spending and corporate regulation as adequate for making capitalism a workable economic system (Kling 1993).

Stone’s determination that cross-sectoral disagreements signal an absence of hegemonic thought seems to dismiss how actors work within ideational boundaries. As an analytical construct, hegemonic ideology does not imply a singular strain of thought within a society or even class (Larrain 1991). Instead, as a heuristic, it suggests that differences of opinion emerge from a perspective of capitalism (whether neoliberal or social-liberalist) that informs actors to take market exchange, private ownership of capital, and the commodification of labor for granted.

The historical record indicates that the social-liberalist agenda alone never legitimated “equality of outcome” in the United States, and a policy agenda veering more imaginatively from that tradition may be needed to secure deeper social change, especially in city spaces largely outside the regular market economy (see Sassen 1997). Such an agenda may demand more “communitarian” principles, whereby social change does not only mean forcing private investors to share more gains or serve overlooked consumers but it might also involve creative thinking about group control of community assets, worker ownership, and import substitution, particularly applied to those urban spaces of deep poverty where the market barely penetrates.

Urban regime theory advances the theory and practice of power building from below by pointing out the importance of institutions facilitating relational processes to foster cross-sectoral cooperation and tame conflict. However, the case of labor-community coalitions raises another proposition that may be worth discussing and examining analytically. This is that labor-community’s policy imagination may be limited by the social-liberalist perspective that (I argue) orients them.

Exploring this proposition might involve a “post-empiricist” approach (Fischer 2003) focused on thick description and interpretivist critique of the narratives and meanings internal to labor-community coalitions. Analysis in this vein could identify and unpack how labor-community coalitions articulate the ideal economy or what they mean by social change. Finding that (1) labor-community policy discourses do not diverge significantly from (historical) social-liberalist ones or (2) there are low frequencies of experimental policy proposals (see Imbroscio 2003) in written or oral communications may bolster the argument that capitalist ideology limits policy imagination. Alternatively, high frequencies of experimental policy ideas that diverge from social-liberal thought as well as direct observations of labor-community coalitions dismissing ideas on ground of pragmatism would lend support to Stone's original statements about ideology and cooptation.

Labor-community coalitions are emerging as players in cities and are capable of advancing policies that challenge the simple notion that business interests equal the city’s interests. Regime change is complicated, and a recent effort to establish a “post-materialist” regime was derailed by the difficulties of divisiveness as well as an anticorporate ethos that created obstructionism rather than a proactive agenda incorporating the interests of coalition partners, big business, and the working class (DeLeon 1992). Labor-community coalitions, by actively recruiting cooperation with large corporations, appear to be avoiding the latter pitfall at least, and urban regime theory advances both academic understanding of efforts as well as prescriptions for these coalitions on the ground. While challenger regimes face obstacles to consolidating power, I conclude that constraints on imagination should be explored as among these obstacles. Ultimately, idealism can change history (Brinton 1965, p. 259), and “power to” might very well depend on a combination of new institutions and new ideas.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Michelle Camou organizes the Imagined Economy Project, a newly developing project, to study and promote creative approaches to economic change in urban areas. She received her PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder and has published in International Migration and Labor Studies Journal as well as consulted as a public policy analyst.

References

Aoki

Keith

Shuford

John

Young

Kristy

Hwei

Thomas

. 2008. “(In) visible Cities: Three Local Government Models and Immigration Regulation.” Oregon Review of International Law 10:453–529.

Bailey

Robert

. 1999. Gay Politics, Urban Politics: Identity and Economics in the Urban Setting. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.

Brenner

Neil

. 2009. “Is There a Politics of ‘Urban’ Development? Reflections on the U.S. Case.” In The City in American Political Development, edited by Richardson Dilworth, 121–40. New York: Routledge.

Brinton

Crane

. 1965. The Anatomy of Revolution. New York: Prentice Hall.

Camou

Michelle

. 2010. Designing Labor Justice: How Ideas Shape Nonunion Labor Organizations. www.imaginedeconomy.org (accessed November 20, 2013).

Chung

Angie

. 2007. Legacies of Struggle: Conflict and Cooperation in Korean American Politics. Palo Alto: Stanford Univ. Press.

Clawson

Dan

Clawson

Mary Ann

. 1999. “What Has Happened to the U.S. Labor Movement? Union Decline and Renewal.” Annual Review of Sociology 25:95–119.

Coke

Tanya

. 2010. Perfecting Our Union: Success Stories from Across the United States. New York: U.S. Human Rights Fund. http://www.cadre-la.org/core/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Pefecting-our-Union-0209-314-CST.pdf (accessed November 20, 2013).

Cornell University School of Industrial Labour Relations. 2009. “Is There a Woman’s Way of Organizing? Gender, Unions, and Effective Organizing.” Project Report. http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=reports.

10.

Cornfield

Daniel

. 2007. “Conclusion: Seeking Solidarity . . . Why, and With Whom?” In Labor in the New Urban Battlegrounds: Local Solidarity in a Global Economy, edited by Turner

Lowell

Cornfield

Daniel

, 235–51. Ithaca: ILR Press.

11.

Cranford

Cynthia

. 2005. “Networks of Exploitation: Immigrant Labor and the Restructuring of the Los Angeles Janitorial Industry.” Social Problems 52 (3): 379–97.

12.

Davies

Jonathan

. 2002. “Urban Regime Theory: A Normative Empirical Critique.” Journal of Urban Affairs 24 (1): 1–17.

13.

Dean

Amy

Reynolds

David

. 2009. A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Re-shape the American Labor Movement. Ithaca: Cornell/ILR Press.

14.

DeLeon

Richard

. 1992. Left Coast City: Progressive Politics in San Francisco. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

15.

DiGaetano

Alan

Strom

Elizabeth

. 2003. “Comparative Urban Governance: An Integrated Approach.” Urban Affairs Review 38 (3): 356–95.

16.

Dobbie

David

. 2009. “Evolving Strategies of Labor-Community Coalition Building.” Journal of Community Practice 17:107–19.

17.

Dreier

Peter

. 2007. “Community Organizing for What? Progressive Politics and Movement Building in America.” In Transforming the City: Community Organizing and the Challenge of Political Change, edited by Orr

Marion

, 218–51. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

18.

Dreier

Peter

. 2009. “Good Jobs, Healthy Cities.” The American Prospect, September 20, 8.

19.

Fine

Janice

. 2005. “Community Unions and the Revival of the American Labor Movement.” Politics & Society 33 (1): 153–99.

20.

Fine

Janice

. 2006. Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of a Dream. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.

21.

Fischer

Frank

. 2003. Reframing Public Policy: Discursive Politics and Deliberative Practices. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

22.

Fisher

Robert

Brooks

Fred

Russell

Daniel

. 2009. “‘Don’t Be a Blockhead:’ ACORN, Protest Tactics, and Organizational Scale.” In The People Shall Rule: ACORN, Community Organizing, and the Struggle for Economic Justice, edited by Fisher

Robert

206–34. Nashville: Vanderbilt Univ. Press.

23.

Frank

Larry

Wong

Kent

. 2004. “Dynamic Political Mobilization: The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.” Working USA 8 (2): 155–81.

24.

Gapasin

Fernando

Bonacich

Edna

. 2002. “The Strategic Challenge of Organizing Manufacturing Workers in Global/Flexible Capitalism.” In Unions in a Globalized Environment: Changing Borders, Organizational Boundaries, and Social Roles, edited by Nissen

Bruce

163–88. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe.

25.

Getman

Julius

. 2010. Restoring the Power of Unions: It Takes a Movement. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.

26.

Gonzalez

Arturo

. 2007. “Day Labor in the Golden State.” California Economic Policy 3 (3): 1–21.

27.

Greenhouse

Steven

. 2006. “Labor Federation Forms a Pact with Day Workers.” New York Times, August 10. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/us/10labor.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0.

28.

Greer

Ian

Byrd

Barbara

Fleron

Lou Jean

. 2007. “Two Paths to the High Road: The Dynamics of Coalition Building in Seattle and Buffalo.” In Labor in the New Urban Battlegrounds: Local Solidarity in a Global Economy, edited by Turner

Lowell

Cornfield

Daniel

, 111–28. Ithaca: ILR Press.

29.

Gross

David

. 1995. Broken Promise: The Subversion of U.S. Labor Relations Policy, 1947-1994. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.

30.

Hamilton

David

. 2004. “Developing Regional Regimes: A Comparison of Two Metropolitan Areas.” Journal of Urban Affairs 26 (4): 455–77.

31.

Hauptmeier

Marco

Turner

Lowell

. 2007. “Political Insiders and Social Activists: Coalition Building in New York and Los Angeles.” In Labor in the New Urban Battlegrounds: Local Solidarity in a Global Economy, edited by Turner

Lowell

Cornfield

Daniel

, 129–43. Ithaca: ILR Press.

32.

Imbroscio

David

. 1998a. “Reformulating Urban Regime Theory: The Division of Labor Between State and Market Reconsidered.” Journal of Urban Affairs 20 (3): 233–48.

33.

Imbroscio

David

. 1998b. “The Necessity of Urban Regime Change: A Reply to Clarence Stone.” Journal of Urban Affairs 20 (3): 261–86.

34.

Imbroscio

David

. 2003. “Overcoming the Neglect of Economics in Urban Regime Theory.” Journal of Urban Affairs 25 (3): 271–84.

35.

Kerth

Rob

Baxandall

Phineas

. 2011. Tax Increment Financing: The Need for Increased Transparency and Accountability in Local Economic Development Subsidies. Phoenix: Arizona PIRG Education Fund.

36.

Kilburn

H. Whitt

. 2004. “Explaining U.S. Urban Regimes: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis.” Urban Affairs Review 39 (5): 633–51.

37.

Klein

Juan-Luis

Tremblay

Diane Gabrielle

. 2009. “Social Actors and their Role in Metropolitan Governance in Montreal: Towards and Inclusive Coalition.” GeoJournal 75 (6): 576–79.

38.

Kling

Jospeh

. 1993. “Complex Society/Complex Cities: New Social Movements and the Restructuring of Urban Space.” In Mobilizing the Community: Local Politics in the Era of the Global City, edited by Fisher

Robert

Kling

Joseph

, 28–51. Newbury Park: Sage.

39.

Kwon

Heiwon

Day

Benjamin

. 2007. “The Politics of Labor in Boston: Geographies of Union Renewal.” In Labor in the New Urban Battlegrounds: Local Solidarity in a Global Economy, edited by Turner

Lowell

Cornfield

Daniel

, 97–110. Ithaca: ILR Press.

40.

Larrain

Jorge

. 1991. “Stuart Hall and the Marxist Concept of Ideology.” Theory, Culture & Society 8:1–28.

41.

Larsen

Larissa

. 2009. “The Pursuit of Responsible Development: Addressing Anticipated Benefits and Unwanted Burdens Through Community Benefit Agreements.” Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy Working Paper Series Number 9. Univ. of Michigan Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

42.

Lauria

Mickey

. 1997. Reconstructing Urban Regime Theory: Regulating Urban Politics in a Global Economy. New York: Sage.

43.

Levi

Margaret

Olsen

David

Steinman

Erich

. 2002. “Living Wage Campaigns and Laws.” Working USA 6 (3): 111–32.

44.

Luce

Stephanie

. 2004. Fighting for a Living Wage. Ithaca: Cornell/ILR Press.

45.

McGovern

Stephen

. 2009. “Mobilization on the Waterfront: The Ideological/Cultural Roots of Potential Regime Change in Philadelphia.” Urban Affairs Review 44 (5): 663–94.

46.

Merrifield

Andy

. 2000. “The Urbanization of Labor: Living Wage Activism in the American City.” Social Text 18 (1): 31–54.

47.

Moberg

David

. 2009. “Can a Union Divided Stand?” In These Times, July 1. http://inthesetimes.com/article/4521/can_a_union_divided_stand.

48.

Mossberger

Karen

Stoker

Gerry

. 2001. “The Evolution of Urban Regime Theory: The Challenge of Conceptualization.” Urban Affairs Review 36 (6): 810–35.

49.

Narro

Victor

. 2009. “Si Se Puede! Immigrant Workers and the Transformation of the Los Angeles Labor and Worker Center Movements.” Los Angeles Public Interest Law Journal 1:65–106.

50.

Neumark

David

. 2002. How Living Wage Laws Affect Low-Wage Workers and Low Income Families. San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California.

51.

Nissen

Bruce

. 2009. “Social Justice Infrastructure: Organizations as New Actors from the Community: The Case of South Florida.” Journal of Community Practice 17:157–69.

52.

Omatsu

Glenn

. 2010. “The ‘Four Prisons’ and the Movements of Liberation.” In Asian American Studies Now, edited by Yu-Wen

Jean

Shen

Chen

Thomas

298–330. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press.

53.

Painter

Joe

. 1997. “Regulation, Regime, and Practice in Urban Politics.” In Reconstructing Urban Regime Theory: Regulating Urban Politics in a Global Economy, edited by Lauria

Mickey

122–43. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

54.

Parks

Virginia

Warren

Dorian

. 2009. “The Politics and Practice of Economic Justice: Community Benefits Agreements as Tactic of New Accountable Development Movement.” Journal of Community Practice 17:88–106.

55.

Pfuntner

Laura.

2003. Janitors in 2000: An Overview of NCS Data. Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

56.

Pierre

Jon

. 2005. “Comparative Urban Governance: Uncovering Complex Causalities.” Urban Affairs Review 40 (4): 446–62.

57.

Pollin

Robert

Luce

Stephanie

. 1998. The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy. New York: The New Press.

58.

Raine

George

. 2008. “Q&A with Leader of Breakaway Labor Union.” San Francisco Chronicle, August 31. http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Q-A-with-leader-of-breakaway-labor-union-3270959.php.

59.

Rast

Joel

. 2005. “The Politics of Alternative Economic Development: Revisiting the Stone–Imbroscio Debate.” Journal of Urban Affairs 27 (1): 53–69.

60.

Rathke

Wade

. 2009. “Understanding ACORN: Sweat and Social Change.” In The People Shall Rule: ACORN, Community Organizing, and the Struggle for Economic Justice, edited by Fisher

Robert

41–59. Nashville: Vanderbilt Univ. Press.

61.

Robinson

Tony

. 2004. “Hunger Discipline and Social Parasites: The Political Economy of the Living Wage.” Urban Affairs Review 40 (2): 246–68.

62.

Ruckelshaus

Catherine

. 2008. “Labor’s Wage War.” Fordham URB Law Journal 35:373–407.

63.

Sassen

Saskia

. 1997. “Informalization in Advanced Market Economies.” Issues in Development Discussion Paper 20. Geneva: International Labour Office. http://www-ilo-mirror.cornell.edu/public/english/employment/strat/download/iddp20.pdf (accessed November 20, 2013).

64.

Savage

Lydia

. 2006. “Justice for Janitors: Scales of Organizing and Representing Workers.” Antipode 38 (3): 645–66.

65.

Scanlon

Edward

Harding

Scott

. 2005. “Social Work and Labor Unions: Historical and Contemporary Alliances.” Journal of Community Practice 13 (1): 9–30.

66.

Service Employees International Union. 2011. “Justice for Janitors a Look Back and a Look Forward: 21 Years of Organizing Janitors.” http://www.seiu.org/a/justice-for-janitors/justice-for-janitors-20-years-of-organizing.php (accessed November 20, 2013).

67.

Simmons

Louise

Harding

Scott

. 2009. “Community-Labor Coalitions for Progressive Change.” Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health 24:99–112.

68.

Sites

William

. 1997. “The Limits of Urban Regime Theory: New York City Under Koch, Dinkins, and Guiliani.” Urban Affairs Review 32 (4): 536–57.

69.

Stoker

Gerry

. 1997. “Regime Theory and Urban Politics.” In Theories of Urban Politics, edited by Judge

David

Stoker

Gerry

Wolman

Harold

, 54–71. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

70.

Stone

Clarence

. 1989. Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta 1946-1988. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

71.

Stone

Clarence

. 1993. “Urban Regimes and the Capacity to Govern: A Political Economy Approach.” Journal of Urban Affairs 15 (1): 1–28.

72.

Stone

Clarence

. 1998. “Regime Analysis and the Study of Urban Politics: A Rejoinder.” Journal of Urban Affairs 20 (3): 249–60.

73.

Stone

Clarence

. 2005. “Looking Back to Look Forward: Reflections on Urban Regime Analysis.” Urban Affairs Review 40 (3): 309–41.

74.

Swarts

Heidi

. 2007. “Political Opportunity, Venue Shopping, and Strategic Innovation: ACORN’s National Organizing.” In Transforming the City: Community Organizing and the Challenge of Political Change, edited by Orr

Marion

134–61. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

75.

Swarts

Heidi

. 2008. Organizing Urban America: Secular and Faith-based Movements. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.

76.

Turner

Lowell

. 2007. “Advantages of Backwardness: Lessons for Social Europe from the American Labour Movement.” Social Europe, the Journal of the European Left 2 (4): 147–53.

77.

United Workers Association. 2008. “Another Big Win at Camden Yards: Cleaners Vote Yes to AFSCME Union.” Baltimore Independent Media Center, July 25. http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/17598/index.php.

78.

Waldinger

Roger

Erickson

Chris

Milkman

Ruth

Mitchell

Daniel

Valenzuela

Abel

Wong

Kent

Zeitlin

Maurice

. 1998. “Helots No More: A Case Study of the Justice for Janitors Campaign in Los Angeles.” In Organizing to Win: New Research on Union Strategies, edited by Bronfenbrenner

Kate

Friedman

Sheldon

Hurd

Richard

Oswald

Rudolph

Seeber

Ronald

, 102–19. Ithaca: ILR Press.

79.

Ward

Kevin

. 1996. “Rereading Urban Regime Theory: A Sympathetic Critique.” Geoforum 27 (4): 427–38.

80.

Wial

Howard

Rickert

Jeff

. 2002. “U.S. Hotels and Their Workers, Room for Improvement.” AFL-CIO Working for America Institute. http://www.hotel-online.com/News/PR2002_3rd/Aug02_HotelJobs.html (accessed November 20, 2013).

81.

Wolf-Powers

Laura

Reiss

Jeremy

Stix

Margaret

. 2006. Building in Good Jobs: Linking Workforce Development with Real Estate-Led Economic Development. Brooklyn: Pratt Institute, Pratt Center for Community Development.