New Urban Immigrant Workforce

This ground-breaking look at contemporary immigrant labor organizing and mobilization draws on participant observation, ethnographic interviews, historical documents, and new case studies of three organizing drives. The expert contributors provide tangible evidence of immigrants' eagerness for collective action and organizing. Parting company with mainstream thinking, they argue lucidly that immigrants' propensity to organize stems from social isolation. Many of the contributors highlight a specific ethnic group and special labor niches, such as the dominance of Punjabi in the New York City taxi industry. Each case study examines efforts beyond the conventional unions to organize the immigrants, such as worker centers and independent syndicalism on the job. An essential text for courses in labor-relations and immigrant studies, the book takes into account the latest debates in the fields of labor studies, urban studies, sociology, and political science. Chapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 Socioeconomics and Conflict in Sending Remittances from New York City’s Unstable Labor Markets to Peru, Alex Julca; Chapter 3 Driving Taxis in New York City: Who Wants to Do It?, Diditi Mitra; Chapter 4 Community Labor Alliances: Organizing Greengrocery Workers in New York City, Immanuel Ness; Chapter 5 Models of Worker Organizing, Saru Jayaraman, Immanuel Ness; Chapter 6 La Alianza Para La Justicia: A Team Approach to Immigrant Worker Organizing, Saru Jayaraman; Chapter 7 Center Stage: Domestic Workers Organizing in the Global City, Ai-Jen Poo, Eric Tang; Chapter 8 Organizing in the South Asian Domestic Worker Community: Pushing the Boundaries of the Law and Organizing Project, Monika Batra; Chapter 9 “ROCing” the Industry: Organizing Restaurant Workers in New York, Saru Jayaraman;