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I also believed that collaborative efforts among such groups could enhance their organizing. My objective was to gain insight into common challenges they faced and to explore the potential for collaboration.

I met with approximately 80 organizations. At each visit, I asked three questions:

What groups are organizing low-wage workers?
What organizations are organizing groups of low-wage workers that include both immigrants and the other ethnic lines present in their community?
What groups are focused on increasing the base of organized working poor to create the power needed to challenge powerful corporations and business owners (as opposed to providing services or advocacy)?

Groups that I found taking on the challenges of organizing low-wage workers were unions, worker centers and community-based worker organizations who often worked in collaboration with unions. Unions were at the forefront when it came to organizing that included multi-ethnic and immigrant groups.

For example, in 1997 a collaborative effort by the Tourism Industry Development Council (now called the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy) and H.E.R.E. Local 11 pushed local government to implement standards of corporate accountability through worker retention and living wage ordinances that enhanced the capacity of a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual workforce to organize. The result was that more than four thousand employees of Los Angeles city contractors and leasers organized successfully for a living wage. Unions like SEIU and HERE were able to use the momentum of the Living Wage campaign to organize hundreds of workers into unions. Since then there have been other Living Wage successes in the Los Angeles area. The most notable is the recently passed ordinance in Santa Monica, which is unique because it targets a geographical zone. All small businesses in the zone, including private businesses, not just those with city or county contracts, must pay a base living wage and an additional hourly amount for health insurance.

In Chicago, ACORN organized two hundred home care workers; an organizing drive that gave birth to an SEIU local that today has over 11,000 members. The workers were organized to apply direct pressure on the state legislature which sets salaries for home care workers. Initial successes inspired the hope that helped motivate more home care workers in both the private and public sectors to organize.

Over all, however, there has been very little organizing of low-wage workers relative to the need. And unfortunately, if the number of organized low-wage workers in the United States (in unions, worker centers or community-based worker organizations) were to triple overnight, more than three quarters of low-wage workers in the country would still be without collective organization and power in the morning.

The lack of a substantial base of organized low-wage workers is one of the great crises facing the forces working for progressive change. There is no shortage of brilliant ideas for advancing social and economic justice, but without a dramatic increase in the base of organized working poor, as well as increases in population in other progressive organizations such as environmental and political groups and socially conscious churches, there simply won’t be enough legs to make the movement move. We cannot compete with the corporate interests that bombard us on television, in the movies, through the mail, in print, over the radio or on the Internet. Our power lies in building organizations, labor unions and community-based worker organizations, in which low-income people collectively engage in building power.

Organizing low-wage workers, whether to win union recognition by an employer, a contract or workplace justice, is usually a long-term endeavor. Serious organizing efforts must have the capability to sustain the fight for many years. This requires the support of strong, stable, community allies and unions, accurate research on corporate vulnerabilities and a well planned and executed organizing campaign.

For many organizations, sustaining these efforts is simply too hard. One factor that makes sustaining a worker organizing effort difficult is lack of adequate staffing. The reality of universal employer hostility to worker organizing efforts and the evolution of complex ownership structures in the private sector underscore the requirement for full time staff in worker organizing efforts.

Finding the resources and devoting the time to doing this work effectively is a serious challenge. Unions, which rely on dues to finance staffing, face the problem of getting the authority from members to assign staff to focus exclusively on organizing, thereby leaving service tasks to the members themselves - this is not a quick and easy process. Organizations such as worker centers, which rely on grants and donations to finance staffing, must report short-term quantifiable progress to their funders to continue funding for staff. This is often impossible because successful worker organizing is not quantifiable in the measurable terms most funders are accustomed to (how many housing units were built, how many meals were given to how many children, how much money a local government paid to relocate people and clean up a toxic spill or build a community center, etc.).

As a result, it is often easier to allow organizing to take a back seat to other worthy work of the organization, such as public advocacy or providing services to individuals. To successfully increase its numbers of organized low-wage workers, an organization must focus on organizing to the exclusion of other activities. To the extent that it does engage in these other worthy activities, the focus must be on increasing the organized base. All who work for the organization, even if they are not involved in the actual daily tasks of organizing, must share that purpose.

Organizations need to establish a predominant organizing focus as a prerequisite to facing today’s common challenges to successful low-wage worker organizing.

Challenges facing groups who organize low-wage workers
Low wage employment is exploding in the United States. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 1999 over 15.6 million people were employed in the low paying health, hospitality, food, cleaning and other personal services industries, while only about 5.8 million were employed in the relatively well paying manufacturing jobs in the steel, lumber & wood products, auto, airplane, railroad, mining, petroleum, textile, chemical and paper industries.

In the wake of NAFTA, much of this manufacturing is now centered in Mexico, where factory workers earn poverty wages like their counterparts did in the U.S. before unionization in the mid 1900’s. Groups who organize low-wage workers in both countries face some common challenges.

The challenge of inclusion - building and regenerating the worker leadership group
To be successful, organizing must be thoroughly inclusive, meaning that every racial, cultural, gender and language group in the workplace gets to see itself as having equal status in the organization. The task of the low-wage organization is to create a leadership group that can activate all the elements in the workforce, and sustain an atmosphere of solidarity over the course of the years it may take to win the struggle.

There are two obstacles to achieving an effective worker leadership group. One is bigotry in our ranks; the second is company attacks on worker leaders.

In addition to traditional American racial bigotries, workplaces and communities are becoming more fragmented in the wake of rapidly increasing diversity.2 Many workers come from war torn countries and many are political refugees. It is not uncommon for workers on opposite sides of an ancient struggle or from different ethnic communities “back home” to find themselves working side by side or competing for resources and jobs. This leads to a greater sense of isolation and to a very serious set of obstacles to organizing. Employers often take advantage of these differences to quell organizing efforts.

An example of employer exploitation of these differences and organizing to counter the exploitation: Housekeeping workers in a hotel organizing drive in Portland were segregated on the job by the management. Vietnamese women cleaned the rooms on the 4th, 7th, 9th & 10th floors, Chinese workers cleaned the rooms on the 8th floor, and Filipinas cleaned the rooms on the 3rd, 5th & 6th floors. Some of the “inspectresses” (the company’s term for women who had no power to supervise but were paid 10 cents an hour more than the room cleaners) were Filipina and the rest were African American. Through a series of house meetings, the union organized sub-committees based on ethnicity. Each sub-committee complained that the workers of other ethnicities kept them down at low wages, but despite this each group agreed that they could advance only if all of them were united. They selected representatives to participate in the overall campaign committee. The night of the first campaign committee meeting, the depth of the division between the ethnicities was illustrated when the two Vietnamese representatives arrived last at the union hall. Upon seeing the Filipinas in the room, they stepped backward and began to slide around with their backs to the wall as if trying to make themselves invisible. They were terribly frightened. One pointed to a Filipina “inspectress” and whispered “boss!” It was clear that no matter how equally the committee was composed, it would be some time before they would be able to work as a unit.

In addition to mutual distrust along ethnic lines among the workers in an organizing effort, the same kind of barrier applies when the staff and leadership of the union or worker center conducting the organizing is ethnically different from the workers being organized. A union or worker center whose staff and leaders are all monolingual English speaking white or black people is not equipped to sustain a representative leadership group among workers who are mostly people of color and whose predominant language is not English. Hiring translators to address this problem does not work. Most good organizers have cultural roots in common with the workers being organized. This presents a challenge for the union or worker center seeking to organize workers who are ethnically different from the existing membership because of the necessity to generate the political will to hire and keep organizers who are not ethnically representative of their own leadership’s power base.

Organizations have to put an emphasis on modeling the inclusion principle before any large infusion of dues from newly organized workers of different ethnicities justifies the expense to the existing base. Failure to do so undermines the credibility of the organizer who tries to get workers of different ethnicities to work together as a unit in a campaign.

Company attacks on leaders in private sector low-wage worker organizing efforts are now universal. Leaders are isolated from co-workers through arbitrary schedule and assignment changes, their hours are cut, and they are fired. In addition to these attacks, in developing countries leaders and their families face violence on and off the job and even incarceration. Organizations must assume these attacks will occur and have a plan in place to counter the fear and disorganization that is the employer’s strategy.

Figuring out whom to pressure and how
Organizing has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. In the 1960s and before, one individual or one company owned a workplace. The nature of ownership has changed - owners are now huge complex clusters that are diversified in both their holdings and operations. Simply figuring out whom to pressure involves complex research. To be successful, an organization has to figure out what those decision makers must do to effect change and how to convince them. This is a complex and demanding field but multi-year campaigns can be considerably shortened if organizations can invest their resources in this crucial research.

Forging sustainable alliances between unions and community-based groups
It takes an entire community to win fights to organize low-wage workers. A few new models have succeeded in changing the local balance of power and creating a viable environment for organizing new groups, notably the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE). LAANE has organized and coordinated unions, churches, respected academics, and community organizations in each of their successful campaign efforts. In the wake of passage of several living wage ordinances in the Los Angeles area, LAANE worked with SEIU Local 1877, HERE Local 814 and the national AFL-CIO in a major organizing campaign at LAX. As a result of these efforts, virtually all major employers at LAX are now covered by the living wage ordinance and most also now have union contracts.

It’s also important to create a community “nest” that supports workers in long-term battles. In the five year Park 55 Hotel struggle in San Francisco, HERE Local 2 organized a broad spectrum of supporters who joined workers in weekly sit ins and other actions. In several parts of the country Jobs With Justice has played a pivotal role in marshalling on-going broad community support for workers engaged in struggles to establish their unions in campaigns to win their first union contract.

Successfully competing with the captains of industry for credibility
Building on thriving community alliances, organizations must also win media campaigns to reach the larger community. Companies that control the low-wage industries can and do buy media, politicians and service organizations’ loyalties with relatively little money. These business interests regularly employ or contract professional staff who develop relationships with key main stream media editors, columnists, and reporters. Corporate leaders often have social relationships with the owners and publishers of the local main stream media who share an aversion to organized employees. These relationships usually result in substantial favorable media coverage for the companies which employ low-wage workers and little attention to the concerns raised by organizing workers.

Escalating and sustaining the fight over time
Successful organizing requires the capacity to expand and sustain the fight for as long as it takes to compel a company to settle a dispute. The employers of low-wage workers have the resources to wage long fights against workers who are increasingly marginalized in society. To be victorious in a long-haul campaign, organizations must have a sharp and focused strategy. They must create a strong and diverse leadership committee able to call on all the elements of the workforce to respond; they must develop strong ties in the community that will support workers in rallies, with pressure on companies, and perhaps financially; they must cultivate an intelligent corporate strategy; and they must win the public relations war with corporate communications departments.

Organizational regeneration
An organization’s on-going viability depends on its capacity to grow in people, effectiveness and spirit. Developing that capacity requires that the organization become purposeful; every step the organization takes, both internally in structure, planning and staffing, and externally in campaign decisions, must be planned and intended by the leadership. This limits the amount of time leaders spend in damage control, putting out fires caused by unanticipated problems.

Organizations must develop a mitosis type of culture. As with the biological process at the essence of reproductive life, all participants in the organization must see their roles as passing on to others all their knowledge and spirit, replicating themselves in the organization. The organization must create meaningful involvement at all levels and must constantly develop new leadership opportunities that will attract young talent to stay for the long haul. Cultivating new people and new energy must be a continuous process, so that the organization can have a life of its own, not dependent on the presence of a few charismatic leaders.

Thirdly, organizations truly committed to social change must take on the task of changing their very characters. A service-oriented union, for example, must change its priority to organizing, focused entirely on expanding and strengthening the base of workers. These internal cultural changes are consuming, exilerating and painful.

Accomplishing these tasks requires an expertise in which our organizations and leaders are not schooled. Businesses rely on employees educated at the business schools of universities and the skills of high-powered consulting firms to help facilitate continuous organizational design changes to maximize their competitive edge. In the movement for low-wage worker rights, we do not have these resources, but we desperately need them. We cannot seriously contemplate tripling the base of organized working poor without addressing this need.

In the early 80s, unions and worker organizations had to develop the research capacity to identify effective pressure points in ever more complex corporate structures and inter-relationships. This is now a well-developed field of study. Today we face another challenge: we must find new ways to continuously transform and regenerate our organizations.

By Peter Cervantes-Gautschi

1 I was funded by the French American Charitable Trust, the New World Foundation and the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Fund at Shelter Rock.
2A partial listing of groups in the low-wage workforce includes African-American, Native American, Chicano, Mexican, Salvadorian, Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, Honduran, Jamaican, Haitian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Peruvian, Brazilian, Korean, Burmese, Lao, Thai, Hong Kong Chinese, Southern Chinese, Filipino, Samoan, Hawaiian, Trukese, Nigerian, Somalian, Ethiopian, Oromo, Eritrean, Russian, Bosnian, Ukrainian and European-American workers from varying sections of the U.S.


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A portion of your sales goes directly to Enlace.	Challenges to Organizing Low-Wage Workers In 1995 and 1996, I toured the United States and Mexico to explore the need and potential for collaborative efforts among multi-racial, multi-cultural, community-based low-wage worker organizing groups. I believed that many of the issues and problems we address in organizing low-wage workers are common to multi-cultural and low-wage communities everywhere. I also believed that collaborative efforts among such groups could enhance their organizing. My objective was to gain insight into common challenges they faced and to explore the potential for collaboration. I met with approximately 80 organizations. At each visit, I asked three questions: What groups are organizing low-wage workers? What organizations are organizing groups of low-wage workers that include both immigrants and the other ethnic lines present in their community? What groups are focused on increasing the base of organized working poor to create the power needed to challenge powerful corporations and business owners (as opposed to providing services or advocacy)? Groups that I found taking on the challenges of organizing low-wage workers were unions, worker centers and community-based worker organizations who often worked in collaboration with unions. Unions were at the forefront when it came to organizing that included multi-ethnic and immigrant groups. For example, in 1997 a collaborative effort by the Tourism Industry Development Council (now called the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy) and H.E.R.E. Local 11 pushed local government to implement standards of corporate accountability through worker retention and living wage ordinances that enhanced the capacity of a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual workforce to organize. The result was that more than four thousand employees of Los Angeles city contractors and leasers organized successfully for a living wage. Unions like SEIU and HERE were able to use the momentum of the Living Wage campaign to organize hundreds of workers into unions. Since then there have been other Living Wage successes in the Los Angeles area. The most notable is the recently passed ordinance in Santa Monica, which is unique because it targets a geographical zone. All small businesses in the zone, including private businesses, not just those with city or county contracts, must pay a base living wage and an additional hourly amount for health insurance. In Chicago, ACORN organized two hundred home care workers; an organizing drive that gave birth to an SEIU local that today has over 11,000 members. The workers were organized to apply direct pressure on the state legislature which sets salaries for home care workers. Initial successes inspired the hope that helped motivate more home care workers in both the private and public sectors to organize. Over all, however, there has been very little organizing of low-wage workers relative to the need. And unfortunately, if the number of organized low-wage workers in the United States (in unions, worker centers or community-based worker organizations) were to triple overnight, more than three quarters of low-wage workers in the country would still be without collective organization and power in the morning. The lack of a substantial base of organized low-wage workers is one of the great crises facing the forces working for progressive change. There is no shortage of brilliant ideas for advancing social and economic justice, but without a dramatic increase in the base of organized working poor, as well as increases in population in other progressive organizations such as environmental and political groups and socially conscious churches, there simply won’t be enough legs to make the movement move. We cannot compete with the corporate interests that bombard us on television, in the movies, through the mail, in print, over the radio or on the Internet. Our power lies in building organizations, labor unions and community-based worker organizations, in which low-income people collectively engage in building power. Organizing low-wage workers, whether to win union recognition by an employer, a contract or workplace justice, is usually a long-term endeavor. Serious organizing efforts must have the capability to sustain the fight for many years. This requires the support of strong, stable, community allies and unions, accurate research on corporate vulnerabilities and a well planned and executed organizing campaign. For many organizations, sustaining these efforts is simply too hard. One factor that makes sustaining a worker organizing effort difficult is lack of adequate staffing. The reality of universal employer hostility to worker organizing efforts and the evolution of complex ownership structures in the private sector underscore the requirement for full time staff in worker organizing efforts. Finding the resources and devoting the time to doing this work effectively is a serious challenge. Unions, which rely on dues to finance staffing, face the problem of getting the authority from members to assign staff to focus exclusively on organizing, thereby leaving service tasks to the members themselves - this is not a quick and easy process. Organizations such as worker centers, which rely on grants and donations to finance staffing, must report short-term quantifiable progress to their funders to continue funding for staff. This is often impossible because successful worker organizing is not quantifiable in the measurable terms most funders are accustomed to (how many housing units were built, how many meals were given to how many children, how much money a local government paid to relocate people and clean up a toxic spill or build a community center, etc.). As a result, it is often easier to allow organizing to take a back seat to other worthy work of the organization, such as public advocacy or providing services to individuals. To successfully increase its numbers of organized low-wage workers, an organization must focus on organizing to the exclusion of other activities. To the extent that it does engage in these other worthy activities, the focus must be on increasing the organized base. All who work for the organization, even if they are not involved in the actual daily tasks of organizing, must share that purpose. Organizations need to establish a predominant organizing focus as a prerequisite to facing today’s common challenges to successful low-wage worker organizing. Challenges facing groups who organize low-wage workers Low wage employment is exploding in the United States. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 1999 over 15.6 million people were employed in the low paying health, hospitality, food, cleaning and other personal services industries, while only about 5.8 million were employed in the relatively well paying manufacturing jobs in the steel, lumber & wood products, auto, airplane, railroad, mining, petroleum, textile, chemical and paper industries. In the wake of NAFTA, much of this manufacturing is now centered in Mexico, where factory workers earn poverty wages like their counterparts did in the U.S. before unionization in the mid 1900’s. Groups who organize low-wage workers in both countries face some common challenges. The challenge of inclusion - building and regenerating the worker leadership group To be successful, organizing must be thoroughly inclusive, meaning that every racial, cultural, gender and language group in the workplace gets to see itself as having equal status in the organization. The task of the low-wage organization is to create a leadership group that can activate all the elements in the workforce, and sustain an atmosphere of solidarity over the course of the years it may take to win the struggle. There are two obstacles to achieving an effective worker leadership group. One is bigotry in our ranks; the second is company attacks on worker leaders. In addition to traditional American racial bigotries, workplaces and communities are becoming more fragmented in the wake of rapidly increasing diversity.2 Many workers come from war torn countries and many are political refugees. It is not uncommon for workers on opposite sides of an ancient struggle or from different ethnic communities “back home” to find themselves working side by side or competing for resources and jobs. This leads to a greater sense of isolation and to a very serious set of obstacles to organizing. Employers often take advantage of these differences to quell organizing efforts. An example of employer exploitation of these differences and organizing to counter the exploitation: Housekeeping workers in a hotel organizing drive in Portland were segregated on the job by the management. Vietnamese women cleaned the rooms on the 4th, 7th, 9th & 10th floors, Chinese workers cleaned the rooms on the 8th floor, and Filipinas cleaned the rooms on the 3rd, 5th & 6th floors. Some of the “inspectresses” (the company’s term for women who had no power to supervise but were paid 10 cents an hour more than the room cleaners) were Filipina and the rest were African American. Through a series of house meetings, the union organized sub-committees based on ethnicity. Each sub-committee complained that the workers of other ethnicities kept them down at low wages, but despite this each group agreed that they could advance only if all of them were united. They selected representatives to participate in the overall campaign committee. The night of the first campaign committee meeting, the depth of the division between the ethnicities was illustrated when the two Vietnamese representatives arrived last at the union hall. Upon seeing the Filipinas in the room, they stepped backward and began to slide around with their backs to the wall as if trying to make themselves invisible. They were terribly frightened. One pointed to a Filipina “inspectress” and whispered “boss!” It was clear that no matter how equally the committee was composed, it would be some time before they would be able to work as a unit. In addition to mutual distrust along ethnic lines among the workers in an organizing effort, the same kind of barrier applies when the staff and leadership of the union or worker center conducting the organizing is ethnically different from the workers being organized. A union or worker center whose staff and leaders are all monolingual English speaking white or black people is not equipped to sustain a representative leadership group among workers who are mostly people of color and whose predominant language is not English. Hiring translators to address this problem does not work. Most good organizers have cultural roots in common with the workers being organized. This presents a challenge for the union or worker center seeking to organize workers who are ethnically different from the existing membership because of the necessity to generate the political will to hire and keep organizers who are not ethnically representative of their own leadership’s power base. Organizations have to put an emphasis on modeling the inclusion principle before any large infusion of dues from newly organized workers of different ethnicities justifies the expense to the existing base. Failure to do so undermines the credibility of the organizer who tries to get workers of different ethnicities to work together as a unit in a campaign. Company attacks on leaders in private sector low-wage worker organizing efforts are now universal. Leaders are isolated from co-workers through arbitrary schedule and assignment changes, their hours are cut, and they are fired. In addition to these attacks, in developing countries leaders and their families face violence on and off the job and even incarceration. Organizations must assume these attacks will occur and have a plan in place to counter the fear and disorganization that is the employer’s strategy. Figuring out whom to pressure and how Organizing has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. In the 1960s and before, one individual or one company owned a workplace. The nature of ownership has changed - owners are now huge complex clusters that are diversified in both their holdings and operations. Simply figuring out whom to pressure involves complex research. To be successful, an organization has to figure out what those decision makers must do to effect change and how to convince them. This is a complex and demanding field but multi-year campaigns can be considerably shortened if organizations can invest their resources in this crucial research. Forging sustainable alliances between unions and community-based groups It takes an entire community to win fights to organize low-wage workers. A few new models have succeeded in changing the local balance of power and creating a viable environment for organizing new groups, notably the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE). LAANE has organized and coordinated unions, churches, respected academics, and community organizations in each of their successful campaign efforts. In the wake of passage of several living wage ordinances in the Los Angeles area, LAANE worked with SEIU Local 1877, HERE Local 814 and the national AFL-CIO in a major organizing campaign at LAX. As a result of these efforts, virtually all major employers at LAX are now covered by the living wage ordinance and most also now have union contracts. It’s also important to create a community “nest” that supports workers in long-term battles. In the five year Park 55 Hotel struggle in San Francisco, HERE Local 2 organized a broad spectrum of supporters who joined workers in weekly sit ins and other actions. In several parts of the country Jobs With Justice has played a pivotal role in marshalling on-going broad community support for workers engaged in struggles to establish their unions in campaigns to win their first union contract. Successfully competing with the captains of industry for credibility Building on thriving community alliances, organizations must also win media campaigns to reach the larger community. Companies that control the low-wage industries can and do buy media, politicians and service organizations’ loyalties with relatively little money. These business interests regularly employ or contract professional staff who develop relationships with key main stream media editors, columnists, and reporters. Corporate leaders often have social relationships with the owners and publishers of the local main stream media who share an aversion to organized employees. These relationships usually result in substantial favorable media coverage for the companies which employ low-wage workers and little attention to the concerns raised by organizing workers. Escalating and sustaining the fight over time Successful organizing requires the capacity to expand and sustain the fight for as long as it takes to compel a company to settle a dispute. The employers of low-wage workers have the resources to wage long fights against workers who are increasingly marginalized in society. To be victorious in a long-haul campaign, organizations must have a sharp and focused strategy. They must create a strong and diverse leadership committee able to call on all the elements of the workforce to respond; they must develop strong ties in the community that will support workers in rallies, with pressure on companies, and perhaps financially; they must cultivate an intelligent corporate strategy; and they must win the public relations war with corporate communications departments. Organizational regeneration An organization’s on-going viability depends on its capacity to grow in people, effectiveness and spirit. Developing that capacity requires that the organization become purposeful; every step the organization takes, both internally in structure, planning and staffing, and externally in campaign decisions, must be planned and intended by the leadership. This limits the amount of time leaders spend in damage control, putting out fires caused by unanticipated problems. Organizations must develop a mitosis type of culture. As with the biological process at the essence of reproductive life, all participants in the organization must see their roles as passing on to others all their knowledge and spirit, replicating themselves in the organization. The organization must create meaningful involvement at all levels and must constantly develop new leadership opportunities that will attract young talent to stay for the long haul. Cultivating new people and new energy must be a continuous process, so that the organization can have a life of its own, not dependent on the presence of a few charismatic leaders. Thirdly, organizations truly committed to social change must take on the task of changing their very characters. A service-oriented union, for example, must change its priority to organizing, focused entirely on expanding and strengthening the base of workers. These internal cultural changes are consuming, exilerating and painful. Accomplishing these tasks requires an expertise in which our organizations and leaders are not schooled. Businesses rely on employees educated at the business schools of universities and the skills of high-powered consulting firms to help facilitate continuous organizational design changes to maximize their competitive edge. In the movement for low-wage worker rights, we do not have these resources, but we desperately need them. We cannot seriously contemplate tripling the base of organized working poor without addressing this need. In the early 80s, unions and worker organizations had to develop the research capacity to identify effective pressure points in ever more complex corporate structures and inter-relationships. This is now a well-developed field of study. Today we face another challenge: we must find new ways to continuously transform and regenerate our organizations. By Peter Cervantes-Gautschi 1 I was funded by the French American Charitable Trust, the New World Foundation and the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Fund at Shelter Rock. 2A partial listing of groups in the low-wage workforce includes African-American, Native American, Chicano, Mexican, Salvadorian, Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, Honduran, Jamaican, Haitian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Peruvian, Brazilian, Korean, Burmese, Lao, Thai, Hong Kong Chinese, Southern Chinese, Filipino, Samoan, Hawaiian, Trukese, Nigerian, Somalian, Ethiopian, Oromo, Eritrean, Russian, Bosnian, Ukrainian and European-American workers from varying sections of the U.S.
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