Organizing the Organized: Structural Change, Organizing Strategies, and Member Participation in a Union Local of Service Workers

Abstract

Have you ever met Ernest [a union field representative]? He’s the one that started there, the first time. I remember that he came [to my building] and they were handling these vacation checks for my wife and myself. And we already considered that check gone. He went and said “No, you have the right to the check” . . . And he took his [notebook] and wrote down. “What’s your name? OK, I will look this up.” And then, shortly after, he comes back with the check. And from then on, he started to pull us in. I started alone among twenty-some that we were [at my building]. I started to go alone [to union meetings and rallies]. Then I took my wife, because the two of us worked together [as janitors]. And then we started to pull another one in, and another one, until I got almost everybody in . . . That’s how it was, with the talking and everything. (Interview with Domingo, activist worker; translation from Spanish, emphasis added by the author)