Social movement dynamics of labor organizing: Transcending market-based approaches to labor revitalizatio

This dissertation seeks to expand the boundaries of conventional labor sociology and labor studies by drawing attention to movement activity occurring outside the traditional collective bargaining domain. The central questions are: (1) How might analyzing the labor movement as a social movement open new avenues of inquiry and contribute to current labor movement theorizing? (2) Do innovative efforts by non-traditional labor movement actors---such as community based organizations---represent new mechanisms by which movement rebirth might occur? I contend that fully understanding the dimensions and possibilities of labor transformation requires scholars and practitioners to fundamentally alter established analytic suppositions. Specifically the work challenges the common assumptions treating union density as the sole source of movement power, trade unions as the exclusive movement organization, and organizing success measured in terms of union recognition and contracts. The project design consists of two phases. The first maps the dimensions of the "new" labor movement to identify the scope, type and quality of activity emblematic of labor revitalization. The second phase is comprised of two in-depth case studies: an analysis of the union organizing campaign of graduate teaching assistants at the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California, the other focuses on the efforts by the Garment Worker Center to organize immigrant workers in Los Angeles. Analysis is based on data gathered from participant observation, extensive fieldwork and interviews with California-based labor leaders, community activists, labor scholars, organizers and workers. This work contributes to the sociology of labor revitalization by drawing attention to alternative organizational forms and innovative organizing approaches and by demonstrating the theoretical and strategic potential of applying a social movement lens to analyses of the contemporary US labor movement.