Organizing Immigrants in America's Sweatshops: The Los Angeles Garment Worker Center.

As labor scholars search for answers to reverse the long decline in labor movement power, the analytic orthodoxy of labor studies treat union density as the sole measure of movement strength. This assumption leads to treating trade unions as the constitutive movement organization and to the exclusion of alternative forms of movement organizations operating outside of the traditional collective bargaining framework. Through an in-depth examination of the Garment Worker Center in Los Angeles this paper explores the potential of one alternative organizational form and assesses the role organizations like it might play in revitalizing the US labor movement. Based on preliminary analysis of data gathered from participant observation and interviews with staff and workers I conclude that the Center's effort to build community raise political consciousness and address the immediate material needs of workers, represents a viable movement-building strategy deserving of our attention as labor shifts to a social movement footing. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]