Painters’ Union Aims to Build Cross-Cultural Alliance in the South

Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition activists (TIRRC)

Writing for the Guardian, Payday Senior Labor Reporter Mike Elk looks at how the Painters’ Union’s new focus on organizing immigrants in Nashville is achieving results:

Ponce’s union is investing heavily to organize Latino workers in Nashville, where it currently has no traditional dues-paying members covered by union contracts that are Latino. Often Latino construction workers, despite being heavily skilled, are unable to join traditional unions because they lack documentation.

Last spring, the painters union launched a new worker center under the banner of Alianza Laboral that will allow workers in non-union workplaces to join the union as an affiliate member at half the dues of those covered by the union contract. The aim is to mobilize whole communities that otherwise couldn’t be a part to feel a sense of belonging in the labor movement.

For more, go to the Guardian. 

 

 

 

About the Author

Mike Elk
Mike Elk is an Emmy-nominated labor reporter and alumni of the Guardian. A native of Pittsburgh, Elk grew up in a UE union family. Elk was the only American reporter in the room with Lula on the morning of the election & traveled with him to the Oval Office. Credited by the Washington Post for being the first reporter to track the strike wave systematically, Elk started Payday Report using his NLRB settlement from being illegally fired for union organizing in 2015. He lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh and attended journalism school at PUC-Rio de Janeiro. He speaks both Portuguese and Pittsburgh fluently. His email is [email protected]

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