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

Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition activists (TIRRC)

By: Mike Elk September 17, 2018

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 who covered everything from Lula & the Brazilian labor movement to major league baseball. He spent years covering union organizing in the South for The Guardian and was labeled by the New York Times as an "abrasive gadfly" for exposing within the labor movement. Raised in a UE union family in Pittsburgh, Elk was illegally for union organizing at Politico in 2015 and used his NLRB settlement to start the crowd-funded Payday Report. He lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh and is fluent in both Pittsburghese and Portuguese, which he learned when attending journalism school at PUC-Rio de Janerio. Email: [email protected]

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