Building
Labor-Community
Alliances

to Put Low-Income Communities on the High Road

Unions have always worked to mobilize resources, talents and energies to create jobs and economic conditions that help people out of poverty and put working class communities on the road to middle-class lives. Through wages, benefits and skill upgrades negotiated at the bargaining table, and through political and community action to win the minimum wage, the eight-hour day, insurance and pension benefits, unions have raised living standards all across America.

But poverty continues to exist, and it continues to be concentrated in particular neighborhoods and communities.
A number of union-community initiatives are actively working to change that reality as part of creating high road communities.

Good Jobs - the Real Answer to Poverty

The best way to move people out of poverty and toward middle class is good jobs. On the one hand, this is fundamentally an individual process - as workers are placed in new jobs. But given the barriers facing people with limited skills and work experience, it must also be a community undertaking if it is ultimately going to be successful.

Many of those living in low-income communities are shut off from traditional job referral networks, because their neighbors also lack good jobs. That means they don't find out about jobs that are available.

They often face barriers of language, education and training that also keep them from getting jobs even when they do find out about them. Substandard schools and lack of support for education and learning leave them ill-prepared for the workplace and labor market. Inadequate transportation and childcare facilities are also common.

Negative stereotypes also create barriers on all sides: cynicism, doubt and negative preconceptions on the part of neighborhood residents and distrust among potential employers are often compounded by racial, cultural and economic gaps. To many living in low-income communities - especially minority communities - union workers often look like the "haves" in a world in which they are "have-nots."

The biggest obstacle of all, however, is often the tendency not to take seriously the problems of poverty and exclusion from jobs.

A number of promising community alliances involving unions are demonstrating that it is possible to change this equation - to build solid initiatives designed to address the whole range of problems facing low-income workers interested in finding better jobs.

Alameda Corridor Jobs Coalition
Poverty Reduction Project - Modesto
Sacramento Valley Organizing Project

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