REDEFINING THE BOUNDARIES OF WORK: APPAREL WORKERS AND COMMUNITY UNIONISM IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

This article focuses on new forms of community unionism that are being developed by apparel workers. Based on ethnographic research in Mexico and the United States, it argues that because so many apparel workers are women, because women have been excluded from unions in many contexts, because the relationship of apparel workers to their employers is “flexible” and unstable, and because the high turnover rates associated with low wages and poor working conditions erode long-term relations among workers themselves, workers find it easier to organize outside the factory than within it. Challenging traditional definitions of what kinds of issues labor activism should address, women working in the apparel sector have invented radical new agendas for social change that confront the state as well as industry, attend to the social reproduction of their communities as well as the wage, and call on employers to recognize that workers have gendered and fallible bodies.

The author thanks the National Science Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Graduate School for providing support for this project; Greta Krippner and Molly McGrath for their ethnographic work in Mexico; and Micaela di Leonardo, Caitrin Lynch, and Gay Seidman for helpful comments on this article.

Key Words:

• gender
• labor
• community unionism
• apparel industry
• United States
• Mexico

Notes

The author thanks the National Science Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Graduate School for providing support for this project; Greta Krippner and Molly McGrath for their ethnographic work in Mexico; and Micaela di Leonardo, Caitrin Lynch, and Gay Seidman for helpful comments on this article.

Apparel Industry Magazine 1999. Apparel's ‘big six’ retailers grab a 90% share. Industry News, June

Gladwell, Malcolm 1999. Annals of retail. Clicks and mortar. The New Yorker, 6 December

Juárez NúZez, Huberto 2002. Industria Maquiladora del Vestido: Estructura, Proceso de Trabajo e Impactos Sociales. Working Paper, Facultad de Economía, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico