Since the Democrats’ victory last week, the unions are out in full force promoting a “pro-worker” agenda. Unfolding from six years in a “defensive crouch,” the unions now propose a series of policy measures to counter the growing economic vulnerability of many American working families due to stagnating wages, job insecurity, income volatility, and rising healthcare costs. The Democratic agenda includes a package of “economic policies that benefit everyone,” according to Rep. George Miller (D-CA), likely the next chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Critically, voters and the unions must respectively demand and pursue the universalism that the term “everyone” indicates. The case of rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina illustrates the political and cultural difficulties ahead in achieving this.

Before and since the storm, New Orleans is a poster child for economic insecurity and urban vulnerability due to the predominance of a low-wage, service and tourism-oriented economy. The AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor coalition have since descended on the Crescent City to create and fill needed jobs in construction and healthcare, mainly targeting New Orleans’s economically disenfranchised African-American population. Meanwhile, a cottage industry of workers’ rights activists has emerged throughout the Gulf Coast to protect the rights of the predominantly Latino workforce engaged in reconstruction.*

Simmering beneath the surface of activism for job creation and workers’ rights is a tension not unique to New Orleans, what labor activists refer to as the “black-brown divide.” In this case, black New Orleanians see reconstruction jobs filled by Latino workers, while they remain disconnected from the workforce. Moreover, labor’s decentralized and segregated history introduces the hurdle of integrating predominantly white Southern locals with black New Orleanians who need access to union jobs most. (Notably, the first graduates of Change to Win’s Service Employees International Union’s training classes in construction were all African-Americans.) And despite their common alignment around workers’ rights, unions and immigrant labor rights’ activists must overcome intra-union conflict and the “community-labor divide” about organizing methods and the role of unions in our diverse twenty-first century workforce.

In cities like New Orleans, and especially states throughout the South with rising immigrant populations and endemic poverty, organizing is essential to unions and labor activists seeking to bring at-risk populations into the mainstream economy where they can benefit from the proposals of the incoming Democratic congress. Furthermore, unions and labor activists can learn from one another on how to best advocate for economic incorporation and justice. Labor activists working with day laborer populations have strong experience in street and community organizing, while unions are struggling to shift their conceptions of organizing from the workplace to communities. Meanwhile, unions have an historic relationship with the Democrats and a strong lobbying base. To be true to their mission of fair labor for all workers, they must bring non-traditional labor activists into this lobbying base, not least because it opens up a whole new population of potential union members by tapping into networks of Latino workers around the U.S.

However, organizing will be compromised sharply unless unions, labor activists, politicians and all Americans challenge long held stereotypes about immigrants and the poor, particularly African-Americans and other minority groups living in poverty. An organizing and network conference held in April 2006 brought together 30 organizations committed to economic and racial justice in Gulf Coast recovery. This is one example of such efforts to overcome fissures among poor communities of color who are seeking the same justice outcomes. Progressives should look to border states like Arizona, where shifting demographics among whites, retirees, Hispanics and immigrants signal that the state is ready to have some thoughtful debate on managing immigration and adapting to the permanent, growing presence of Latino immigrants and residents. Progressives must pay attention to the changing demographics in our nation, the transnational ties these demographics give us to other social justice campaigns around the world, and embrace the opportunity for building a multi-ethnic coalition of activist voters with the potential to pursue social, economic and political equality at home and abroad.