Kati L. Griffith

Worker Centers and Labor Law Protections: Why Aren't They Having Their Cake?

As private sector labor union membership in the United States dwindles, the number of worker centers continues to grow. Given worker centers’ focus on low-wage workers largely engaged in service sectors of our post-industrial economy and their relatively recent entrance into the field of United States labor relations, scholars and commentators are increasingly debating the applicability of the eighty-year-old National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to the worker organizing activities of these emerging organizations. Unlike prior work on the relationship between the NLRA and worker centers, this Essay considers the extent to which NLRA protections have been helpful to worker center organizing efforts to date and proposes several theories to explain why worker centers have not turned to the NLRA’s protections more proactively.

Immigration Advocacy as Labor Advocacy

As immigration reform efforts continue to experience fits and starts in Congress, immigrant and non-immigrant workers have joined together to advocate for immigration reform at the federal level and to protest the surge of exclusionary immigration measures at the state and local levels. These advocacy efforts demonstrate that many workers connect immigration law to workplace conditions. This article develops a comprehensive analytical framework for viewing immigration advocacy as labor advocacy, even though these two statutory regimes have completely separate policymaking processes. It uncovers the historical roots of the interplay between immigration law and labor issues. Similarly, it elaborates the ways that a workplace law, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), has the potential to protect a broad range of workers’ immigration advocacy efforts. To date, scholars have largely focused on how restrictive aspects of immigration law narrow workplace protections, such as minimum wage and safety standards. In contrast, this article shows how the interaction between immigration law and workplace law can broaden workplace protections in some circumstances. By constructing an analytical lens that views immigration law in relationship to workplace law, this article illuminates why it is crucial to simultaneously consider these two statutory regimes. In doing so, it also reveals new opportunities for immigrant and worker advocates to come together around shared interests.

Introduction to a Special Issue on the Impact of Immigrant Legalization Initiatives: International Perspectives on Immigration and the World of Work:

This article is the third in a series to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the ILR Review. The series features articles that analyze the state of research and future directions for important themes the journal has featured over its many years of publication. In this issue, we also feature a special cluster of articles and book reviews on one of the most critical labor market issues across the globe—the legalization and integration of immigrants into national labor markets. Despite the urgent need for immigration reform in the United States, there is a paucity of US research that looks at the impact of a shift from unauthorized to legal immigrant status in the workplace. The US immigration literature has also paid little attention to immigrant legalization policies outside of the United States, despite the fact that other countries have implemented such policies with far more regularity. The articles in this special issue draw on studies of legalization initiatives in major immigrant destinations: Canada, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Together they underscore the importance of cross-national perspectives for understanding the range of legalization programs and their impact on immigrant workers, the workplace, and the labor market. These findings contribute to key questions in migration scholarship and inform the global policy debate surrounding the integration and well-being of immigrants.