Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Imagine a justice system built on rigorous evidence, not gut instincts or educated guesses about what works and what doesn't.
More people could access the civil justice they deserve.
The criminal justice system could be smaller, more effective and more humane.
The Access to Justice Lab here at Harvard Law School is producing that needed evidence. And this podcast is about the challenge of transforming law into an evidence based field.
I'm your host, Jim Greiner and this is proof over precedent.
This week we're bringing you a student voice.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Low income wage earners face constant access to justice problems. In this podcast, student Andrew Garcia interviews HLS professor Sharon Block about a type of organization that attempts to address access to justice issues, among other things.
That organization is called a worker center. Listen in here. My name's Andrew Garcia. I'm a 3 year old at Harvard Law School in the Access to Justice Lab with Professor Greiner, and today I'm sitting with the renowned Professor Sharon Block. Your reputation precedes you as an attorney, as professor of law and practice, as a former government official across agencies, and presently as executive director for the center for labor and a Just Economy.
Thank you for taking the time today.
I previously before law school, was the executive director of a worker center in New York.
And obviously that channeled into the work that I'm doing now at school.
And the topic for my research for my last blog post was on just the incidence of wage theft and the way that it's rising and the way that it affects immigrants and workers in New York, but also, I guess nationally.
And I did not break from my pattern. I just went straight to worker centers.
[00:01:50] Speaker C: And can I ask you, what was, what was your worker center?
[00:01:53] Speaker B: It was called El Centro de Migrante, but was the Staten Island Immigrant Center. And I was there from right around the time Covid started to 2023 when I started law school. And I did, as you can imagine, a lot of worker related work. We didn't have any attorneys on staff, but we primarily served day laborers and immigrant workers and focused our mission, our efforts on worker services. Whether it was helping connect them to wakestep services, prepare them like worker development, or using that kind of foot in the door with them for other wraparound services that they or their family might need.
And then I remember even then, before I had given touch with the legal field of the world, there was this framing of worker centers as these de facto unions.
And I thought that was interesting, but wasn't truly sure, perhaps aware of what that meant entirely and perhaps the distinctions from unions proper.
And so my hope with this Conversation and with this research that I'm working on is to kind of parse out the differences between what a worker center is from a union, but perhaps more generally. And it's something that I saw on the CJLE website was I wrote it down because I really liked the language labor of organization innovations. When you think as I'm included in your website, when you think about the next generation of worker organizations, what does that mean for you?
[00:03:26] Speaker C: So one reason why I've been long interested in worker centers is related to the idea organizing workers across a sector as opposed to a particular workplace. So traditional unions, because of the way that the law derives organizing traditional unions are forced to organize workplace by workplace. Actually sometimes a subunit within a workplace.
But worker centers generally, as you well know, will organize across usually across a sector.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:07] Speaker C: So you'll have a worker center will traditionally have as its members represented, serves immigrant workers in the restaurants or day laborers.
And the way that kind of organizing can one get a better picture of how the sector is working in the economy? What are the issues related to conditions in that sector as opposed to more idiots, what is it in this particular workplace, which I think is really important. I think employers often will look and are aware across their sector of what the issues are. So there's somewhat of a symmetry that way. But I also think it's much more powerful.
You may know it's how actually the labor movement works in much of the rest of the war is there's organizing and bargaining across the sector.
And if you can set common standards across the sector, you take away the incentive for employers to try to compete with each other based on their ability to drive down labor costs.
And while worker centers don't engage in formal collective bargaining, there is something to I think looking at the conditions across the sector. And often worker centers will use litigation as a way to address setting standards. And so you can have the worker center coordinating campaigns, even if it's just through education, know your rights, know that you should be paid minimum wage and overtime, and making sure that all of the members of the worker center know that you're then empowering across that whole sector the possibility of pushing for compliance with those standards. So it is.
It's not sectoral collective bargaining like we think about in other countries. But there's an element and some of the benefit of that mode of organizing and bargaining through a worker center that you don't get in workplace by workplace. Organized.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: And noticed on the wall out there, there's the Olympic educator, I think flowchart almost out There And I also remember on the website there was almost kind of equalizing quite. But comparing or equal weighting of educators with organizers. Do you think that's something that comes through a little bit more with peer centers? Is it just as present in unions?
[00:06:57] Speaker C: I think unions would good unions spend a lot of time educating their members certainly about their rights, but probably more at the my understanding more at the core of what worker centers do.
Things like know your rights, you know, true name and even helping workers understand their rights even outside of a labor and employment context.
So most workers that are certainly unfamiliar with tend to serve immigrant populations also know your rights in terms of immigration law. Of course I know there are worker centers that will help workers with their rights as tenants because most of their members don't own they are tenants. And there's that tight connection between your economic political well being meaning are you getting paid at work and your ability to pay your rent is so closely connected.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:02] Speaker C: So I think that in light of the population that worker centers serve and the tools that are available as not an a formal union like that education role just is more prone to workers unions.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Something that's come up in the Access to Justice lab has been my personal perhaps confusion and a stark differentiation between access to justice and justice. And I think sometimes I have trouble navigating where I fall when I'm in my research, when I'm pursuing these different topics.
But at the same time I think even like worker centers specifically operate in this gray area where they are simultaneously perhaps less structured like a union and less confined to an industry, but also less confined to the access that they're seeking for their workers.
Has that distinction come up for you in your work? Do you see a meaningful distinction between the two?
[00:09:11] Speaker C: Hello. It's an interesting question. This is maybe a little bit to the side of that question. But in the Obama, in the second term of the Biden of the Obama administration, our secretary of labor was Tom Perez. And Tom, he said that like often the law is very siloed. Like even if you looked at the Department of Labor's website, there was like the wage and hour division.
You had to know about the wage and hour division.
You had to know that the wage and hour division enforces minimum wage and overtime law. If you are a worker trying to figure out like how do I find out what my rights are? Like how many workers actually know that? And then you have to know that OSHA is where you go if you're afraid of getting hurt on the job. Obvious is that you know Workers don't have wage an hour problem or an OSHA problem. They have get I'm getting screwed at work problem.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:11] Speaker C: And I absolutely that one thing I've been interested in, although I'm a labor lawyer, so I tend to think it just about the hours in the day. But poor people don't actually even have just an I'm getting screwed at work problem. They have an I'm getting screwed in life problems.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:30] Speaker C: And there's a whole constellation of issues that kind of travel together for poor people that are often about their rights as tenants, as workers, as people who have to rely on public transportation, as immigrants for many.
And again, another reason why I think worker centers are so interesting because they do have that flexibility to see what are the problems that our members are most concerned about and how can we then address those needs. Because we all know if you were vow you are not going to be a good worker if you are worried about getting evicted or you have been evicted, if you can access your SNAP benefits and so you're not eating properly, again, you're not going to be a good worker. And the way that the law tends to silo these issues really works I think to the detriment particularly it's for
[00:11:34] Speaker B: people in the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. And you talk about that a lot because we have these three discrete practice areas that operate and very siloed. But figuring out the ways to enact the practices is difficult but necessary. I feel like the housing any labor connection is very strong. And just recently I saw this article commenting on TSF proceedings and how like investigations abide apartment needs of children families. We want to meet their equivalents, maybe never blame the landlord for some of these that may be quite impacting the family and the reasoning during investigation in the first place. And I remember seeing that and being like, oh, that's a brace that I wouldn't have thought of. Right?
[00:12:17] Speaker C: Yeah. No, that's a great point. I do think that the labor movement is getting much more innovative in dealing with with the relationship between housing and labor. And you're seeing some bargaining in among federal unions around issues related to housing affordability because it is, you won. The problem is so out of control and so it's front and center for workers. I hear this from union folks all the time and they ask their members what do you care about? They're like housing.
So there's been some innovations of unions trying to facilitate affordable housing, just bringing that issue into how they think about what their members need more.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: You said trying to stop feudalism from coming back somehow. That's how interesting on that point, maybe not on the feudalism point, but towards the idea of unions and collective bargaining. Like I said earlier, when I think of worker organizations or many people think of worker organization, they think of unions. But for listeners, people who may not be as familiar with what collective bargaining power is or the National Labor Relations Board. I know we had spoken already about how worker centers work across sectors, but do you feel that they're meaningful distinctions between unions as conceptualized under the law and the way that workers tendencies operate perhaps whole newly.
[00:13:55] Speaker C: Well, yeah. So the law does set certain limitations on ways that unions can operate.
And so sometimes we like note the irony of the fact that like laws that were supposed to or thought of as empowering, the purpose is to empower workers.
That this is haven't been quite as contested more recently but certainly during the Obama administration we had a lot of concern about worker centers being labeled as unions forces of the law. And so the irony of these laws that were passed to the purpose of empowering workers, these worker organizations want to stay as far away from being covered by them as possible.
So there's that irony and it has to do with the formality that the law imposes upon unions on labor organizations that are formal labor organizations under the law have a lot of requirements around financial disclosure of the union of officers in the that lead the union have to do really in depth financial reporting. There are requirements around bylaws and frequently of elections for union leadership. So a lot of issues that are internal to the union that the law imposes these formalities on those forms.
And so again in the Obama administration we actually had there was, we had a whole series oversight requests and hearings about whether the Department of Labor was appropriately categorizing certain organizations as unions or not or as labor organizations as covered by labor law or not then. And a lot of the big worker centers and prominent worker centers in the country, Republicans were on the Hill were trying to get information about and to pressure Obama Department of Labor to categorize needs.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: I can imagine why they would do that or want to do what. But is there either specific to the cadre of Republicans, do you think? There are other issues that maybe aren't quite so apparent from that. Misclassification and alleged misclassification.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: There are issues related to I think accountability that can be valid about any nonprofit about the relationship between the leadership and the members and how responsive the leaders are to the members.
Unions are not an issue as long as there's no correction because leaders of Unions have again unable law. There have to be elections and if elections aren't run fairly then there are steps that members can take so that the law imposes these requirements fairness that we like. I teach a seminar in the fall on ways that workers organize outside of traditional labor and we talk about wolfer centers a lot. And my students are always very interested in worker centers and I ask them about this issue 1 what are those trade offs? And I think that can't hide from it like that level of accountability is different in a worker center than it is in a unit. But there are good leaders and not good leaders. And I think being work presenters if the leadership is takes advantage of that lack of formal accountability to not be responsive to their members they're going to be looking at an empty yep.
When they try to totally fulfill their mission.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: So worker centers and you perhaps as of late labor more generally are more and more often framed as an immigrants issue or seems to be more front of mind for immigrants because of his connection to immigration law and worker authorization when he has an immigration climate. Have there been any examples or experiences that stand out where you see the very obvious missed connection between immigrants and non immigrants in labor?
[00:18:56] Speaker C: I think the labor the sort of formal labor movement has come a really long way in being supported by immigrant labor and understanding that employers if employers can exploit any workers they're exploiting all workers and that the presence immigrant workers doesn't that is not what contributes to downward pressure on wages.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: That's just a talking point. Yeah.
[00:19:33] Speaker C: Economy is much more complicated than that.
So I think now there's a lot certainly than when I started doing this. There's much closer relationships between the labor new men and worker centers and much more support on labor for protecting immigrant workers. And we're seeing that now like the labor movement and this administration were in this just unbelievably terrible attacks upon immigrants in our country. The labor movement is stepping up is suing the more than any other through civil society type of organization.
I think that that means a lot
[00:20:19] Speaker B: and there's that's a common thread to the better tools available to worker centers from you mentioned earlier than moving litigation one that's interesting the collective and the
[00:20:31] Speaker C: power of people coming together whether you have a formal structure or not the law can provide more structure to that collective power.
But I think all workers, whether they're in a union or not understand that you are more powerful when you're together and that worker centers are all workers coming together to stand with each other in our common interests.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: How this might be going back to the access versus justice question, but reductively access seems to be clearing away to mechanizing labor enforcement that currently exists. But for example, in the wake of COVID the Coalition of Workforce Centers in New York, including Wyoming, organized this campaign that resulted in about $2 billion relief fund for excluded workers. And that was done achieved through the state legislature and obviously couldn't have been done without the legislative process. But whether it be through litigation or through the legislative process itself, do you feel that access to law may gain or policy may gain fits into access labor justice? Of course, but that access that may be present for included workers or citizen workers or non immigrant workers, but doesn't currently exist for excluded populations?
[00:22:05] Speaker C: For sure, although I question how much it's even included for the immigrant included workers today kept a political process incredibly unresponsive to the interest of anybody other than the most wealthy and well connected and concentrated corporations with the most concentrated power is it is a deep problem in our democracy that predates the crisis that we have in our democracy as a result of the Trump administration.
So yes, to be even more disempowered than disempowered is dead bully. Not a good plan to be. But again, I do think the labor movement has done a better job in recent years of advocating on behalf of all working people, seeing solidarity across all working people, whether they're union members or not, whether they're documented or not.
But the sad reality is we have elected representatives that just don't care.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Proof over precedent is a production of the Access to Justice Lab at Harvard Law School.
Views expressed in student podcasts are not necessarily those of the A J Lab.
Thanks for listening. If we piqued your interest, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Even better, leave us a rating or share an episode with a friend or on social media.
Here's a sneak preview of what we'll bring you next week.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to my third podcast episode for the Access to Justice Lab at the Harvard Law School.
My name is Andrew Garcia, I am a third year law student and today I am joined by Emily Irigoyen, a second year law student at Harvard. In addition to a full class schedule, Emily maintains a strong presence on campus as co president of the Harvard Immigration project for the 25 to 26 term and as a board member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. Her unparalleled advocacy has resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in legal judgments for her clients. Hundreds of pounds of food and basic supplies distributed to the greater Boston area in mutual aid efforts that she has organized. And she joins us today to talk about her work on the ground as a student attorney and active community member.
