Day Laborers' Group To Help LIUNA With Organizing, Recruitment
Can recruitment of day laborers energize union organizing of residential construction workers?
Union officials say it can and point to two separate partnerships between the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), an advocacy group for day laborers, and the AFL-CIO and the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA). LIUNA General President Terence O’Sullivan says NDLON will help his union in its largest organizing effort to date, a drive to unionize the residential construction industry. The effort, just kicking off, will start in three cities: Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and then expand to other cities nationwide. “We’re on the ground, but we’re not ramped up yet,” O’Sullivan says. “It will be ramped up in the next six months.” O’Sullivan says that NDLON will help LIUNA in its outreach to the largely immigrant workforce in the organizing campaign, which is targeting approximately 85,000 workers. “The residential construction market is largely unorganized, largely immigrant workers, and we see it as a real growth industry for our union,” O’Sullivan says.