“Taking on Corporate Bullies”: Cintas,Laundry Workers,and Organizing in the 1930s and Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Based on interviews with workers and organizers, union and company records, legal documents, and media sources, this article compares laundry unionism in the 1930s and early 2000s at Cintas, North America’s largest industrial launderer and uniform rental provider. Employing resource mobilization theory, social movement unionism, and collective identity theory, the article argues that laundry workers were able to organize in the 1930s because of the simultaneous presence of union resources and internal activist solidarities at the shop floor level. While UNITE HERE (now Workers United) has run an innovative comprehensive campaign to organize Cintas, the absence of solidarity on the shop floor has impeded organization.