“We are the Union”: Care Work,Unions,and Social Movements

Abstract

This article explores the potential confluences between the labor movement and calls for a “care movement.” Scholars of care work focus on the paid and unpaid labor that provides for the health, education, and well-being of a society—including taking care of children as well as those who are ill or elderly. Using care as a frame for thinking about social change has the potential to be part of a renewed labor movement, and in this paper, I describe three different ways of conceptualizing care as part of union organizing as well as of a more broadly defined labor movement. Do low-wage care workers represent the new face of the “working class”? Or does “care work” represent a broad occupational category that unites workers on the basis of that shared experience across traditional class boundaries? Perhaps the concept of care offers the possibility of uniting workers even more broadly on the basis of their shared family and community needs? I argue that labor scholars and activists could make important conceptual and strategic gains by linking to the idea of care in all three of these ways. In particular, the notion that all workers should have the right to care could be a powerful discourse in efforts to expand union participation and labor's impact on far-reaching social change.