Assessing Workers’ Power
Level II

RATIONALE:  To advocate and act effectively on behalf of workers’ rights, economic justice, and union growth, students must learn to assess the power and leverage available to both organized and unorganized workers in a variety of settings:  workplaces, communities, industries, sectors, and policy-making bodies at all levels of government.    Such an assessment encompasses the actual as well as the potential power of workers to address and anticipate challenges to their civil rights and economic security.

Identifying the sources of power on all levels – global, national, regional, and local – provides the basis for comprehensive strategic analyses directed toward greater social and economic justice.  For both unions and community-based organizations, an assessment of power is a necessary first step in developing strategies for addressing grievances, for mobilizing members, and for bargaining. Understanding the complex relations of power is also essential for building coalitions and for organizing, both internally and externally. 

This competency enables students to develop the tools to assess power relations in a variety of settings and circumstances.  Students should be able to compare cases in which workers have different sources of power and leverage and, in comparative context, explain the ways in which different conditions affect employment relations.  They should recognize that power stems from many sources and that asserting power effectively depends on a thorough assessment of power structures and dynamics.  Recognizing the interplay of external and internal sources of power, they will be able to consider options for meeting workers’ needs and promoting their interests.

COMPETENCY:  Can identify and assess sources of workers’ power in a variety of situations and on the basis of these assessments can suggest approaches for addressing workers’ problems and for strengthening workers’ organizations, such as labor unions, worker associations, and central labor councils.

CRITERIA:

1.      Identify and distinguish among varying sources of leverage that affect the balance of power in conflicts and/or negotiations between organized and unorganized workers and their employers.

1.      Choose three different types of cases in which workers or their organizations are attempting to solve problems and enhance their power.

2.      Using a framework for power analysis provided by the evaluator/instructor, describe the balance of power in these three cases and explain ways in which power is arrayed against workers.

3.      In each of the three cases above, identify the formal and informal assets as well as tapped and untapped resources workers have at their disposal and describe what the workers understand to be their strengths and weaknesses.

4.      Identify forms of formal and informal power available to workers in these three cases.

5.      Explain in each case what the workers could do to solve their problems and enhance their power.

PORTFOLIO LINKS:  You are expected to use the Level II Communications Portfolio writing standards as guidelines for the essays required by this competency.  At a minimum, writing should demonstrate Level I Communications Portfolio standards.

STANDARDS:

1.      For Criterion 1, the student must summarize and interpret three studies that analyze the sources of actual and potential leverage in conflicts and/or negotiations.  These cases may include one that does not directly apply to a situation involving a workplace or union.

2.      For Criterion 2, the three cases should be chosen with the approval of the evaluator and may include one or two based on sufficient personal experience.  Of the three cases, at least one should involve an aggrieved individual or group with access to  union representation, and one should involve a group of workers bargaining with an employer and/or mobilizing in response to conditions of employment.

3.      For Criterion 3, the description must account for the balance of power in different situations, including the forces that may enhance or diminish workers’ leverage.

4.      For Criteria 3 and 4, the student should develop with an evaluator and/or instructor a checklist of items that provide the criteria for a power analysis. These items could range from the strength of a steward-training program to the limits of the union contract in the case of individual or group grievance.  In the case of collective bargaining or another collective struggle against employers, the criteria might include the size, strength, and financial resources of a labor union, as well as an assessment of its leadership and capacity for mobilizing internal and external support.  Most cases should encompass economic conditions and related public policy. 

5.      Demonstration of the competency may be completed orally in a 20-minute presentation or in writing as an analytical essay.

EXAMPLES OF DEMONSTRATION:

1.      Prior Learning: A student who has worked in a large corporation in another country analyzes power that workers could gain and compares this case with conditions in two cases affecting workers in U. S. corporations.

2.      Independent Learning: A student undertakes a study of a unionized industry in the U.S. that has been subjected to plant closings and examines the ways in which unions exercised power in solving individual and group problems before the closing and the extent to which the union was able to mobilize its members and allies in efforts to stop the plant closing.

3.      Field Project:  A student working with an immigrant workers’ center analyzes the sources of leverage that might enhance the power of workers in the labor market or community whose needs the center addresses.  The student then compares these conditions with two cases that present different sources of power and leverage.

4.      Course:  A student completes a CPCS course or an appropriate transfer course addressing the competency.