How the west was won: an inside view of the seiuʼs strategies and tactics for organizing home care workers in oregon Available to Purchase

Using participatory action research, this paper explains how the Service Employees International Union and community groups collaborated to organize home care workers in Oregon. The tactics used include policy borrowing and tinkering, a ballot initiative, coalition building, lobbying, and legislative politics. This approach to organizing low-wage human service providers has important implications for other unions. Home care workers are similar to many other human service providers because the funding stream for their jobs is public. In essence, they are quasi-public sector employees. The tactics employed by the SEIU may serve as a “handle” for organizing other human service workers, who are employed by nongovernmental organizations, but are paid through federal, state, and local government funds.