movementslabor

Movementslabor describes the intersection of social movements and labor organizing, focusing on how worker concerns are integrated into broader political campaigns and how movement networks amplify labor objectives. It includes traditional unions, worker centers, and non-unionized workers participating in coalitions.

In scholarship and practice, movementslabor analyzes cross-sector alliances, shared tactics, and power dynamics between labor groups and social movements. It emerged from increasing collaboration among climate justice campaigns, immigrant worker organizing, platform- and gig-economy activism, and community-based organizing in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Core features include coalition-wide leadership, reciprocal aid, strategic mobilization (strikes, demonstrations, digital campaigning), and attention to precarity, living wages, safety, and worker dignity. The approach emphasizes democratic governance within campaigns and seeks to align immediate labor demands with longer-term social-change goals.

Critics warn of potential tensions between movement agendas and labor priorities, risk of co-optation, and complexities of sustaining long-term collaboration across diverse groups. Proponents argue that movementslabor expands political and economic power by uniting workplace leverage with broad-based action, enabling more durable reforms.