Building Power

Abstract

Abstract:My first collective bargaining meeting took place in the laundry room of an apartment building in Williamsburg. After a months-long rent strike, the tenants I had helped to organize finally forced the landlord to recognize their association and to negotiate with them collectively. When the landlord's representatives arrived, they sat squeezed between broken washers and dryers in a basement that had not been properly maintained in years. They were surrounded by precisely the kind of neglect that had driven the tenants to organize in the first place. Over the next several months, the landlord agreed to most of the tenants' demands: building-wide rent reductions, apartment repairs, an end to retaliation against tenant association members, and a formal process for dealing with the tenants' association