Description

Alienation and Resistance: New Possibilities for Working-Class Formation

This article examines the factors shaping class formation among hotel workers in Los Angeles, mostly Latino immigrants, employed by a Japanese-owned hotel and organized by the International Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees Union in the late 1990s. Using data from field research and interviews with workers, Zamudio argues that the emotional labor required of hotel workers, expected to be subservient and invisible, along with experiences of racism and nativism on and off the job, made alienation more salient than exploitation to their class-consciousness.

ethnicity, citizenship, labor-market segmentation, coalitions, New Labor Movement, class-consciousness, Los Angeles, Local 11

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 31, No. 3 (2004): 60-76