About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

46 Berkeley J. Emp. & Lab. L. 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/berkjemp46 and id is 1 raw text is: ARTICLES Alt-Legal Services: Re-Visioning Lawyers' Role in the Fight for Worker Power Elizabeth Fordt Can litigation build worker power? This question is the subject of a long- running debate about lawyers' roles in the labor movement, and particularly within the community-based worker advocacy and service organizations known as worker centers. On one side, scholars argue that legal services undermine worker power, atomizing workers by encouraging them to focus on individual solutions. But others respond that legal services especially recovering workers' unpaid wages through wage-and-hour litigation is essential to improving workers' material conditions and demonstrating status quo vulnerability. While many organizations have worked hard to harmonize these two perspectives, the debate has served as a stumbling block, stoking internal conflict between organizers and lawyers. In the worst case, it undermines the organizations themselves. In this Article, I argue that the two sides of this debate are talking past each other because they are assuming different understandings of worker power. Thus, the Article first develops a taxonomy of worker power, focusing on countervailing power (power over) and community organizing power (power with). Building on this more precise understanding of worker power, I argue that it is possible to construct a worker center-affiliated law office that both exerts power over employers to force them to stop stealing workers' wages and builds individual and collective power within communities of workers. Far from DOI: https://doi.org/10.15779/Z38DR2PBO4 T Elizabeth Ford is an Assistant Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. Many thanks to Charlotte Garden, Lisa Brodoff, and Ron Slye for their unwavering support and invaluable help, and to my colleagues Maggie Chon, Erin Carr, Steve Bender, Richard Delgado, and Jean Stefancic whose thoughtful comments made this article much better. I am indebted as always to the Clinical Law Review's Writers' Workshop participants, especially to Paul Trembley for taking extra time to read and comment on this draft. Additionally, I am grateful to the participants in the 2023 Colloquium on Labor and Employment Law Scholarship for their encouragement and brilliance. Finally, huge thanks to my Research Assistant, Julie Phillips, who deserves immense credit for the work in these pages. 1

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most