Taking on "Big Chicken": The Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance

Although efforts to organize workers in the new economy have attracted considerable scholarly and media attention, significant battlegrounds remain in old-economy industries that have successfully resisted union penetration. Unions have been employing new strategies in their attempts to recruit workers in those unorganized sectors. This case study analyzes one such initiative, the Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance (DPJA), an innovative labor-community coalition that is supporting union organizing in the nation's expanding poultry industry. DPJA's experiences illustrate some of the challenges unions face in entering alliances guided by a community organizing approach and offer significant insights into how enduring labor-community coalitions can be developed. Its experience also illuminates the current debate over the extent to which internal union culture must change in order for organizing to succeed, and suggests how labor-community coalitions can influence union strategy.