Collective Bargaining

Collective Bargaining is a legal negotiation tool in which community groups and neighborhood residents collectively band together as tenants to negotiate with developers and landlords to improve building conditions, fight gentrification, and displacement. Typically, collective bargaining have been used by trade unions to negotiate agreements that can function as labor contracts between employers and the union. Across the country, tenants have organized similarly through Tenant Unions or Community Development Corporations against displacement and for affordable housing.

For example, City Life/Vida Urbana has helped tenants in the Boston area to employ a collective bargaining strategy on a building-by-building basis to negotiate specific agreements with landlords who have proposed large rent increases. Through "affordability agreements," this group was able to win housing subsidies and limits on rent increases in more than 40 buildings. At the core, a comprehensive collective bargaining strategy allows community groups to negotiate neighborhood-wide contracts between landlords and tenants that would regulate future rent increases, codify standards on repairs and renovations, guarantee automatic lease renewals and protect tenants from harassment.

In Pittsburgh, Homes for All, a recently-formed grassroots group that works for housing justice and affordable housing on a city-wide basis, represents the voice of tenant unions across the city. Part of their demands have been a national rent freeze, a freeze on all unjust evictions, community control over land and housing, and the right for all tenants to organize and bargain collectively with landlords.

How much does a family pay?

Most tenant unions are membership and donation organizations that tackle common problems like rent increases, eviction attempts, repairs and maintenance, harrassment by the landlord, lease questions, security deposits, and grassroots organizing. Rates to be a member vary depending on the union: In San Francisco a household membership is $65/year, in Washington State membership rates are $1/year for every $1000 of annual household income.

Who qualifies?

Using collective bargaining as a tool, community groups can develop a promising tenant organizing strategy that uses the framework of unions to apply it to tenant-landlord relations. Any community member, tenant, or long time resident can be part of the tenant union but the collective bargaining process is usually carried out by active local community, labor, faith-based, and political leaders that represent the interests of the union.

How many units?

Each tenant union has its own jurisdiction, and in some cases its particular neighborhood. In NYC, the Crown Heights Tenant Union has used collective bargaining since the mid-2000s to win housing subsidies and limits on rent increases in more than 40 buildings.

Further Reading