Collective Bargaining

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 has 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 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.

The process of collective bargaining usually results in a collective bargaining agreement (CBA), a legally binding agreement that lays out policies agreed to all parties. These contracts ensure the affected residents will have a voice in the development process. By having community-based organizations and developers come to an agreement, a CBA can help promote the core values and accountability in both parties involved. For example, The One Hill Coalition was the first CBA to be negotiated in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the Lower Hill site were the former Civic Arena stood. Before PPG Paints Arena was completed many groups and community organizations came together to ensure that major economic plans provided benefits to the communities in which they plan to develop. The collaboration between the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Sports and Exhibition Authority (SEA), the Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), the City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County achieved a master plan for neighborhood improvements in the Hills District of 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 many units?
Most tenant unions are membership and donation organizations that tackle common problems like rent increases, eviction attempts, repairs and maintenance, harassment 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.

How much does a family pay?
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 longtime 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.

Who qualifies?
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.

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Further Reading

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING