INTRODUCTION

Framing strategies have always been central to advancing working class interests in an often unfavorable economic and political climate. The threshold reaction to collective struggles by workers is skeptical at best, and often hostile, in a society that celebrates individualism, control of private property, and entrepreneurial success. The fact that workers' methods of mobilization involve disruptive tactics such as protests, strikes, picketing, and boycotts only amplifies knee-jerk antipathy toward organized labor in the United States, even though these are time-honored methods of contestation in a democracy.

How workers and their unions define terms, present arguments, tell stories, amplify resonance, and evoke responses is critical to the outcomes of their struggles in the workplace and in society. The trade union movement has always needed middle-class reformist, professional, and intellectual allies to make organizing and collective bargaining gains and to win legislation favorable to workers. This chapter examines how workers have framed their appeals to potential allies in the past decade using new human rights arguments alongside more traditional economic justice arguments, and how changing discourse affects prospects for success or failure in such alliances. In particular, it looks at framing strategies in labor's efforts to win labor law reform after Barack Obama became president of the United States in 2009.