SAN JOSE, Calif. -- With a Prada bag and the air of an entrepreneur, Amy Dean is an unlikely labor trailblazer.
But as head of the AFL-CIO's Silicon Valley office, Dean, at just 37 years of age, has become the labor movement's chief navigator, its Christopher Columbus, in the roiling and uncharted seas of the new economy.Working in a flourishing, free-wheeling valley that has hardly welcomed the often stodgy labor movement, she spends her days thinking up ways for unions to be relevant to workers in booming high-tech companies, and labor leaders nationwide are tripping over themselves to copy her ideas.
To help the valley's horde of temporary workers who have no health insurance, she has taken the unorthodox step of creating a nonprofit temp agency that, unlike most for-profit agencies, offers health coverage that temporary workers can afford.
She has established a research institute that has reshaped California's economic debate by churning out weighty studies, including one on the growing gulf between the haves and have-nots in a valley often thought to have mostly millionaire haves.
Through a full-court political press, she and her army of union members have pressured San Jose to enact the country's highest living-wage law, requiring city contractors to pay workers at least $9.50 an hour, nearly double the minimum wage many were earning.
And she has proposed using a hiring-hall concept to provide health and pension benefits to high-tech workers, who often jump from job to job.
"She's a new breed of labor leader," said Harley Shaiken, a professor of industrial relations at the University of California at Berkeley. "She's put a number of issues about Silicon Valley on the public agenda -- inequality, temporary workers and the lack of affordable housing. She's hit nerves in a way that resonates."
Her goal, Dean acknowledges, is nothing short of turning the AFL-CIO's Silicon Valley operation into a model for the rebirth of the labor movement, just as the valley's entrepreneurs have brought about a rebirth of American industry.
So far Dean's efforts have made a difference in the lives of many of the valley's have-nots. But all her strategizing has failed to strike a chord with the valley's haves, like software designers, who, happy with their stock options, often think unions are as useful as manual typewriters. Her biggest challenge is figuring out a way for unions to connect to these high-tech workers.
Her exploits, especially the living-wage law, are already irking many business executives, fueling worries that labor's growing power is signaling that a valley renowned as a fertile ground for entrepreneurs is turning unfriendly to business.
Dean put on such a bravura performance in pushing through the living-wage ordinance that business executives speak of her with equal parts awe and anxiety, fearing what her next battleground will be.
When the San Jose City Council was debating the wage ordinance Dean, all 5-feet-3 of her, came on like a petite field marshal. She packed the chamber with allies, lined up clergymen and community leaders to testify, and, in a sure-voiced speech, nearly brought down the house.
"There's part of me that envies her because she's so good at making an emotional, passionate pitch," said Steve Tedesco, president of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, who fought the living-wage proposal, saying it would hurt San Jose's business image. "She's tenacious. She doesn't tilt at windmills."
Instead, she tilts at what she views as economic injustice, and she does so by mobilizing the valley's union movement to back her crusades. Five years ago, Dean took the helm of the South Bay Central Labor Council, becoming the youngest person to head one of the AFL-CIO's 600 local councils.
While many of her fellow Generation Xers see unions as irrelevant and outmoded, Dean says she is devoting her life to labor because she is convinced it is the only movement that can lift America's have-nots and stop the nation's rightward tilt.
"Why do I spend so much time in the heart of this new economy working with unions to build a voice for working people?" she said. "It has everything to do with whether we can revitalize an institution that so many people in this country depend on. It's the only vehicle in this country that can balance the political landscape."
Dean is a rarity in labor, a movement not exactly known for promoting women, the young or those who spout new ideas. In a movement in which entrepreneurship is usually considered the enemy, she is an entrepreneur par excellence. And in a movement where blue jeans are favored, she wears pumps and gold bracelets, although her Ann Taylor look has not stopped her from earning the nickname, the Mother Jones of Silicon Valley.
Convinced that the labor movement should be a social movement, Dean has refocused the AFL-CIOs operation here so it helps not just unionized workers, but all workers, especially those, like janitors and temps, on the bottom rungs.
When Dean took labor's helm here, many high-flying high-tech companies were using cleaning contractors that paid their janitors the minimum wage and scant benefits. So, working with the Service Employees International Union, she led a Justice for Janitors campaign to pressure and embarrass giants like Apple Computer so they would force their cleaning contractors to pay janitors higher wages and grant union recognition.
"The labor movement was strongest when we were the moral voice in the community," Dean said. "That's when people were attracted to us, wanted to be part of us, wanted to be mobilized into action with us. That's when we just weren't seen as a special members club for a few people. Our job has to be helping folks who don't have a voice."