Author: Jamie K. McCallum Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 0801469481 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 232
Book Description
News about labor unions is usually pessimistic, focusing on declining membership and failed campaigns. But there are encouraging signs that the labor movement is evolving its strategies to benefit workers in rapidly changing global economic conditions. Global Unions, Local Power tells the story of the most successful and aggressive campaign ever waged by workers across national borders. It begins in the United States in 2007 as SEIU struggled to organize private security guards at G4S, a global security services company that is the second largest employer in the world. Failing in its bid, SEIU changed course and sought allies in other countries in which G4S operated. Its efforts resulted in wage gains, benefits increases, new union formations, and an end to management reprisals in many countries throughout the Global South, though close attention is focused on developments in South Africa and India. In this book, Jamie K. McCallum looks beyond these achievements to probe the meaning of some of the less visible aspects of the campaign. Based on more than two years of fieldwork in nine countries and historical research into labor movement trends since the late 1960s, McCallum’s findings reveal several paradoxes. Although global unionism is typically concerned with creating parity and universal standards across borders, local context can both undermine and empower the intentions of global actors, creating varied and uneven results. At the same time, despite being generally regarded as weaker than their European counterparts, U.S. unions are in the process of remaking the global labor movement in their own image. McCallum suggests that changes in political economy have encouraged unions to develop new ways to organize workers. He calls these “governance struggles,” strategies that seek not to win worker rights but to make new rules of engagement with capital in order to establish a different terrain on which to organize.
Author: Kate Bronfenbrenner Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 0801461545 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
To meet the challenges of globalization, unions must improve their understanding of the changing nature of corporate ownership structures and practices, and they must develop alliances and strategies appropriate to the new environment. Global Unions includes original research from scholars around the world on the range of innovative strategies that unions use to adapt to different circumstances, industries, countries, and corporations in taking on the challenge of mounting cross-border campaigns against global firms. This collection emerges from a landmark conference where unionists, academics, and representatives of nongovernmental organizations from the Global South and the Global North met to devise strategies for labor to use when confronting the most powerful corporations such as Wal-Mart and Exxon Mobil. The workplaces discussed here include agriculture (bananas), maritime labor (dock workers), manufacturing (apparel, automobiles, medical supplies), food processing, and services (school bus drivers). Kate Bronfenbrenner's introduction sets the stage, followed by contributions describing specific examples from Asia, Latin America, and Europe. Bronfenbrenner's conclusion focuses on the key lessons for strengthening union power in relation to global capital.
Author: Peter Fairbrother Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136681841 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
Transnational trade union action has expanded significantly over the last few decades and has taken a variety of shapes and trajectories. This book is concerned with understanding the spatial extension of trade union action, and in particular the development of new forms of collective mobilization, network-building, and forms of regulation that bridge local and transnational issues. Through the work of leading international specialists, this collection of essays examines the process and dynamic of transnational trade union action and provides analytical and conceptual tools to understand these developments. The research presented here emphasizes that the direction of transnational solidarity remains contested, subject to experimentation and negotiation, and includes studies of often overlooked developments in transition and developing countries with original analyses from the European Union and NAFTA areas. Providing a fresh examination of transnational solidarity, this volume offers neither a romantic or overly optimistic narrative of a borderless unionism, nor does it fall into a fatalistic or pessimistic account of international union solidarity. Through original research conducted at different levels, this book disentangles the processes and dynamics of institution building and challenges the conventional national based forms of unionism that prevailed in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Author: Michael E. Gordon Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 9780801437793 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
Organized labour faces many challenges in the increasingly global economy, including the portability of technology and capital, and lowered trade barriers. This text, however, presents evidence that unions can survive and grow if labour is willing to co-operate across national borders. The book is a study of such co-operation as an effective weapon against the exploitation of workers in today's world.
Author: Jeffrey Harrod Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134443412 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
This edited collection examines the interaction between industrial relations and international relations in the global economy. The role of trade unions has changed significantly in the era of economic globalization and this book analyzes the key developments in union strategy on a local, national, regional and global level.
Author: Jeffrey Harrod Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 303
Book Description
This edited collection examines the interaction between industrial relations and international relations in the global economy. The role of trade unions has changed significantly in the era of economic globalization and this book analyzes the key developments in union strategy on a local, national, regional and global level.
Author: Verena Schmidt Publisher: International Labor Office ISBN: Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 220
Book Description
Bringing together papers from national and international experts from the Global Union Research Network (GURN), this book provides an overview of how trade unions around the world are responding to globalisation.Globalisation has proved a complex and multi-faceted process for workers, as are the strategies they must develop to face its challenges. The case studies in this volume demonstrate successful strategies undertaken by trade unions in Brazil, Bulgaria, the Caribbean, Colombia, India, Poland, the United Kingdom, Turkey as well as Southern and Eastern Africa. In the process, the contributors highlight issues crucial to trade unions in this period of fast-paced change, such as the struggle for transparent governance for a fairer globalisation, the implementation of labour standards, employment creation, social protection, poverty alleviation including meeting the UN's Millennium Development Goals and gender equality and more.It shows how trade unions are a key part in influencing the rules of globalisation to achieve a fairer globalisation, while also playing a role in implementing and enforcing these rules
Author: Richard Steier Publisher: State University of New York Press ISBN: 1438449569 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
Since 1980 Richard Steier has had a unique vantage point to observe the gains, losses, and struggles of municipal labor unions in New York City. He has covered those unions and city government as a reporter and labor columnist for the New York Post and, since 1998, as editor and featured columnist of the Chief-Leader, a century-old independent newspaper that covers city and state government in greater detail than today's mainstream news organizations. Drawing from his column with the Chief-Leader, "Razzle Dazzle," Enough Blame to Go Around describes in vivid terms how the changed economy has drastically altered the city's labor landscape, and why it has been difficult for municipal unions to adapt. There can be no doubt, he writes, that public employee unions have contributed to the problems that confront them today, including corruption and failed leadership. But at the same time and for all their flaws, he believes unions represent the best chance for ordinary people to receive fair economic treatment.
Author: Richard Schragger Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190246669 Category : POLITICAL SCIENCE Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
"Reigning theories of urban power suggest that in a world dominated by footloose transnational capital, cities have little capacity to effect social change. In City Power, Schragger challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that cities can and should pursue aims other than making themselves attractive to global capital. Using the municipal living wage movement as an example, Schragger explains why cities are well-positioned to address issues like income equality and how our institutions can be designed to allow them to do so"--
Author: Peter Cole Publisher: Wildcat ISBN: 9780745399591 Category : Industrial Workers Of The World Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Founded in 1905, Chicago's Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is a union unlike any other. With members affectionately called "Wobblies" and an evolutionary and internationalist philosophy and tactics, it rapidly grew across the world. Considering the history of the IWW from an international perspective for the first time, Wobblies of the World brings together a group of leading scholars to present a lively collection of accounts from thirteen diverse countries, revealing a fascinating story of anarchism, syndicalism, and socialism. Drawing on many important figures of the movement--Har Dayal, James Larkin, William D. "Big Bill" Haywood, Enrique Flores Mag n, and more--the contributors describe how the IWW and its ideals spread, exploring the crucial role the IWW played in industries such as shipping, mining, and agriculture. Ultimately, the book illuminates Wobblie methods of organizing, forms of expression, practices, and transnational issues, offering a fascinating alternative history of the group.
Author: Jamie K. McCallum
Author: Kate Bronfenbrenner
Author: Peter Fairbrother
Author: Michael E. Gordon
Author: Jeffrey Harrod
Author: Jeffrey Harrod
Author: Verena Schmidt
Author: Richard Steier
Author: Richard Schragger
Author: Peter Cole