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Current
Issue
Volume 32, No. 3
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September2007
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Contents
Articles
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Global Labor Organizing in Theory and Practice
Abstract: Although the need to organize workers at the global level has become widely accepted, there are to date few concrete studies of global organizing campaigns. Four staff members from the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF) analyze the IUF's Nestlé/Coca-Cola Global Organizing Project in the light of the emerging literature on this topic. The IUF launched this ambitious organizing campaign in response to institutional demands and opportunities. Resources were identified to hire organizers working in the Global South to coordinate and support unions organizing at major global companies. Several case studies illustrate how a complex multilayered strategic organizing approach has succeeded in making headway against fierce antiunion resistance in some developing countries. The analysis also suggests that long-term sustainability of strategic global organizing efforts requires their successful application to organizing workers at global companies in industrialized countries as well as in the Global South. |
Paul Garver, Kirill Buketov, Hyewon Chong, Beatriz Sosa Martínez |
The Third Sleeve: Emerging Labor Newspapers and the Response of the Labor Unions and the State to Workers' Resistance in Vietnam
Abstract: This article focuses on how the Vietnamese General Confederation of Labor (VGCL) responds to workers' strikes. A complex, non-monolithic VGCL has developed a "third sleeve," its dynamic pro-labor press, which plays strategic mediating roles among the state, labor unions, and management. The labor newspapers use their forums to champion workers' rights and interests and empower labor unions that negotiate with state bureaucracies and management on the workers' behalf. Simultaneously, the labor press must respond to policies and agendas of the VGCL and the state, which still hold to their power to monitor and control workers' collective action.
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Angie Ngoc Tran |
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The Yugoslav Experience with Workers' Councils: A Reexamination
Abstract: Workers' participation in the management of their work lives is widely regarded as vital to the success of contemporary organizations. One form of nonunion employee representation, widely acclaimed in Europe and rare but receiving increasing attention in North America, is the workers' council. The authors provide a review of the experience, role, structure, and functions of workers' councils in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, a country that undertook one of the most comprehensive programs of worker self-management, including the widespread and legally mandated use of workers' councils. The authors then discuss key issues and concerns about workers' councils.
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Parbudyal Singh, Timothy J. Bartkiw, Zeljan Suster |
Capital Mobility, Job Loss, and Union Strategy: The Case of the UK Aerospace Industry
Abstract: Drawing on case study data, this article analyzes contrasting workplace union responses to organizational restructuring in the United Kingdom's aerospace industry. It critically evaluates two distinct union strategies that resonate with contemporary debates governing the future role of trade unions in the British workplace. The first response is based on "partnership" with management while the second reflects traditional "oppositionalism" via the assertive defense of rank-and-file member interests. The article highlights inherent weaknesses in partnership strategies arising from problems of management intention and union incorporation. By contrast, while militant opposition was more successful in constraining the exercise of managerial prerogatives, the traditions of "sectionalism" (or "localism") in plant-based union organizing meant that this strategy was limited to securing a partial and transient defense of jobs and labor standards.
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Andy Danford, Mike Richardson, Paul Stewart, Stephanie Tailby, Martin Upchurch
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Virginia is for Business: Selling the Commonwealth in the Global Competition Era
Abstract: According to business pundits of the 1990s, the United States had finally liberated itself from the shackles of an Old Economy. Technology, entrepreneurialism, and the reduction of social regulations promised to restore American economic competitiveness. Nowhere else in the United States did this ideology achieve greater legitimacy than in the American South, where traditional southern conservatism merged with corporate neoliberalism to produce a potent ideological compound. Despite the enthusiasm for the New Economy, the driving force of public policy in the region had a decidedly Old Economy tack to it. At the center of economic development strategy was the willingness to use huge subsidies to lure mobile corporations to invest. The corporate subsidies program reflected the key assumptions of the New Economy ideology. Despite the overheated claims, the strategy failed to deliver freedom or prosperity to southern workers
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Michael Dennis |
Book Reviews
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Making Lemonade out of Lemons: Mexican-American Labor and Leisure in a California Town 1880-1960
By José M. Alamillo. Urbana and Chicago: University of IL Press, 2006. 216 pp. $60 cloth; $25 paper. DOI:10.1177/0160449X07306457
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Reviewed by Ryan Dearinger
University of Utah, Salt Lake City |
Globalization and Cross-Border Labor Solidarity in the Americas: The Anti-Sweatshop Movement and the Struggle for Social Justice
By Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval. New York: Routledge, 2004. 240 pp. $85.00 cloth; $25.95 paper. DOI:10.1177/0160449X07306440
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Reviewed by Carolina Bank Muñoz
Brooklyn College, CUNY |
Self-Employed Workers Organize: Law, Policy and Unions
By Cynthia J. Cranford, Judy Fudge, Eric Tucker, and Leah F. Vosko. Montreal, Quebec: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2005. 272 pp. $29.95 paper; $75.00 cloth. DOI:10.1177/0160449X07306463
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Reviewed by Mark Pattison
Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild |
The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and Mexican Immigration
By Bill Bigelow. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools, 2006. 160 pp. $16.95 paper. DOI:10.1177/0160449X07306459
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Reviewed by Mike Prokosch
University of Massachusetts, Lowell |
From the Revolution to the Maquiladoras: Gender, Labor, and Globalization in Nicaragua
By Jennifer Bickham Mendez. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. 284 pp. $79.95 cloth; $22.95 paper. DOI:10.1177/0160449X07306462
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Reviewed by Kathleen C. Schwartzman
University of Arizona, Tucson |
Authors
| Paul Garver is a consultant for IUF Transnational Companies in North America, based in Acton, MA. |
| Kirill Buketov is Director ofthe IUF Regional Coordination Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, based in Moscow |
| Hyewon Chong is IUF Coordinator for Transnational Corporations in Northeast Asia, based in Seoul. |
| Beatriz Sosa Martínez is Americas Coordinator for the IUF Nestle/Coca-Cola Global Project, based in Montevideo |
| Angie Ngoc Tran is a professor in political economy at California State University at Monterey Bay. |
| Parbudyal Singh is an associate professor of human resources management at York University, Toronto. |
| Timothy J. Bartkiw is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Business, Ryerson University, Toronto |
| Zeljan Suster is the dean of the Graduate School of Management, Hamline University, Minnesota. |
| Andy Danford is professor of employment relations in the Centre for Employment Studies Research at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK |
| Mike Richardson is a senior lecturer in industrial relations in the Centre for Employment Studies Research at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK |
| Paul Stewart is a professor of the sociology of work at the University of Stirling in Scotland |
| Stephanie Tailby is a professor of employment relations in the Centre for Employment Studies Research at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK |
| Martin Upchurch is a professor of international employment relations at idlesex University Business School in London |
| Michael Dennis is an associate professor at Acadia University, Wolfville, Canada |
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