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An authoritative overview of the question of power in trade union strategy
Crafted for those who dare to challenge the status quo, this is a radical guide for activists. Drawing from frontline experiences in trade unions, environmentalism, animal rights, and social justice movements, the book explores essential themes from leadership to the art of negotiation. It asks crucial questions about organising and social movements in the 21st century. Avoiding easy prescriptions, the authors uniquely guide readers to where theory meets practice. Written by two experts in activist education and community organising, this is a refreshing take on movement building, empowering changemakers of today to forge new paths towards a more just world.
In Union Voices, the result of a thirteen-year research project, three industrial relations scholars evaluate how labor unions fared in the political and institutional context created by Great Britain’s New Labour government, which was in power from 1997 to 2010. Drawing on extensive empirical evidence, Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate, and Edmund Heery present a multilevel analysis of what organizing means in the UK, how it emerged, and what its impact has been. Although the supportive legislation of the New Labour government led to considerable optimism in the late 1990s about the prospects for renewal, Simms, Holgate, and Heery argue that despite considerable evidence of investment, new prac...
There are no unorganisable workers, only workers yet to be organised. There has been an explosion of organising among workers many assumed to be unorganisable, from delivery drivers in London to tech workers in Silicon Valley. The culmination of years of conversations on picket lines, in community centres, and in union offices, with workers in Britain, the US, India, Argentina, South Africa, Brazil, and across Europe, Troublemaking brings together lessons from around the world. Precarious workers waste collectors in Mumbai show that no worker is “unorganisable,” cleaner organising at LSE and St Mary’s hospital in London and Sans-papier workers in France indicate that demanding more at ...
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 me...
The turnover of labour and its significance for workers and employers has usually been considered at the organizational level as individual exit behaviour, and seldom in relation to the cross-border mobility practices of migrant workers within and without the workplace. Drawing from labour process theory, the autonomy of migration, social reproduction, and industrial relations, this book explores the relationship between labour mobility and international migration under a global and historical perspective. Uncovering both the individual and collective actions by migrants inside and outside worker organizations, the authors develop a new understanding of migrants’ everyday mobilities as creative and life-sustaining strategies of social reproduction and labour conflict.
Labor in the New Urban Battlegrounds examines a diverse array of innovative strategies for revitalizing the labor movement by forming alliances outside the workplace with a variety of community groups, social movements, and faith-based organizations, particularly those that address civil rights, immigrant rights, and consumer concerns. This book presents case studies of issues—such as living wages, community development corporations, and local politics—around which urban coalitions are built in "union towns" (New York City, Boston, Buffalo, and Seattle), "frontier cities" (Los Angeles, Miami, San Jose, and Nashville), and European cities (London, Frankfurt, and Hamburg). Introducing the ...
Several thousand new trade union recognition agreements have been signed since 1997, representing a major development within industrial relations in Britain. This has resulted from the interaction of union organizing efforts and the statutory union recognition provisions of the Employment Relations Act 1999. However for trade unions, recognition alone is not enough, a vital issue is whether, having gained union recognition, trade unions are now effectively delivering upon the promises and prospects of union recognition. These essays examine the substantive outcomes of these new agreements in regard to union representation and collective bargaining. In particular, they explore: the impact on terms and conditions of employment employers’ behaviour and strategy the nature of the union-management bargaining relationship the building of workplace unionism. While the collection focuses primarily on Britain, the germane issues are also looked at in the context of Australia, Canada and the U.S.A. Conceptually and theoretically, Union Recognition offers contributions which develop our understanding of the relationship between workplace and national unionisms and of mobilization theory.
This volume traces the history of the TGWU from its zenith in the period of the Labour Government to its nadir in 1992. It easily divides itself into two distinct periods. The first from 1974-79 saw a reforming Labour government which, recognising trade union strength, was determined to ‘bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people’. It marked the zenith of the TGWU in which the union played an important role, overseeing the repeal of anti-union Industrial Relation Act, and the enactment of a raft of pro-worker legislation. But this was insufficient to sustain the 'Social Contract' between the Labour Government and the Tr...