Globalization and the Labour Movement: Challenges and Responses

Abstract

Up to a decade ago many labour movement strategists and analysts would probably have thought (though not necessarily said) that they were witnessing the beginning of the end of organized labour as a major political force. 'There is no alternative' was not just a triumphalist slogan of the political right but a palpable feeling across the political spectrum. But by the turn of the century the mood began to shift as the labour movement regained some ground after the long night of neo-liberal onslaughts. Maybe we were now at the 'end of the beginning' of a new era where the workers and their organisations will begin to impact on the new global order they have helped to create through their labour? That is, anyway, the premise of this presentation. It is not, however, a simple proclamatory vision, but rather seeks to present a realistic appraisal of the challenges of globalisation and possible responses by the labour movement. The challenges are many: from informalization to international migration, from routinization of labour practices to a sustained attempt by capital to make the world's workers pay for the collapse of the neoliberal globalization model in 2008. It is arguably time for a sober appraisal of where global labour is in terms of a fight-back or perhaps, even in terms of offering an alternative vision for humanity.

Apple, Foxconn, and Chinese workers’ struggles from a global labor perspective

“…The Global Labour Journal has provided a venue for heated debates over labor internationalism, global trade unionism, and national and global labor movements (Munck 2010). A major divide, if a false one, has appeared between Peter Evans' global counter-hegemonic movement calling for a global labor movement (Evans 2008(Evans , 2010, and Burawoy's critique of a "false optimism" inherent in Polanyi's concept of a counter movement to forces of commodification.…”

Globalization, Crisis and Social Transformation: A View from the South

“…This has severely weakened workers in terms of the balance of power vis-à-vis capital. However, labour goes into the current crisis of capitalism with a considerable degree of reorganization and recomposition having been achieved and, above all, with a firm settling of account with the old There is No Alternative discourse of the neo-liberal heyday (for very different perspectives on 'global labour' today see Gray, 2008;Drainville, 2008;Novelli & Ferus-Comelo, 2009;and Munck, 2008).…”

Between Marx and Polanyi: New labour mobilisations in the Italian crisis

“…With regard to structural power, just-in-time production can increase the vulnerability of capital to possible interruptions of the flow of production, and the mobility of productive capital is limited to relatively few products and services, while many of these are still strongly tied to the place (Evans 2010). It also points out that globally, the number of employed persons has never been as high as today (3 billion), as well as the number of workers enrolled in unions participating in international trade union federations, which is 150 million (Munck 2010).…”