Social movement unionism through radical democracy: The case of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and climate change

Abstract

Union-civil alliances have garnered scholarly and practitioner attention in many nations. Drawing on extensive documentary evidence, this qualitative study examines the rationales for this, focusing on coalitions involving New Zealand's peak labour body and its affiliates around climate change and workplace issues.Laclau and Mouffe's ( 2001) seminal political theory on radical democracy frames a critical reading of social movement unionism and union-civil alliances as an effort to build new hegemony against dominant neoliberal discourses and practices. Emergent themes suggest a degree of change by the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and affiliates in their emphasis of wage and conditions vis-à-vis wider issues, and developing alternative forms of representation and solidarities involving unions. However, early initiatives seem unlikely to gain more traction other than via a radicalised democratic approach involving multiinterest approaches, their urgency underscored by irreversible environmental imperatives. | INTRODUCTIONIn New Zealand (NZ), a small, industrialised and service-centred economy, union membership plummeted in the early 1990s. This followed the de-collectivising and de-centralising effects of