Trade unions and the challenge of fostering solidarities in an era of financialisation

Abstract

This articles re-examines evidence that trade unions in the UK have struggled to renew themselves despite considerable investment of time and effort. It argues that financialisation in the realms of capital accumulation, organisational decision making and everyday life has introduced new barriers to building the solidarities within and between groups of workers that would be necessary to develop a stronger response to the catastrophic effects on labour of financialisation in general, and the financial crisis specifically. The crisis highlighted the weaknesses of trade unions as institutions of economic and industrial democracy, but has also given some opportunities to establish narratives of solidarity in spaces and platforms created within a financialised context.

Indie Unions, Organizing and Labour Renewal: Learning from Precarious Migrant Workers

“…Structural transformations such as outsourcing, fragmentation, decentralization, tertiarization and financialization have resulted in job degradation and increased precarity for a growing number of workers – especially if migrant (Alberti et al, 2018; Anderson, 2010; Grady and Simms, 2018; Standing, 2011; Wills et al, 2010; Woodcock, 2014). For low-paid precarious migrant workers this situation has been made even worse by the development of a hostile immigration environment (see Però, 2013; Virdee and McGeever, 2018; Zontini and Però, 2019).…”

Recommodification and the Welfare State in Re/Financialised Austerity Capitalism: Further Eroding Social Citizenship?

“…There is also a vicious circle element to this as solidarities and cohesive social bonds are fractured by the individualised, competitive, resilient performances generated by recommodification in all its forms. This is evident for example in how trade union solidarities are fractured by financialised imperatives in industry (Grady and Simms, 2019), and by how increasingly coercive forms of out of work recommodification lead to 'cracks' appearing in solidarity and support for out of work citizens (Deeming, 2018).…”

Re‐connecting capitalism: prospects for the regulatory reform of the employee interest in UK takeovers

“…As well as these detrimental consequences in terms of restructuring and job losses, employees also have few opportunities for meaningful input into takeover decisions. The process of financialisation undermines the organisational capacity of trade unions (Grady and Simms, 2019), whilst the UK corporate governance regime lacks strong voice and representation mechanisms (Gold and Rees, in press). Not only do company directors in listed firms have no effective way of exercising discretion in favour of resisting hostile takeovers, but labour also has no formal participatory role in decision‐making during restructuring.…”