Labor Movements E-Book

Stephanie Luce

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Social Movements
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 411

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Fewer than 12 percent of U.S. workers belong to unions, and union membership rates are falling in much of the world. With tremendous growth in inequality within and between countries, steady or indeed rising unemployment and underemployment, and the marked increase in precarious work and migration, can unions still play a role in raising wages and improving work conditions?

This book provides a critical evaluation of labor unions both in the U.S. and globally, examining the factors that have led to the decline of union power and arguing that, despite their challenges, unions still have a vital part to play in the global economy. Stephanie Luce explores the potential sources of power that unions might have, and emerging new strategies and directions for the growth of global labor movements, such as unions, worker centers, informal sector organizations, and worker co-operatives, helping workers resist the impacts of neoliberalism. She shows that unions may in fact be more relevant now than ever.

This important assessment of labor movements in the global economy will be required reading for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of labor studies, political and economic sociology, the sociology of work, and social movements.

Leseprobe

Labor Movements

Labor Movements

Global Perspectives

Stephanie Luce

polity

Copyright © Stephanie Luce 2014

The right of Stephanie Luce to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2014 by Polity Press

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8239-6

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

1.  Introduction

Part I: Background

2.  A Role for Unions?

3.  Why Unions Decline: External Challenges on the Macro Level

4.  Adding to Further Decline: Labor Market Changes

Part II: Union Response

5.  Changing from Within

6.  Union Power

7.  Rebuilding the Movements

8.  New Directions – Going Global

Notes

References

Index

Acknowledgments

The material in this book was gathered over many years, and I am grateful to colleagues and scholars who helped me understand the labor movement in a more global context, including Sara Abraham, Emiko Aono, Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval, Carolina Bank Muñoz, Anannya Bhattacharjee, Edna Bonacich, Anita Chan, Dan Clawson, Eli Friedman, Ellen David Friedman, Sarita Gupta, Jeroen Merk, Pun Ngai, Matt Noyes, Ashim Roy, Gay Seidman, Yamasaki Seiichi, Akira Suzuki, Hirohiku Takasu, and Ben Watanabe. A special thanks to Naila Kabeer, who invited me to visit India and Bangladesh with her to interview activists, workers, and scholars, which helped me understand labor standards from another perspective. Thanks to Shannon Lederer and Ashwini Sukthankar for sharing time to discuss their work. I have also learned a great deal from working with the Asia Floor Wage Campaign, National Guestworkers Alliance, the Retail Action Project, and Labor Notes.

The book is immeasurably improved by insightful feedback from Paula Chakravartty, Ellen David Friedman, Heidi Gottfried, Amy Hanauer, Penny Lewis, and Ruth Milkman. I have benefitted enormously from working over many years with my students, colleagues, and staff at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Labor Center, and the Murphy Institute, at the School for Professional Studies, City University of New York. Ilana Berger, Johanna Brenner, Eli Deuker, Kim Gilmore, Jen Kern, Catherine Sameh and Erin Small all provided support of various kinds to help me through the writing process. I am also grateful for the support of my family and the Brenner family.

I am thankful for Emma Longstaff at Polity Press for her vision that such a book should be part of the social movement series, and for inviting me to contribute. Thanks also to Jonathan Skerrett, Elen Griffiths, and Clare Ansell who patiently guided me through this process, and Ian Tuttle for copyediting.

I owe deep gratitude to my partner Mark Brenner, who read the manuscript multiple times and helped me formulate my ideas, making the book much better as a result. It was he who convinced me to write this book, as his own persistent optimism in the labor movement pushes me to keep working.

This book was inspired by the hundreds of activists, organizers, students, union members, and leaders I have met in dozens of countries. Some have risked their livelihoods, and even their lives, in the fight for a more just world. It is to them that I dedicate this book.

1

Introduction

Vignette #1:

When the BJ&B hat factory opened in a free trade zone in the Dominican Republic in 1987, it brought the promise of jobs and a better life for local residents. Over 2,000 workers, primarily women, were hired. But soon, the women realized the jobs came at a cost. Managers were verbally abusive, sometimes threatening physical violence, forcing most workers to work overtime shifts, and firing or refusing to pay workers for small infractions. By the late 1990s, a small group of workers began to organize a union. But when they declared their union in 2001, 20 union supporters were fired. The workers enlisted supporters in the Dominican Republic and abroad, and over the next two years, they waged a campaign against BJ&B. The company asserted that unionization would result in factory closure (Gonzalez 2003; Ross 2004).

The U.S.-based United Students Against Sweatshops launched a campaign against Nike and Reebok, two of the largest purchasers of BJ&B products, urging the companies to pressure the factory owners to recognize the union. After much effort, in 2003, BJ&B agreed to let workers decide whether to form a union, remain neutral during the process, as well as negotiate a contract if that was the workers’ decision. They also agreed to rehire the fired workers. Workers won raises, scholarships, and better working conditions. The victory was hailed as groundbreaking, since unions have had little success organizing workers in the free trade zones of the Dominican Republic or elsewhere (Ross 2004).

But soon after the victory, the large brands began reducing their orders and moving work to cheaper factories in other countries. In February 2007, the brands abruptly ended all orders and BJ&B shut its doors without warning, leaving the workers without jobs and with little recourse (Greenhouse 2010; Dreier 2011). Like so many cases where garment workers have organized, the victory at BJ&B was short-lived. In the end, the factory owner’s dire predictions that work will dry up were not just idle threats (Armbruster-Sandoval 2005).

Vignette #2:

In August 2008, 134 workers at the Stella D’oro bakery in the Bronx, New York went on strike, two weeks after their union contract expired. The company was demanding significant wage and benefit cuts. Stella D’oro was founded in 1932 by a New York family, who grew it to a successful business with 575 employees. In 1992 the family sold the company to Nabisco, which sold it to Kraft, which then sold it to Brynwood Partners, a private equity firm, in 2006. Brynwood obtained over $425,000 in tax abatements from the city to upgrade machinery at the plant, but by 2008, it argued that wages must be cut to retain profits (Jaccarino 2009; Lee 2009).

The workers, members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 50, went on strike for the next 10 months. The union filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), one of which claimed that Brynwood had refused to provide the union with a copy of its 2007 financial statement, thereby failing to bargain in good faith. In June 2009 an NLRB judge ruled in favor of the union, and ordered the company to reinstate the workers.

The next week Stella D’oro invited the workers back but within a few weeks announced that it would close the factory and move production elsewhere. Brynwood sold the company to the Lance Corporation, which moved the production to a non-union bakery in Ohio.

Despite a strike, significant community support, favorable court ruling, and media coverage in major newspapers, the union was unable to keep the plant open or maintain the jobs of its members. While the company ended up moving production inside the U.S., the dynamics are indicative of the reduced power that unions have in an era of global capitalism. Whether companies threaten to move overseas or to the neighboring city, they can still use their mobility to break a union. When employers are free to move investments and production with little penalty, what can unions do?

* * *

Just a few decades ago, mainstream economists predicted that increased international trade and the spread of free markets around the globe would lead to new jobs for many and an increased standard of living for all. Noted economist Paul Krugman argued for increased free trade, dismissing those who raised concerns as “silly,” protectionist, or simply wrong (Greider 2013). But while globalization has led to a massive increase in wealth, and an average increase in gross domestic product per capita, a closer look reveals a troubling picture for many of the world’s workers.