Core Workers’ Legal Mobilisation

Abstract

This chapter explores three case studies of core workers who play certain role in contesting practices at their own companies and the challenges of collective legal mobilisation. It examines whether their hope and confidence in the law changed when they themselves resort to law to confront mistreatment and injustice at work. In putting their legal knowledge and awareness into practice, these core workers have called upon the state and management to uphold their legal obligations to workers’ plight. Yet an evocation of law does not necessarily alter, challenge, or negate existing social values and norms, such as those that concern mutual respect, reciprocal obligations, and the socialist ideals of equality. Core workers’ language of resistance does not stop at a call for a proper implementation of law, but also brings out the moral values imbued in management’s legal obligations and extends the legal rights claim to assert a broader call for social justice. The chapter also evaluates the potential of legal aid in enabling workers’ collective mobilisation and examines changes in core workers’ legal consciousness as they engage with the formal system of dispute resolution.