Intersectionality, subjectivity, collectivity and the union: a study of the ‘locked-out’ hotel workers in Toronto

Abstract

The study uses narrative analysis to understand the workers discursive constructions of their classed, gendered and racialized subjective identities and their investments into the collectivity of the union in the context of the lock-out. It goes beyond the Marxian analysis and uses poststructural feminist analysis to understand how the intersectional subjective identities are constituted and their interrelationship to the investments in and constitution of collectivities in the context of industrial action. The study is based on participant observation and interviews of hotel workers in the food and beverage section of a hotel in Toronto, who were locked-out in 2007, and of other workers on the picket line supporting the locked-out workers. These workers are members of UNITE HERE-Local 75 (Now HERE-Local 75), who had been in the process of renewal of their contracts at the time. I would argue that the intersectional subjectivities of the hotel workers and their investments in the collectivity of the union are fluid and relate to their pursuit of material and/or symbolic security through search for an identity as a unionized, active worker or an identity which is secure irrespective of the union.