Left Nationalism and Global Solidarity: Strategy, Identity, and the Fight to Save GM Oshawa

Abstract

The effects of globalization on working people and their organizations in the Global North have been the subject of a great deal of research over the past thirty years. Unions face increasing pressure to reduce labour costs under the threat of mass job losses, as production has been increasingly relocated to the Global South in search of greater profitability. In that context, a number of union strategies have emerged for confronting global capital, broadly belonging to one of two categories: left nationalism and global solidarity. This paper studies a 2016 campaign by an autoworkers' union local to save the General Motors facility in Oshawa, Ontario. I set the campaign in conversation with the union's Global Solidarity policy, and argue that a number of contradictions exist in the union's current strategy, connecting those contradictions to the union's collective action frame, and assessing the prospects for a more effective strategy moving forward.