Race, Multiculturalism, and Labour Organizing in the United States: Lessons for Europe

Abstract

THE NEO-LIBERAL ASSAULT on labour unions, the introduction of new schemes of capitalist work organization, and the expansion of low-wage manufacturing and service industries, have probably been nowhere more pervasive than in the United States of America. Massive immigration, the subsequent ethnic re-composition of the working class, and the emergence of new patterns of racial discrimination and segmentation are forming an essential part of what business pundits and mainstream economist like to call the ‘new U.S. economy’. During the recent two decades, however, the U.S.A. has also witnessed important struggles of non-white immigrant workers for social organization and political representation, which have hardly become known in Europe. Furthermore, the open bankruptcy of the Cold War AFL-CIO leadership allowed the rise of labour leaders more committed to the organization of non-white immigrant workers. As the U.S. is re-emerging as a global model for economic restructuring, these developments entail many lessons for the labour movement in Europe. A serious assessment of the implications of the growth of a new, increasingly non-white working class for the reconstruction of trade unions and the labour movement as a political force requires a closer look at the relationship between the changing patterns of racial segmentation in the workforce, the historically established forms of trade unionism, and the changing conditions of the capitalist economy. As any such comparison between the U.S. and Europe, this discussion should neither view global economic restructuring as a U.S.-enforced implementation of neo-liberal principles into the more ‘civilized’ parts of the Race, Multiculturalism, and Labour Organizing in the United States: Lessons for Europe