Radical Union Research Articles

The formation of Ezker Sindikalaren Konbergentzia: radical unitary unionism in the Basque Country and Navarre

ABSTRACT The origin of the union ESK (Ezker Sindikalaren Konbergentzia) took place in the context of the Spanish Democratic Transition in the Basque Country and Navarre, when many radical unions and political parties emerged and disappeared. Its survival may help us trace better the effectiveness of union renewal strategies. Characterized by high conflict and mobilization rates at the company level, ESK militants sought to promote direct action and horizontal organizational structures standing at the opposite end of the model promoted by the new brand CCOO (Comisiones Obreras). The origin and development of ESK cannot be understood without the parallel analysis of the communist political party EMK (Euskadiko Mugimendu Komunista). ESK turned out to be the most effective and long-lasting materialization of EMK’s strategy of mass politics, and of what we conceive as a form of ‘integral militancy’ that is reflected in the immersion of union activists in ecologist, feminist, internationalist and anti-NATO struggles among others. EMK had a significant role in the promotion of unitary candidacies during the late 1970s and early 1980s, becoming the consolidation of a non-independentist non-centralized radical union model that continues to be referential among Basque struggles today.

Engaging with social media in a context of fragmentation and change: Chilean unions' use of the Internet and social media

PurposeThis paper explores the ways in which a range of company-level trade unions based in Chile's food manufacturing industry engage with Internet technologies and social media.Design/methodology/approachThe research has a qualitative methodology with 69 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2015 and late-2019 with different level informants such as trade union leaders, human resource managers, line managers, labour lawyers, academics and field experts.FindingsThe findings suggest that these trade unions' engagement with social media was not widespread, using it to share communication of day-to-day activities with members. The article argues that even in contexts where there appear to be some radical union traditions, a trade unions' identity, as well as the nature of the employment relationship, can have a constraining effect regarding how unions use digital technologies and social media.Practical implicationsThe article suggests new ways for Chilean trade unions to take the opportunities offered by digital platforms and social media to enhance the representation of their workers' collective rights while advancing the labour movement's agenda.Originality/valueThe paper makes a direct contribution to the literature on Internet technologies, social media and the labour movement, while expanding the empirical evidence on the topic and looking at the limitations and constraints on the use of social media in this context. Given the current discussion in academic settings as well as within the union movement about the importance of social media for trade union revitalization, the present paper focuses on building empirical research in a less known context (i.e. Chile).

Doing global investments the Nordic way

In the Nordic countries, unions are represented in company boards and can influence companies’ policies toward labor abroad. This article focuses on the Norwegian national oil company Equinor and its support of unionization of its employees in Tanzania. This was inspired by the Nordic tradition of social dialogue between corporations and strong, independent unions. Corporation managers and union representatives tend to refer to this social dialogue as “the Norwegian model,” but this is a narrow conceptualization of the model that disregards the role of the state. I argue that while it is beneficial for the Tanzanian workers to be organized, it is probably also “good for business” to have unionized workers who have adopted the Nordic collaborative model, rather than a more radical union model.

Framing labor militancy and political exchange in a Spanish Catholic trade union: the Autonomous Union of the Vine in Jerez (1979–1987)

AbstractThis article examines the evolution of the Autonomous Union of the Vine (Sindicato Autónomo de la Vid [SAVID]), a radical wine industry union that operated in the Jerez area (Spain) between 1979 and 1987. The SAVID was born as a result of a series of internal conflicts and splits in the trade union Unión Sindical Obrera (USO), which was founded by Christian groups that were influenced by self-management ideas in the province of Cádiz during the 1970s. Drawing on the life stories of two union members, this article analyzes the creation, evolution, and decline of the SAVID labor union of the sherry wine industry in the Jerez area, which can be categorized as a paradigmatic case of “militant particularism.” The biographical narratives of the union members make the identification and analysis of factors involved in both the rise and the decline of this trade union possible. These narratives will also help in contesting the dominant narratives on the role of the trade union movement and the radical Left during the Spanish Transition by providing empirical evidence of labor militancy on a local scale.

Union organising and Full‐time Officers: acquiescence and resistance

AbstractIn the mid‐1990s, the TUC relaunched itself with a strategy for renewal labelled ‘new unionism’. The strategy had two strands: partnership with employers and the promotion among affiliate unions of grassroots union organising. The latter, heavily influenced by US and Australian experience, saw possibilities for a more radical trade unionism in the UK. This article draws on a case study of Unison to analyse the organising strand of new unionism. It identifies how top‐down approaches to organising are distorted by union bureaucracy for the priority of recruitment, not only limiting the possibility of emerging union radicalisation but also restricting the ability of trade unions to represent their members. The article also identifies that the position of union Full‐time Officers is complex and not necessarily within a uniform union bureaucracy juxtaposed to and restraining a more radical union rank and file.

Workplace unionism under decentralised bargaining in France: a case study of the CGT in the car industry

AbstractConsidering recent theoretical accounts on the trajectory of French unionism under localised bargaining, this article examines potential consequences for the country's traditionally largest radical union, Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT). Deploying a case study of CGT at PSA Peugeot Citroёn and Renault in the years since the 2008 automotive crisis, the article observes a persistent pattern of militant opposition within company and plant union sections. Company bargaining structure, interunion reformist collaboration and electoral considerations are identified as workplace mechanisms reinforcing CGT actions at this level.

The Role of Social Networks in Trade Union Recruitment: The Case Study of a Radical Union in Spain

<p>In a general context of union decline, radical trade unions are experiencing a moderate growth in contemporary Spain. This article examines the channels through which workers join radical unions. It applies social network analysis to the study of recruitment in 2012 by the local branch of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) in El Puerto de Santa María, Spain. It concludes that pre-existing social networks (co-workers, family and friends) are essential in trade union recruitment. Due to the rapid growth of the local branch and to the characteristics of this union, the findings of this case study can shed light on the general debate on union membership.</p>

A origem da escola moderna: o legado de Condorcet

The contributions of Condorcet (1743-1794) on public education are discussed. Condorcet, an intellectual who participated in the French Revolution, established the doctrinal basis of the bourgeois education system and the Republican liberal educational project based on the Illustration theoretical and ideological premises and on the Enlightenment philosophers who influenced contemporary pedagogical thought. Condorcet's document "Report and Draft Decree on the General Organization of Public Instruction," submitted to the National Assembly on behalf of the Committee on Public Education (1792), is analyzed. Other shorter documents, such as (a) On Provincial Assemblies (1788); (b) Post-scriptum (1788); (c) the speech given to the National Assembly on behalf of the National Academy of Sciences (1790); (d) Overview of the Public Man's Library (1790); (e) On the Need of Public Education (1793), in which the author stresses the need to establish public education in the Republic, are also analyzed. The sources investigated show the insistence on people's moral formation, perceived as a radical union between reason and morality, based on the principle of absolute autonomy and independence from any religious or political influence. The texts suggest that all citizens should have access to free education at all levels for the physical, intellectual and moral formation of both genders.

Marginal Movements and Minority Struggles? The Case of the Japanese Minority Social and Labour Movements

In Japan, some of the socially, economically and politically marginalised have developed robust social and labour movements that engage with mainstream society. These movements have developed strategies challenging the conditions of the excluded, while also highlighting pathways to establish, or enhance, individual and collective participation in the labour market and the wider society. Two distinct though related, social and organisational forms of these movements are elaborated – firm-centred and community centred respectively. The former especially has a combative past in the labour struggles of the 1950s in what are known as sa'ha shωsū-ha kumiai (left wing Minority union, or, Minority-faction union). However, this does not mean Minorities are inherently leftist in orientation. In the 1940s and 1950s, during a period of radical union hegemony, a collaborative form of second unions developed assisting the purge of radical leaderships. Our focus here is on a contemporary radical democratic current. While articulating concerns of those in full time employment outside the political mainstream they may also represent ethnically and otherwise socially marginalised workers. The community unions, a form of what are known as ‘new-type union’, shingata kumiai (this term will be used here to describe the community unions) articulate the concerns of those socially and economically marginalized in the community and the wider labour market. Controversially, the term ‘Minority union’ is used to depict the different forms of oppositional social movement union in a broader sense than is typically understood in the literature. This is because they share a common concern with the articulation of Minority social and political interests in the context of the employment relationship and the local community. In considering the character of these social movement unions the article seeks to add to what Price (1997) describes as ‘bottom up history’ which we term ‘sociology from below’.

川崎製鈑争議 (一九四八年) と西山弥太郎

This paper analyzes the process of the Kawasaki strike, which lasted from December 1947 to July 1948, Nishiyama Yataro, later president of Kawasaki Steel, was the director of the steelworks divisions of Kawasaki Heavy Industries. The main operation was in the Fukiai district of Kobe. Nishiyama faced corporate restructuring in a tug-of-war between the management and the radicalized union at Fukiai.The militant union demanded so large a role in management as to infringe on corporate leadership. The national labor federation, Sanbetsu, which was organized by the the Japan Communist Party, and the steel industry arm of Sanbetsu, Zentetsuro, were behind this labor movement. The union had won contracts (labor agreements) along the Sanbetsu model and was influenced by the communist fraction. Japan Federation of Employers' Association, Nikkeiren, identified the Kawasaki strike as a crucial struggle with the enemy, which it identified as communism.In this strike, Nishiyama organized staff and workers to fight the militant agitation that had taken over the union. During the struggle, the membership of the militant “first” union declined, and the membership of the cooperative “second” union rapidly increased. Thus, he broke the radical union and succeeded in formating a new and loyal union.Moreover, this paper points out that this strike marked a turning point for relations between management and union. In 1949, Nishiyama won new labor agreements to keep the industry peace and raise productivity. And he lead Kawasaki Steel, turning it into a major integrated iron and steel production in the 1950s.

Belgian labour in World War II: Strategies of survival, organisations and labour relations

A system of collective bargaining at sector level emerged in Belgium after the First World War. The commissions paritaires, in which unions and employers were equally represented, became the centres of power of the pillarised Belgian trade union movement. This system of industrial relations was challenged during the general strike of 1936. Some employers tried to compete with the unions by creating factory councils, yellow unions and 'mutual societies' at company level. The strategic aim was to remove the centre of labour relations from sector to factory level. This tendency was reinforced during the Second World War. Pre-war trade unions were abolished, employers tried to take over the role of the unions by creating all kinds of social provisions at company level. The factory became a basic element of the survival strategy of the workers. Moreover, from 1941 a clandestine and more radical trade union movement, which opposed the pre-war pillarised trade unionism, emerged. These clandestine unions were organised at factory level. In their view, the factory and not the sector had to become the locus of industrial relations after the war. The organisational framework that was established between 1944 and 1952 was a synthesis of the pre-war model of industrial relations and newly established councils at company level.

Taking care of business: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the tragedy of American labor

In this history of unionism, Paul Buhle and Julius Jacobson explain how trade union leaders in the USA became remote from the workers they claimed to represent, as they allied with the very corporate executives and government officials who persistently opposed labour's interests. At the centre of the tale are three of the most powerful labour leaders of the last century: Samuel Gompers, George Meany and Lane Kirkland, successive presidents of the Federation of Labor and its descendent, the AFL-CIO. Many other labour leaders, from John L. Lewis to Walter Reuther receive in-depth treatment. This work demonstrates how a union hierarchy heavily populated by former radicals thwarted women and people of colour from joining unions, suppressed shop floor militance, and colluded with business and government at home and abroad. Buhle and Jacobson show how these leaders defeated generations of radical union members who sought a more democratic, class-based approach for the movement. The book explains why policies and practices at the highest levels of labour came to be counter-productive to workers' interests - a pattern the authors speculate may have been disrupted by the 1995 election of John Sweeney's New Slate in the AFL-CIO.

Revolutionary Unions and French Labor: The Rebels behind the Cause; Or, Why Did Revolutionary Syndicalism Fail?

Since its publication in 1971, Peter Stearns's Revolutionary Syndicalism and French Labor: A Cause without Rebels has haunted French labor history.' Rejecting the popular of French workers as revolutionaries, devotees of the period's most radical union movement, Stearns argues that revolutionary syndicalist activists were out of touch with French workers. Vigorous producers of distinctive and abundant rhetoric, syndicalists not characterize French labor in their heyday and they did not set an enduring trend. Instead, their image lives in the minds of those historians who wish that workers had been what they were not.2 For Stearns, revolutionary syndicalism mattered only because it hindered unionization by inhibiting the organization of effective unions.3 Lacking support among workers, the movement collapsed in a crise syndicaliste before World War I. By 1910, Stearns argues,

Electrogenerated chemiluminescence. XIV. Effect of supporting electrolyte concentration and magnetic field effects in the 9,10-dimethylanthracene-tri- p-tolylamine system in the tetrahydrofuran

A comparison of the efficiency of photon production in the chemiluminescence studies of Weller and Zachariasse and in ECL for the system involving reaction of 9,10-dimethylanthracene (DMA) radical union and tri- p-tolylamine (TPTA) radical cation in tetrahydrofuran (THF) solutions was undertaken. The luminescence intensity increased and the magnitude of the magnetic field effect decreased when the supporting electrolyte (TBAP) concentration was decreased from 0.2 M to 10 mM. The ECL efficiency, extrapolated to low TBAP concentrations, was in good agreement with that of the chemiluminescence studies.

Worker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History

Worker in the Cane is both a profound social document and a moving spiritual testimony. Don Taso portrays his harsh childhood, his courtship and early marriage, his grim struggle to provide for his family. He tells of his radical political beliefs and union activity during the Depression and describes his hardships when he was blacklisted because of his outspoken convictions. Embittered by his continuing poverty and by a serious illness, he undergoes a dramatic cure and becomes converted to a Protestant revivalist sect. In the concluding chapters the author interprets Don Taso's experience in the light of the changing patterns of life in rural Puerto Rico.