Union Revival Research Articles

Emotions and solidarity in unionism: Farewell, Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions

This article is a photo essay that presents the emotions of union activists in Hong Kong on the day the Confederation of Trade Unions (CTU) decided to cease their operation. It is nested within a larger research project on the new unionism movement in Hong Kong triggered by the anti-extradition law protest. Reflecting on these emotions, this article explores the possibility of using photography to facilitate more discussions on unionisation and labour activism. Such reflection could offer much insight into the leftist scholarship on solidarity and the revival of unionism in the contemporary global landscape.

Turning the tide? Economic reforms and union revival in India

AbstractDespite nearly three decades of ostensibly pro‐employer economic reforms in India, trade union membership and density in India appear to have risen. Although similar trends have been reported and investigated in other emerging economies such as China and South Africa, the union revival thesis in India is yet to be fully explored. Using large‐scale official survey data from 1993–1994 to 2011–2012 and primary data collected through 56 interviews with key stakeholders, this paper investigates the patterns of union membership growth in India. Findings indicate varying degrees of growth in union membership across all industrial sectors and employment types. We draw upon theoretical insights from economic theories of union growth, comparative politics and social movement unionism to explain union membership growth in India.

Management of employee’s voice in the context of changing economic market relations: a case of Kazakhstan

This paper addresses the key aspects of project management of organizational performance in the context of changing economic market relations and seeks for an alternative approach to fill the representation gap. Employee’s voice is chosen as the case of organizational performance, as it is important in many ways. In this context, key question is whether partnership mechanism could help labor union revival and increase mutual gains outcomes. In order to address the issues, first of all, the paper reviews the concept of employee’s voice, the features of direct communication, and representative participation, including consultation and partnership. Next, it explores the recent evolution of industrial relations in Kazakhstan and explains why the representation gap is important. Then it looks into the real business case study of the National Railway Company Kazakhstan to understand the features of partnership. The conclusion suggests that there is a need for a mix of direct communication and representative participation to fill the representation gap effectively, and partnership could be an effective mechanism to establish the cooperative industrial relations. AcknowledgmentThis paper was written within PhD project “Barriers and solutions to small and medium entrepreneurship in Kazakhstan” (Ayana Zhaxylykova, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University).

Rolling back the right to strike: amendments to South Africa’s Labour Relations Act and their implications for working-class struggle

SUMMARYThe South African National Assembly recently passed amendments to the Labour Relations Act which will roll back the right to strike. This briefing will analyse the amendments, their implications and what they tell us about the state of the labour movement, the possibilities for trade union revival and the state working-class struggle in South Africa today.

Social Movement Unionism as Union-Civil Alliances: A Democratizing Force? The New Zealand Case

This exploratory study examines union-civil alliances in New Zealand (NZ). It focuses on the involvement of NZ’s peak union body, the Council of Trade Unions, in three civil group coalitions around the Living Wage Campaign, Decent Work Agenda and Environmental Agenda. It assesses how the CTU and its affiliates’ coalition involvement are informed by and seek to progress liberal (representative), participatory and/or more radical democratic principles, and what this means for organizational practice; the relations between the coalition parties; workplaces; and beyond. Through case discussions, the study finds that civil alliances involving the CTU and its affiliates do not reflect a core trait of union activity in NZ. Among the union-civil alliances that do exist, there is a prevailing sense of their utility to progress shared interests alongside, and on the union side, a more instrumental aim to encourage union revival. However, the alliances under examination reflect an engagement with various liberal and participatory democratic arrangements at different organizational levels. More radical democratic tendencies emerge in relation to ad hoc elements of activity and the aspirational goals of such coalitions as opposed to their usual processes and institutional configurations. In essence, what emerges is a labour centre and movement which, on the one hand, is in a survivalist mode primarily concerned with economistic matters, and on the other, in a position of relative political and bargaining weakness, reaching out to other civil groups where it can so as to challenge the neo-liberal hegemony. Based on our findings, we conclude that Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) view of radical democracy holds promise for subsequent coalitions involving the CTU, particularly in the context of NZ workers’ diverse interests and the plurality of other civil groups and social movements’ interests. This view concerns on-going agency, change, organizing and strategy by coalitions to build inclusive (counter-) hegemony, arguing for a politic from below that challenges existing dominant neo-liberal assumptions in work and other spheres of life.

Austerity as an opportunity for union revival: Québec public school teachers

AbstractThis article proposes an account of how two teachers’ labour federations have been reacting to austerity measures in public education. Current austerity measures have coincided with the renewal of collective agreements, thus allowing the study of how unions link bargaining stances to wider issues of service quality and accessibility. Union responses are the result of at least three influences: the institutional framework for public sector collective bargaining and worker representation, the previous orientation of members and their organisations towards social and work relations, and ongoing innovations for renewal and member engagement. We posit that union responses can contribute to renewal if they are guided by concerns to redefine union purpose, union organisation and building capacities. Under these conditions, unions are able to engage members and push forward an alternative agenda to that of the government. In doing so, they may be able to forge temporary alliances with outside stakeholders, namely parents. Analysis of union responses should consider the dialectic between union renewal effort and the opportunities and constraints of the institutional framework for public sector collective bargaining. The challenge for these two labour federations is in sustaining member engagement and activism beyond the current context of collective bargaining.

From Employee to Homo Faber? Considerations About Union Renewal and Informal Workers in Brasil and India

For the purpose of trade union renewal, it is suggested that trade unions need to convert themselves from being institutions centred on employer-employee relations to open source ones engaged with broader social justice issues. In this article, we offer two elements to the debate on trade union revival: first, we focus on two rapidly emerging economies with a corporatist and state-centered union structure (i.e., Brazil and India); second, in the context of these two countries, we challenge the idea that informal workers are a burden for trade union organizations. We consider the possible contributions that informal workers could make towards the renewal of trade unions in these two countries. We argue that trade unions could take advantage of these contributions if they overcome the employee horizon, which originated in Western countries and excludes millions of workers from its purview in Brazil and India. We propose the concept of “homo faber” as a new horizon for trade union organization, which is inclusive of both formal as well as informal workers.

US union revival, minority unionism and inter-union conflict

One option for reversing US union decline, requiring no legislative change, would involve re-legitimizing non-majority or minority union representation, allowing unions to organize without running the gauntlet of union certification. Such minority representation, applicable only to workplaces without majority union support on a members-only basis, could run in parallel with the existing system of exclusive representation in workplaces where majority support is achieved. The increased representation in the currently unrepresented workplaces would inevitably promote workers’ collective voice and contribute to union revival. However, minority unionism has been criticized for breeding union competition because it is non-exclusive. In this paper, the nature and extent of inter-union conflict under minority unionism are re-examined, using survey data from unions in New Zealand which already has non-exclusive, minority union representation. The low levels and consequences of conflict suggest that the benefits of minority unionism far outweigh any potentially unfavourable effects.

Revitalizing the Malaysian Trade Union Movement: The Case of the Electronics Industry

The article takes an historic perspective on contemporary issues of trade union revival in Malaysia, focusing on the challenge of raising union density and analysing the process of organizing employees in the strategically important electronics industry. It concludes that the political support for transnational corporations in the electronics industry is declining. This strategic shift enables union activists to bypass enterprise and state-based unions and to establish larger, regionally based unions. However, newly organized unions have not yet overcome resistance from global corporations, nor have trade unions been included in the larger politics of development strategies. Unions must be part of a larger socio-political movement and regime change in order to overcome the restrictive labour laws as well as the anti-union practices of transnational corporations. Yet the majority of the peak union organizations prefer non-partisan engagement. In order to revitalize themselves, the unions must demonstrate to the Malaysian public that they are both relevant and important for increased productivity and that they can play a significant role in enabling Malaysia to move beyond the middle-income ‘trap’ towards a more developed market economy.

We are the union: democratic unionism and dissent at Boeing

In this extraordinary tale of union democracy, Dana L. Cloud engages union reformers at Boeing in Wichita and Seattle to reveal how ordinary workers attempted to take command of their futures by chipping away at the cozy partnership between union leadership and corporate management. Taking readers into the central dilemma of having to fight an institution while simultaneously using it as a bastion of basic self-defense, We Are the Union offers a sophisticated exploration of the structural opportunities and balance of forces at play in modern unions told through a highly relevant case study. Focusing on the 1995 strike at Boeing, Cloud renders a multi-layered account of the battles between company and the union and within the union led by Unionists for Democratic Change and two other dissident groups. She gives voice to the company's claims of the hardships of competitiveness and the entrenched union leaders' calls for concessions in the name of job security, alongside the democratic union reformers' fight for a rank-and-file upsurge against both the company and the union leaders. We Are the Union is grounded in on-site research and interviews and focuses on the efforts by Unionists for Democratic Change to reform unions from within. Incorporating theory and methods from the fields of organizational communication as well as labor studies, Cloud methodically uncovers and analyzes the goals, strategies, and dilemmas of the dissidents who, while wanting to uphold the ideas and ideals of the union, took up the gauntlet to make it more responsive to workers and less conciliatory toward management, especially in times of economic stress or crisis. Cloud calls for a revival of militant unionism as a response to union leaders' embracing of management and training programs that put workers in the same camp as management, arguing that reform groups should look to the emergence of powerful industrial unions in the United States for guidance on revolutionizing existing institutions and building new ones that truly accommodate workers' needs. Drawing from communication studies, labor history, and oral history and including a chapter co-written with Boeing worker Keith Thomas, We Are the Union contextualizes what happened at Boeing as an exemplar of agency that speaks both to the past and the future.

Reaching out for strength within? ‘Social movement unionism’ in a small country setting

ABSTRACTTrade unions around the developed world face common challenges in terms of declining membership and influence, and ‘conventional’ union revival strategies have yielded limited success. A relatively recent innovation has been the embrace of ‘social movement unionism’ (SMU), which challenges traditional workplace conceptions of trade union roles via alliances with campaigning civil society organisations. This empirical study examines how SMU is conceived and applied in a small country context, focusing on the role of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. The findings suggest that SMU can appeal to trade union associations in smaller national (or regional) settings owing to a combination of institutional and size effects which concentrate networks. This has implications for unions and union federations interested in advancing both workplace and wider social justice concerns.

Partnership and organizing: An empirical assessment of two contrasting approaches to union revitalization in the UK

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Britain has been advocating two contrasting approaches to union revitalization namely: ‘labour—management partnership’ and ‘union organizing’. Using a case study of a public services union this article examines empirically the prospects of union revival offered by these two contrasting approaches. Public services with relatively high union density should offer better prospects for union revival through partnership. However, the authors’ findings indicate that even in public services, partnership was not associated with management’s support for union recruitment, better facility time provisions for union representatives, lower worker grievances or union membership gains. Rank-and-file organizing, on the other hand, was associated with lower worker grievances, greater worker satisfaction with the union, higher worker involvement in union activities and union membership gains. Overall, the findings question the ‘mutual gains’ assertions of partnership advocates and lend support to the critics of partnership who propose an alternative organizing approach to union revitalization.

Labor and the Bush Administration: “down so long, seem like up to me”

For a century, scholars and labor movement activists have debated the question of “American Exceptionalism,” or the distinctive nature of the labor movement in the United States. The weakness of American unions, especially their lack of members, has been attributed to distinctive features of American society, notably the hostility of the American government towards unions. Those who accept this Exceptionalist view have urged unions in the United States to become more active politically in order to strengthen their position. Since 1980, unions have followed this advice and have doubled their political spending. Most of the unions’ political activity and spending has been in support of candidates of the Democratic Party; but unions have received little in return from Democrats, even during the Clinton Administration. Indeed, during the administration of George W. Bush, union membership fell at almost exactly the same rate as before notwithstanding the Bush Administration’s open hostility towards unions and its attempt to use state power against unions in both the private and public sectors. In fact, over the last decades, we may be seeing the end of Exceptionalism. Since 1990, union membership decline has been slower in the United States than in most other OECD member states, despite a relatively hostile political and legal regime. Combined with the negligible effect of the Bush Administration on American unions, this suggests that union weakness in the United States is not due to exceptional features of the United States but to characteristics it shares with other countries. Throughout the affluent world, the idea of the labor movement has lost its tie to the broader democratic aspirations. In America and elsewhere, union revival depends on more than some incremental legal changes or political victories. It depends on the revival of the formative ideals of the labor movement, equality, fraternity, and the struggle for free and democratic work.

L’après-communisme et le déclin du syndicalisme à l’Est : leçons de Pologne et d’ailleurs

Trade unions in Eastern Europe have declined in almost all aspects since 1989, due not just to economic restructuring but to subjective factors such as reactions to communist-era legacies and skilled workers’ animosities towards the unskilled, which made union officials themselves skeptical of the value of unions. Starting around the turn of the new century, however, five factors now favor revival: survival imperatives of the union bureaucracy, incorporation into the European Union, emerging cross-border labor solidarity, a new generation of workers, and the end of postcommunism in the firm, or the dismissal of unessential workers, which means union officials no longer need to defend the unskilled. Three obstacles, however, continue to work against union revival: ideological (continued distrust of unions), organizational (plethora of small firms), and structural (location in the global economy). Organized labor is likely to remain weak, with a few stronger unions emerging in the manufacturing sector that are more elitist, male, and less class oriented than those in the past, while unions chiefly in the public sector would flounder. Such an arrangement is not conducive to stable liberal democracy.

The Consequences of Postcommunism

Following a long period in which labor in Eastern Europe had been marginalized, often with unionists' complicity, five conditions now favor revival: survival imperatives of the union bureaucracy, incorporation into the European Union, emerging international solidarity, a new generation of workers, and the end of postcommunism in the firm, or the dismissal of unessential workers. This article focuses on subjective factors: union officials' own misgivings about unions in the postcommunist era and their revived interest now that they no longer need to defend the unskilled. Yet three factors work against union revival: ideological (continued distrust of unions), organizational (plethora of small firms), and structural (location in the global economy). Labor is likely to remain weak, with a few stronger unions emerging that are more elitist, male, “producerist,” and less class oriented. Legacies continue to be the major problem, but in a twist, the problem today is the legacy not of communism but of postcommunism.

Trade union merger strategies: good or bad?

PurposeThe purpose of this editorial is to review the significance of Roger Undy's book, Trade Union Merger Strategies: Purpose, Process and Performance, Oxford University Press, 2008.Design/methodology/approachThe editorial outlines and evaluates the arguments put forward by Dr Undy to explain why trade union mergers take place. It also evaluates the book's analysis of the politics of trade union mergers.FindingsAs trade union membership has declined mergers have been prominent features in strategies of union revival. Yet, there is little empirical research into the effects of mergers on the unions actually merging or on their impact on the wider union movement. Dr Undy concludes that mergers do not provide a solution to the problem of falling membership and that transfers of engagements are often more successful than amalgamations.Originality/valueThe editorial offers insights into the process, performance and effects of trade union mergers.

Can Women's Structures Help New Zealand and United Kingdom Union Revival?

Union decline in the UK and NZ is a familiar story. Drawing on NZ research and an advanced UK project involving two national surveys, interviews and documentary evidence, this paper examines the relationship between union women's structures and union revival efforts. It emerges that, mediated by context; women's structures contribute to revival strategies, not just in terms of quantitative and external outcomes, but in the qualitative processes of engaging members. Findings inform a discussion of future directions for revival strategies and gauges of union vitality.

The Trades Union Congress and civil alliance building: towards social movement unionism?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine why and how the Trades Union Congress (TUC) – the labour movement's peak body, “think tank” and exemplar – engages in alliance building with civil movements and groups. In particular, it investigates: the rationale for such; the nature of the alliances and the extent to which they inform TUC revival efforts or a new approach to trade unionism.Design/methodology/approachSemi‐structured interviews were conducted with eight senior TUC personnel. Most interviewees provided documentary evidence to elaborate on their comments. The dimensions of a thematic analysis of this and web site evidence were structured to reflect the above areas of inquiry.FindingsThe findings are that: interest in the TUC and labour movement in alliance building with civil groups is building at all levels; TUC engagement with, promotion of and guidance on civil alliances is largely emergent and sporadic; notwithstanding this, certain parts of the TUC have increased its promotion of and to a lesser extent direct engagement with alliances. It also is shown that: such engagement looks likely to continue to grow as a feature of other revival strategies and there is little assessment of whether alliance building can help strengthen the British labour movement.Practical implicationsThe findings inform the paper's discussion of potential TUC and union revival purpose, policy and practice.Originality/valueThis paper provides an in‐depth empirical study of the TUC's involvement in alliance building with other social movements and groups. Policy‐maker and practitioner interest in such is growing rapidly, particularly in light of the debatable effectiveness of familiar British union revival strategies.

The End of the Road for American Labour, or a Blueprint for Union Revival?

The End of the Road for American Labour, or a Blueprint for Union Revival?

Les travailleurs des services et l'avenir du mouvement syndical aux États-Unis

The growing presence of “service jobs” is a major component of the new economy. It has been a factor in weakening the traditional labor movement and the major social and political institutions which benefit workers, rooted as they were in basic industry. Can service jobs today be considered the saving grace of union revival ? First we need to define these very diverse employment situations, what are incorrectly referred to as a “sector”. Do these workers, often women, ethnic minorities, immigrants, bring with them new strategies in organizing ? Finally, we’ll look at how this all plays out as a background for the recent split in the U.S. labor movement.