Social Movement Unionism Research Articles

Struggle, Exit, “Resilience”—or How Precarious Workers Cope with Late Neoliberalism. Individual and Collective Agency of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in Spain

Abstract This article inquires the individual and collective agency of female migrant domestic workers in Spain. I use fieldwork conducted between 2013 and 2023 to examine the interplay between the migrant workers’ individual coping strategies, the claims-making strategies of the domestic workers’ trade union Sindihogar, and the structures they operate within and attempt to challenge. Drawing on contemporary research about precarious workers’ movements, I aim to explore to what extent this social movement union has the potential to reduce the power of structural constraints and increase the power of agency. Implicit is a broader, more provocative question: To what extent is substantial change possible within the current political-economic order, here defined as late neoliberalism? I found that while the movement’s community-building approach may empower activists at an individual level, there are significant structural barriers to its potential to accomplish change in terms of better job conditions for this highly precarious workforce. In addition, I suggest that an increasing focus on precarious workers’ “resilience” risks undermining narratives of structural transformation.

Imperialism and social movement unionism in South African responses to the Just Transition

In November 2021, South Africa signed the first international Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). This unlocked 8.5 billion USD in donor funding (primarily loans) to decarbonise its economy. The processes and substance of this decarbonisation have been criticised by unions and by civil society. This article traces the stakeholder consultation process through which civil society encouraged marginal improvements while broadly legitimising the JETP, and it details the causes and implications of South African unions’ decreased engagement with the Just Transition. The article argues that the specifics of civil society’s engagement with multistakeholder consultations, and organised labour’s disengagement, work towards legitimising a donor- and market-led transition. In partially explaining why a powerful civil society and the labour movement have not demanded more radical change, the article highlights tensions between the ‘professional class’ that dominates responses to climate change and a workers’ movement where political power is deeply tied to identarian mobilisation.

Precários, mas organizados: a estratégia de resistência dos uberizados

Abstract Uberization of work is one more step in the process of unconfiguring the social pacts formed in the Fordist period. The strategy of building “partners” makes it possible to externalize fixed capital costs to a multitude of precarious workers and exempt companies from responsibility for guaranteeing labor rights and occupational safety. This process is driven by large transnational companies that operate beyond national limitations and accumulate on a global scale, in this new territory of labor exploitation. In this article, we present initiatives for the organization of uberized workers based on international and national experiences, in light of the concept of social movement unionism.

Cosatu’s mute response: Waves of social movement unionism in South Africa and its crisis during Covid

Cosatu’s failure to be the voice of the working class in times of crisis, such as during Covid-19 and the July 2021 unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, reflects its inability to envision a future beyond the ANC, writes uMBUSO weNKOSI. He argues that as long as organised labour is locked in an alliance with the ruling party it cannot be rooted in community struggles, to the detriment of the social movement unionism of the anti-apartheid struggle.

The Tidal Wave of New Unions during the Hong Kong Resistance Movement of 2019–20: Toward Social Movement Trade Unionism

During the Anti-extradition Movement in Hong Kong, a wave of new unions surfaced—18 newly registered unions in 2019 and 491 in the first half of 2020. This article examines and analyzes the factors behind this upsurge in new union activism and asks how protesters acquired trade union consciousness. Previously, in the throes of an earlier protest movement in 2014 led by young people who valued individualism, self-activism, spontaneity, and post-materialism, hierarchically structured institutions were distrusted and scorned, including trade unions. Yet half a decade later, during the 2019–20 protest movement, many thousands of participants joined forces to form the new unions. These took the shape of a new type of union known in labor studies as “social movement unionism.” Despite having little experience, the new unions were able to sustain themselves, and some began to engage not only with political activism but also with management-labor issues and worker rights. This article draws on extensive interviewing during 2020–22 with labor activists and trade union organizers from old and new unions.

The practice of social movement unionism: COVID-19 and the Hong Kong medical workers’ strike

In this Theory into Practice article we discuss the collective agency of Hong Kong medical workers in COVID-19 in the context of social movement unionism (SMU). In particular, the article utilises Dhatt’s framework defining factors influencing health social movements (2019). We focus on the way the pro-democracy movement underpinned and shaped the five-day strike by 7000 healthcare workers that forced the government to close the Hong Kong–China border in February 2020. We argue that the strike was made possible by the political opportunities linked to collective fear arising from the SARS epidemic in 2003 and to revitalised civil society resulting from the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in 2019. It illustrates that framing strategies and organisational capacity capitalised on the discursive power and solidarity linked to these political opportunities. However, the failure to achieve demands related to resource redistribution, occupational safety and union rights reflect professionals’ dilemma on fulfilling their duty of care and the limitations of SMU in Hong Kong.

Social movement unionism in Spain's feminized precarious service sector: Criticism, cooperation and competition

Abstract‘Social movement unionism’ (SMU) has been suggested as a suitable strategy for union renewal in Spain, yet the literature on union renewal and SMU has two major shortcomings: (1) a lack of bottom‐up studies, and (2) a lack of dialogue between industrial relations and social movement research. To redress these shortcomings, we make three contributions in this article: first, we provide evidence on the current opportunities for SMU in Spain's feminized precarious service sector; second, we apply a bottom‐up intersectional approach to the study of SMU; and third, we bridge the research on industrial relations and on social movements by adopting a relational framework that looks at both union and non‐union actors as key actors for union renewal. Our results show a landscape of co‐existence, conflict, cooperation and competition between union and non‐union actors, including established unions, radical grassroots unions and emerging forms of collective representation; however, if we are to develop SMU as a strategy for union renewal in post‐Great Recession Spain, then there is still room for promoting deep coalition building between unions and novel forms of worker collectivism, as well as developing intersectional politics to reach non‐traditional membership groups.

Turning Points in U.S. Labor History, Political Culture, and the Current Upsurge in Labor Militancy

I consider the current labor upsurge in context of prior pro-labor transformative turning points in U.S. labor history, all of which involved major changes in political culture. My assessment of key conditions in the current moment centers on three important conditions for changing political culture: (a) anti-racist civil rights-based social movement unionism; (b) changing discourse about the role of unions in political economy; (c) the weak position of labor law. Taken in combination, labor in the current conjuncture faces a steep, but not impossible, uphill climb.

Union collective action, social movement unionism and worker freedom in New Zealand

Freedom of association can include the right of labour unions to take collective action in the interest of their members. In this regard, it is presumed that unions increase worker freedom. However, there is little literature on how worker freedom as self‐actualization is linked to union collective action involving coalition‐building with civil society. This article uses the notions of freedom according to Berlin (1969) and MacCallum (1967) to assess the meaning of such coalition‐building for worker freedom. It then employs a radical democratic perspective (Laclau and Mouffe 2001) of union engagement with the Just Transition in New Zealand to explore how unions enhance worker freedom.

Social movement unionism and feminism: the organization of women at CUT

Resumo O problema central deste trabalho é demonstrar como a atuação das mulheres sindicalistas na Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) possibilitou o desenvolvimento de estratégias próprias do modelo de sindicalismo de movimento social (SMS), graças à parceria com o feminismo. O SMS é um conceito relativamente novo na produção acadêmica brasileira, porém muito evocado por autores estrangeiros como saída para a crise dos modelos sindicais existentes. As mulheres abraçam novas causas graças às contribuições teóricas e analíticas do feminismo, que desnaturalizou as diferenças por meio de conceitos, como de gênero, divisão sexual do trabalho, e da adoção de estratégias, como transversalidade e interseccionalidade. O feminismo também politizou a compreensão das sindicalistas sobre a necessidade de incorporar a luta antissistêmica. Ao refletir sobre o modelo de sindicalismo e a atuação das mulheres, este trabalho questiona: as mulheres aprimoraram o modelo de SMS?

In the interest of everyone? Support for social movement unionism among union officials in Quebec (Canada)

In the interest of everyone? Support for social movement unionism among union officials in Quebec (Canada)

A strike in the time of COVID-19 pandemic: The 2020 health workers’ dispute in Hong Kong

A short health workers’ strike held in early 2020 in Hong Kong at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrates the importance of democratic framing of social movement unionism. A trade union was established during a period of massive civil unrest against the local government in 2019 and then proceeded to organise a strike within 2 months of formation to pressure both their employer and the government to enhance citizen and health workers’ safety as the pandemic entered Hong Kong. The paper explains the organisation, progress and reaction to the strike by different stakeholders. The case exemplifies mobilisation through strong democratic trade unionism and provides an example of social movement framing that combined membership and societal interests. The strike represents the last instance of successful independent union mobilisation in Hong Kong as governance shifted from laisse-faire industrial relations that favoured the local capitalist elite to state authoritarianism focussed on obedience to the national political elite.

US Communists as Early Social Movement Unionists Circa 1930 to 1956?

Abstract Through the examination of three recently published volumes, in this review essay I argue that US Communists were “premature social movement unionists” in the quarter century circa 1930 to 1956. US Communists had adopted social movement unionism (smu), which did not officially emerge as an accepted type of trade unionism until the late 1980s/early 1990s, approximately a half century before becoming accepted throughout the world. This demonstrates that US Communists recognized the enormous potential of what trade unionism could achieve beyond the American Federation of Labor’s craft-oriented business unionism and the Industrial Workers of the World’s shopfloor based revolutionary syndicalism. Thus, the Communists’ smu can be interpreted as a precursor to the twenty-first century Bargaining for the Common Good.

A NEW COLLECTIVE BARGAIN? A MULTICASE COMPARISON OF U.S. LABOR UNION STRATEGY

Twenty-five years ago, a vocal faction of progressive union leaders, labor educators, and academics charted a new path forward for American labor unions. Proponents of “social movement unionism” sought to reverse unions’ flagging strength through redoubled organizing drives, street mobilizations, “public dramas,” and labor-community coalitions. While case studies describing this repertoire of contention abound, there are few systematic analyses that take stock of emergent union strategy. Based on an analysis of 76 case studies of union-led collective-bargaining campaigns, strikes, and political mobilizations, I argue that contemporary labor union revitalization is best understood not as a singular, movement-inspired struggle but as a mix of four strategies— sometimes competing, sometimes complementary—each espousing divergent visions for how to recapture social, economic, and political power. These divergent visions, in turn, shape how unions form alliances and construct class-based identities.

Union Democracy, Union Bureaucracy, and the Left

To have healthy union democracy, it is essential for the Left to be active in unions. Leftist unions are more democratic than non-leftist unions on all measures of union democracy including the absence of union corruption, the quantity of union factions, the presence of grassroots militancy, and union member participation in social movement unionism and community unionism. Additionally, although union democracy is associated with union effectiveness, restrictions on union democracy and decisions implemented by the union bureaucracy might be advantageous to the union as an organization in certain situations. If the survival of the union as an organization is at stake, it will be necessary for the union bureaucracy to make decisions, independent of rank-and-file union members. Although potentially denoting an infringement on union democracy, such decisions might aid the union as an organization, especially with the existence of a progressive union bureaucracy.

Teacher activists’ praxis in the movement against privatization and school closures in Oakland

ABSTRACT In 2019, Oakland teachers joined the wave of teacher strikes across U.S. cities sparked by teacher activism against neoliberal reforms that cut funding to public schools, increased privatization, and led to school closures. As in other cities, a group of progressive rank-and-file teachers working toward transformative change moved their union toward social movement unionism, and in the process, garnered the support of communities of color that had been alienated from organized teachers. Drawing on in-depth interviews with teacher activists involved in the 2019 Oakland teacher strike, I demonstrate how strategic decisions to focus on gaining power within the union and to center the leadership of progressive teachers of color, especially women of color, helped to build public support for both the strike and the broader movement against privatization, yet also led them to focus on an inside strategy that may undermine their more transformative goals. I argue that as activist teachers gain power within their unions, activist groups that function independently from the union provide a critical outside space where teachers can develop an intersectional and transformative praxis that helps them better strategize against the racial politics of advocacy in the neoliberal context.

Economic and Political Strikes: A Social Movement Unionism Hypothesis

Economic and Political Strikes: A Social Movement Unionism Hypothesis

The Unionism of Oaxacan Teachers against the Education Reform in Mexico (2012-2018). A case of Social Movement Unionism

The Unionism of Oaxacan Teachers against the Education Reform in Mexico (2012-2018). A case of Social Movement Unionism

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.

Resisting the Great Recession: Social movement unionism in Croatia and Serbia

Addressing the debate regarding the impact of the Great Recession on changing union strategies in post-socialist Europe, our analysis shows that in Croatia and Serbia the crisis, while depressing strike numbers, was nevertheless met with substantial union resistance. Developing a paired comparison and relying on protest event data for the period 2000–2017, we argue that the differences among the two countries’ respective varieties of capitalism drive divergent union strategies described as social movement unionism. In Serbia, the role of unions in protests articulating workers’ demands remained more central and unions were overall more present in the protest arena, while in Croatia, unions have exhibited stronger propensity to forge alliances and adopt innovative policy strategies. While taking on board scholarship that portrays social movement unionism as signalling union weakness, we argue that strategies which increase union mobilization capacity may also be understood as increasing union resilience in changing social circumstances.