Labor Struggles Research Articles

Are We Preparing Teachers to Fight Labor Oppression?: A Critical Community Autoethnography Interrogating Social Justice Teacher Education

ABSTRACT Teachers in public schools regularly face labor oppression. Despite this reality, in research and practice, “social justice teacher preparation” has largely neglected the topic of labor struggle. We offer this community auto-ethnography as a collective reflection on how we came to our own understandings around these issues and what we learned from supporting students’ development around these topics as we co-taught a Foundations pre-service teacher preparation course. We unpack the experiences that shaped our individual relationships to issues of social justice and labor that were prioritized in the class with implications for expanding the purview of social justice teacher preparation.

Social reproduction, women’s labour and systems of life: A conversation

This conversation brings together feminist scholars from various backgrounds and epistemological traditions around a central topic in feminist debates that is today more relevant than ever, social reproduction. It begins by examining social reproduction as a concept and its entanglements with the dynamics of global capitalism from human geography and feminist international political economy perspectives. We ask, what does the lens of social reproduction bring to light? We discuss how social reproduction is a fundamentally political concept that bridges classic labour struggles with demands around housing, service provision and the reproduction of life in general. As a concept, it makes visible the systems of life that support the labour process, both daily and intergenerationally, in sites of production along global supply chains, from the garment industry, to mining and agriculture. Nevertheless, there is a need to consider how gendered dichotomies of productive and reproductive that underpin its modern origin may or may not undermine this concept and to rethink how, ultimately, we organise around social reproductive struggles. The conversation took place in June 2022 and has been edited for clarity.

Ecoprecarity: exploring the nexus between labor and ecological struggles

The Covid-19 pandemic represented a critical conjuncture for investigating the nexus between ecological and labor struggles. To grasp this nexus, the authors reinterpret the concept of ecoprecarity. Ecoprecarity considers precariousness from an ecosystemic perspective to describe the vulnerabilities of working relations, human existence and ecological balance. The analysis focuses on whether and how ecoprecarity was discursively represented by trade unions and grassroots organizations in labor struggles during the pandemic. Through the observation of two case studies in Italy, the agrifood and logistic sectors, empirical results from a discursive scrutiny show that the contiguity of ecological and labor struggles is seldom present. Yet, ecoprecarity seems to emerge as an effective mobilizing frame when employed as it builds solidaristic connections among different claims.

Women in the Sky: Gender and Labor in the Making of Modern Korea

Women in the Sky: Gender and Labor in the Making of Modern Korea

Remembering Herbert Gutman's Work, Culture, and Society Fifty Years On

Remembering Herbert Gutman's <i>Work, Culture, and Society</i> Fifty Years On

Remembering Herbert Gutman's Work, Culture, and Society Fifty Years On

Remembering Herbert Gutman's <i>Work, Culture, and Society</i> Fifty Years On

La solidarité et ses limites: La CFDT et les travailleurs dans “les années 68”

La solidarité et ses limites: La CFDT et les travailleurs dans “les années 68”

For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900—1938 by Sonia Hernández

Reviewed by: For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900—1938 by Sonia Hernández Gabriela González For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900—1938. By Sonia Hernández. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. Pp. 256. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) Sonia Hernández's masterful study examines labor activism and explains the conditions that inspired workers to see anarcho-syndicalism as a path toward justice. By centering the stories and contributions of activist leaders such as Caritina Piña Montalvo, the book highlights the gendered nature of anarchism in the Mexican borderlands during the early twentieth century. Identifying Piña as "transnational labor broker" (2), Hernández takes the reader on a journey into the world that shaped the lives and ideologies of Mexicana anarchists such as organizing pioneers Luz Mendoza, Isaura Galvan, Reinalda González Parra, and later Piña. These women connected the dots of worker struggles in their own back yards with the challenges of workers around the world to claim and defend their human rights. Operating from the Gulf of Mexico region and invested in the local dynamics of the Tampico-Villa Cecilia area of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Piña nevertheless formed an integral part of a global nexus that found her writing in defense of workers in faraway places, such as Mexicana textile workers on strike in Gastonia, North Carolina. She did this in her capacity as secretary of correspondence of the Comité Internacional Pro-Presos Sociales, an organization dedicated to helping political prisoners. Anarchist ideas found fertile ground in a Gulf of Mexico region whose export orientation tethered it to a global economy heavily invested in oil production. Thus, the region served as a magnet for a diverse array of migrants from Mexico and around the world who were attracted to economic opportunities but also to the principle of reciprocity associated [End Page 591] with mutual aid societies. Industrialization's success hinged on the working masses, and with them came ideas and prospects for labor organizing. But as the Gastonia intervention reveals, for Mexicana activists, "the anarchist ideal of a nationless world" (3) nurtured their sense of solidarity with all workers, whether in Tamaulipas, the United States, or elsewhere. Thus, from their home communities, Piña and other activists, through an impressive anarchist print culture and correspondence, felt resonance and connection with Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), Industrial Workers of the World, and Casa del Obrero Mundial labor organizers many miles away. One of the most compelling elements of this book is its focus on transnational feminism or femenismo transfronterizo, centering theorist Gloria Anzaldùa's intersectional framework engaging race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality and "promoting worker unity free from state control." Hernández adds geography to the mix, reminding us that while it is critical to understand how Mexicana activists took part in a transnational workers liberation project, they also shaped local histories. These local histories stretch into the Texas-Tamaulipas border area from where early Magonista ideas existed in tandem with a developing anarcho-feminist agenda that promoted equality of the sexes. Because the women of the PLM and other radical organizations did not exist in a sexist-free world, the rhetoric of gender equity in anarcho-syndicalist circles created opportunities for women activists to challenge the sexism that inhabited even progressive organizations. Part of the brilliance of this book is how it demonstrates Caritina Piña's anarcho-feminism even as it highlights her use of maternalism to advance an agenda for labor rights. In this context, motherhood, a concept used by the Mexican state in its national unity narrative, does double duty as the anarchist driver for a call to action focused on the need for women to participate in the labor struggle. Within the context of this revolutionary motherhood, women activists could claim equality with men as they who reproduce the fighters, the defenders of families and communities. Ultimately, Piña's political usage of motherhood is described by Hernández as anarcho-maternalism, for it "directly challenged the state as the primary guarantor of women's rights" centering instead women themselves as the...

Labor Unbound? Assessing the Current Surge in Labor Activism

Where will the current surge of labor activism lead? To address this question we examine two distinctive currents of labor struggle—one rooted in “new economy” firms and a second in the nation's logistics sector—where post-pandemic conditions have confronted workers with important opportunities and challenges. If the workers’ movement is to make enduring gains, it will need to foster organizational alliances that stretch across distinct sectors of the economy, build support among consumers and the broader public, and challenge culture war rhetoric through appeal to workers’ shared needs.

Reaching into the Community to Interpret Labor History

Reaching into the Community to Interpret Labor History

The work of representation and representations of work: the feminist experimental poetries of Catherine Walsh and Ellen Dillon

ABSTRACT This article analyses how Catherine Walsh and Ellen Dillon employ a shared feminist experimental poetics to address notions of female labour in contemporary Ireland. It argues that both subscribe to a contemporary feminist consensus, outlined in Angela McRobbie’s The Aftermath of Feminism, that neoliberalism has co-opted the ideals of second-wave feminism, and redeployed them as spurious evidence that “there is no longer any place for feminism in contemporary political culture.” Both poets challenge this latter assertion, positioning a distinctly female form of traditional Irish labour – butter-making – as a site in which to reclaim lost feminist ideals and forms of social solidarity. Beginning with an account of how Ireland has transitioned to the logic of capital while paradoxically exploiting the ideals of the social movements it necessarily suppresses, it then shows how Walsh uses a feminist experimental poetics in Optic Verve (2009) to simulate the experience of the Irish female subject in a harsh “post-feminist” neoliberal landscape, while gesturing towards lost female forms of labour and commoning. It then posits that Dillon’s Butter Intervention (2022) seeks to expose the neoliberal erasure of feminist labour struggles from Irish history, as well as present ways to repatriate them within a contemporary social consciousness.

Romania’s societal transformation and labour struggles abroad – how missing income opportunities and the fear of dismissal inform practices of labour resistance

Romania's transformation from a socialist to a capitalist market society resulted in massive negative social and economic consequences which, ultimately, have become push factors for labour migration. However, little research has been done on the consequences of Romania's transformation for the work and labour struggles of migrant workers abroad. Empirically, the article shows how the intersection of the ‘making money’ motive, which is anchored in rural Romania, and the fear of job loss, which characterises the construction industry in Echsberg, shapes labour struggles. Fearing job loss, many do not engage in open labour disputes, but have developed a variety of strategies of covert resistance with which to counter exploitation. Accordingly, the article shows how the transformation in Romania shapes labour struggles at German construction sites. The findings not only highlight the need to include migrants and their work abroad in order to reach a comprehensive understanding of the effects of transformation but also provide starting points for combating labour exploitation.

“Those Deluded, Ill-Starred Men”: Frederick Douglass, the New National Era, and the Paris Commune

The Paris Commune was the apotheosis of what unfolded in the 1848 European Revolutions, the first time the working class actually took political power, although briefly. Frederick Douglass covered the events of the Paris Commune closely in his newspaper, the New National Era. Douglass’s views on the Paris Commune, as of yet unexplored in detail by scholars, illuminate his relationship to democratic and social movements both abroad and in the United States. This essay examines in-depth the writings in Douglass’s newspaper on the Paris Commune and argues Douglass’s commitment to mass movements and oppositional politics did not necessarily extend to oppressed wage workers and was therefore situational, specifically as it related to class, labor, and republicanism. The Commune abroad and labor unrest at home motivated Douglass to examine the “labor question” for his readers. This brought to light his free labor prescription, with its assumption of a harmony of interests between capital and workers, to the problem of inequality and the exploitation of labor. Douglass supported, at key junctures, revolutionary movements and action both in Europe and at home, but his reaction to the Paris Commune exposes the limitations of his liberal political thought to take on an internationalist analysis of class conflict and labor struggles, especially when compared to contemporaries such as Benjamin Butler, Wendell Phillips, and Karl Marx. This study offers a unique contribution to Douglass scholarship while also building on research on Americans’ views of the Paris Commune and the retreat from Reconstruction. Douglass’s writings on the Paris Commune and the labor movement deserve more attention. They provide opportunities for historians, political theorists, and labor activists to augment our understanding of Douglass’s post-war career.

(Re)shaping Amazon labour struggles on both sides of the Atlantic: the power dynamics in Germany and the US amidst the pandemic.

With the initial context of COVID-19 fuelling Amazon's exponential growth, this article investigates how the pandemic (re)defined labour struggles, i.e., cultivating labour's structural, associational and institutional powers in two case study countries, Germany and the US. By analysing these power resources in its two largest markets, I argue that Amazon's structural conditions by which it organises its warehouse labour, which predate the pandemic, have continued to act as obstacles to collective labour action. While in Germany, ver.di continues to mobilise its workplace power but has been unable to get Amazon to sign a collective agreement, the pandemic triggered unprecedented workplace mobilisations and the pursuit of associational power in the US, albeit with varying outcomes. Despite their different industrial relations systems and labour struggles, these two cases highlight the key role of shop-floor organising to put pressure on Amazon, while Amazon's continued rejection of unions as negotiating partners further underlines the importance of regulating Amazon's union-busting tactics.

Introduction to Special issue

Introduction to Special issue

Changes in the South Korean academic labor market and labor struggle

ABSTRACT This study examines the characteristics of and changes in the Korean academic labor market and labor struggle. The strategies of three agents (government, capital, and universities) and the resulting response of labor drive the evolution of the academic labor market, which can be analyzed based on market stratification, employment status (tenured vs non-tenured and full-time vs part-time), wage level, and availability of performance-based systems. The growth of Korean universities starting in the late 1970s, forcing universities to recruit larger numbers of low wage part-time lecturers and resulting in the segmentation of the academic labor market. Following the 1987 democratization movement, part-time lecturers established organizations that called for improvements in labor conditions, but few things changed. After the 1997 financial crisis, capital and the government implemented a neoliberal agenda and the government and universities made wages flexible, and the new category of non-tenured full-time faculty started to replace tenured full-time faculty, creating a three-tiered labor market. This aggravated the hardship that part-time lecturers had faced and drove them to engage in the labor struggle. The Korean example shows that the academic labor market emerges, evolves, and changes through strategic interaction and strife among the parties involved, and reminds us of the importance of workers’ organizational capabilities and counterstrategies.

The Labor Angle: Reflections on the History of the Working-Class and Radical Press

The Labor Angle: Reflections on the History of the Working-Class and Radical Press

How do youth innovate to make agriculture gainful? Challenges and youth entrepreneurs in mid-western Uganda

The global population is expected to increase to 9 billion by 2050, with the youth accounting for 14 per cent of this total. While the world's youth population is expected to grow, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for youth, particularly those living in low and middle-income countries remain limited, poorly remunerated and of poor quality. The Ugandan population, in particular, is largely comprised of a high youthful population with 78 percent below the age of thirty. Evidence reveals that youth engagement in agriculture is declining, and in recognition of the agricultural sector's potential to serve as a source of livelihood opportunities, this study assesses the factors impeding youth engagement and the drivers of innovation among the youth engaged in agricultural enterprises in Mid-Western Uganda. Anchoring in the Agricultural Innovation System (AIS), cross-sectional survey and case study research designs were employed to establish the innovativeness of youth, and the factors impeding engagement in agricultural enterprises from the youth's perspective. A pairwise ranking of the factors was also independently done. The findings reveal that the significant factors restraining youth engagement in agricultural enterprises as enhancing soil productivity, access to relevant technical knowledge and information, and access to land for production. The major innovations for successful youth engagement in agriculture are irrigation to reduce risks of dependence on rain, mechanization to reduce labour struggle, and market linkages. The case studies' innovation index portrays a high potential of innovativeness of youth to revolutionize and make agriculture gainful and attractive to the youth. Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. Tech. 12(1): 39-44, June 2022

Zombie resistance: Reanimated labour struggles and the legal geographies of authoritarian neoliberalism in Cambodia

AbstractAs neoliberalism lurches through its zombie phase – intellectually dead but dominant – critical scholars chart the global ascendancy of authoritarian variants of neoliberalism. Distinguished, in particular, by the rise of constitutional and legal strategies to contain dissent and entrench exclusion, authors call for attention to the role of law in reproducing and regulating neoliberal policy. Previous research on the intersections of law and neoliberalism tends to emphasise law's role in maintaining rather than subverting hegemony. In this paper, I move away from domination‐oriented accounts to consider the potential for resistance. I argue that renewed dialogue with legal geography and its erstwhile emphasis on contingency can recentre the agonistic dimensions of authoritarian rollout. I draw on evidence collected through a three‐year institutional ethnography of the labour movement in Cambodia, examining the impacts of the 2016 Law on Trade Unions on labour and labour organising in the garment and footwear industry. I show how the law frustrates and criminalises union organisation in an attempt to insulate the state from the growing discontent provoked by Cambodia's uneven neoliberal development. In doing so, however, the law has inadvertently centred the state as the direct target of popular labour struggles no longer contained within disciplining trade union channels. By drawing attention to the complex entanglements of everyday activism and state efforts to contain dissent, the paper highlights the contradictions that manifest in the consolidation of authoritarian neoliberalism. I argue that legal geography helps elucidate how these contradictions are productive of new forms of crisis, where the rollout of zombie neoliberalism spawns recurrent reanimations of zombie resistance.

Informalities in urban transport: Mobilities at the heart of contestations over (in)formalisation processes

This editorial introduces and contextualises the Special Issue on informalities in urban transport and mobility in cities across the Global South, East and North. It identifies a mutual misrecognition between the urban studies literature on informality and research on transport and mobilities, and proposes that urban mobility be understood as a critical site of contestations over (in)formalisation processes. The editorial suggests that the articles gathered in the Special Issue diversify and extend understandings of informality in both the transport and urban studies literatures. It outlines three specific contributions that the articles make. Drawing on conceptualisations of informality from across the social sciences and by offering empirical studies of informalities in urban mobility in the Global East and North, the articles confront the habit of dualistic thinking in relation to informalities in urban mobility. They move beyond the formal/informal binary and challenging the North/South division which associates informality predominantly with the South. The papers in the Special Issue also highlight how ‘informal transport’ is a highly dynamic sector at the vanguard of innovation, digitalisation and platform urbanism. Finally, the articles demonstrate that informalities in urban mobility offer a useful analytical lens onto questions of labour struggles and subject formation within ongoing urban transformations.