Working-class Power Research Articles

A working-class road to radical industrial democracy. Workplace industrial relations and workers mobilisation in the ex-GKN factory in Florence

Can workplace industrial democracy be a tool of transformative working-class empowerment in the contemporary context of liberalised industrial relations? We argue that in the presence of specific historical legacies and organisational circumstances, radical forms of workplace industrial democracy can contribute to the strengthening of workers' structural, associational, societal and ideational power resources, even under hostile conditions of labour-capital balance of power. After providing a conceptual definition of radical industrial democracy, we develop our argument by showing its workings in practice in a salient case of industrial restructuring, that of the former GKN plant in Florence, Italy. Since summer 2021, GKN workers have undertaken a long-lasting mobilisation against the plant closure and for its reindustrialisation, in the perspective of a productive reconversion compatible with the concept of just transition. We show how the practices of radical industrial democracy embedded in the GKN plant played a key role in shoring up workers' power resources, supporting the long-lasting mobilisation and the convergence with other social movements. Our findings underscore that radical industrial democracy can be a key asset to cultivate autonomous working-class power. It needs, however, to be backed up by broader institutional and political infrastructures to lead to transformative outcomes.

A Democracy That Works: How Working-Class Power Defines Liberal Democracy in the United States. By Stephen Amberg. New York: Routledge, 2023. 378p. $180.00 cloth. - The New Power Elite. By Heather Gautney. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. 336p. $29.95 cloth.

A Democracy That Works: How Working-Class Power Defines Liberal Democracy in the United States. By Stephen Amberg. New York: Routledge, 2023. 378p. $180.00 cloth. - The New Power Elite. By Heather Gautney. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. 336p. $29.95 cloth.

The remaking of working classes: digital labour platforms and workers’ struggles in the Global South

This themed issue explores the impact of digital labour platforms on the conditions of work and social reproduction in the Global South. The collection of articles – most of which derive from research undertaken by the Future of Work(ers) research group, led by the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand – profile case studies from Argentina, Brazil, India, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda. The case studies focus on location-based platforms in food delivery, e-hailing, e-commerce and beauty and spa work. The collection of articles explores two broad and overlapping themes. The first is how platform business models are redefining the work process and the conditions of work. Here, labour process theory is particularly relevant because it allows us to identify both the points of value production and the sources of working-class power (Kenny and Webster, 2021). The second is the transformative possibilities and limitations of emerging forms of worker organisation. Here the power resources approach is especially useful because it allows us to analyse the extent to which organisations can leverage sources of power to transform the conditions of work and social reproduction. Ultimately, the contributions illustrate that the impact of digital technologies on the world of workers is neither predetermined nor linear. Rather it is shaped by struggle, the terms of which are themselves contingent.

Walter Rodney and the method of political economy: retrieving a critical-historical IPE

Walter Rodney is a household name in IPE. Traditionally, scholars place Rodney in the tradition of dependency theory. More recently, scholars of ‘racial capitalism’ have identified Rodney as a foundational analyst of the empirical and conceptual relationship of racism and capitalism. However, while Rodney’s work is often invoked in contemporary literature, it is rarely discussed. This paper offers a detailed engagement with Rodney’s major works and situates them in their broader intellectual context in the history of IPE. In doing so, the paper highlights three major contributions. First, Rodney locates processes of working-class formation within the historical emergence and structural constraints of the capitalist world economy, breaking down conventional divides between domestic and international political economy. Second, Rodney demonstrates the centrality of unfree labor to the extension and reproduction of capitalism on a world scale. Third, Rodney highlights the integral role of race and racism in working-class formation, but stops short of positing these relations as functionally necessary to capitalist reproduction – a nuance which distinguishes him from current fashions. The paper argues that retrieving these three contributions can help renew a critical-historical IPE centered on the development of – and challenges to – working-class power in the global economy.

Formalising and Informalising Labour in Vietnam

ABSTRACT Scholarship on labour informalisation in Vietnam pulls in two different directions. One set of policy-focused literature suggests that there is an increasing formalisation of labour. Literature of critical labour studies and cognate disciplines, however, suggests the opposite; an increasing informalisation of labour as workers must accept less security of employment and income. This article argues that these two trends are both true, and that there has been a simultaneous expansion and informalisation of formal labour. It introduces the concept of the informalising-formalising labour regime. The formalising element of the informalising-formalising labour regime means that increasing numbers of people have been brought into the formal economy, as salaried workers with contracts. Concurrently, work within the formal economy has become increasingly informal. Such workers may enjoy some legal benefits or entitlements, but in comparison to previously existing formal urban jobs this work is much less secure. Viewing informalisation as a form of class struggle from above, the article argues that employers in the garment and footwear industry use many techniques to informalise work. It outlines the informalising-formalising labour regime, focusing on various concrete techniques used by capital to fragment working class power.

Author’s Response

Author’s Response

Harmonious Insurrections

Exceptionalism has long defined our understanding of the rise of progressive politics in the early twentieth-century United States. While industrialized European nations blazed the path of social democracy, in the United States, it is argued, “progressivism” merely legitimized middle-class cultural hegemony, social engineering, and the subversion of working-class power. In this era, however, social reform was a distinctly state-led phenomenon, only rarely taken up by the federal Congress. As such, by analyzing labor protest at the level of the state—in this case, Washington—a different interpretation emerges. American “progressivism” was neither exceptionally repressive nor of little interest to labor. In fact, espousing a language of progress, the common good, and the duty of the state to promote “social harmony,” Washington workers actively drew on “progressive” ideas in their struggles to tame the excesses of industrial capitalism. This ideology of “labor progressivism” became the foundation for unprecedented working-class power.

Karl Marx on alienation and the ways of universal emancipation

The main forms of alienation that are typical for the capitalist society with theoretical comprehension in Marx’s writings are reviewed in the article. It is made clear that K. Marx offered a communist social project, which is implemented through the socialist revolution and unlimited power of working class during the transition period as an alternative to inhuman and unreasonable capitalistic reality. K. Marx’s analysis of origins and consequences of various forms of alienation becomes relevant in the conditions of reanimation of the institute of private ownership of means of production in the post-Soviet space.

Chris Killip and LaToya Ruby Frazier

Abstract Since the 1970s—in effect, the rise of neoliberalism—efforts by photographers to represent the working class have been accompanied by a substantial diminution in the power of that class and by efforts to redescribe its members in both individualizing and racialized terms. Focusing on work made by the British photographer Chris Killip (in the late seventies and early eighties) and on work made by the American photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier (some thirty years later), this article analyzes the way these photographers acknowledge the decline in working-class power while insisting on the continuing power of the idea of class conflict. Its concern is above all with the relations between photographer, subject, and audience and with the formal strategies deployed to insist on a certain structural antagonism between the photograph and its beholders.

Labour and democracy in the Maghreb: The Moroccan and Tunisian trade unions in the 2011 Arab Uprisings

This article focuses on the part played by Moroccan and Tunisian labour in the 2011 Arab Uprisings and their outcomes, aiming to add fresh evidence to the long-standing debate over the place of social classes in democratisation processes. In Morocco, most labour confederations supported a new constitution that did not alter the undemocratic nature of the political system. In Tunisia, instead, rank-and-file trade unionists successfully rallied the single labour confederation in support of the popular mobilisations, eventually contributing to democratisation. The most important facilitating factor for these divergent processes and outcomes was the different level of working-class power existing in the two countries. On the eve of the Uprisings, working-class power was higher in Tunisia than in Morocco and this enabled Tunisian workers to mobilise more effectively. Democratisation in Tunisia, however, has so far failed to address the demands for social justice that were at the core of the Uprisings.

Pension funds, privatization, and the limits to “Workers Capital”

In the 1960s and 1970s, some worker activists thought they saw a source of emerging working class power in the growth of North American workers’ pension funds. This paper critically examines what are now called “Workers Capital” strategies for controlling financial investment. It points to the role recently played by Canadian pension funds in the privatization and financialization of public infrastructure to illustrate the structural limits of these strategies, concluding that efforts should be directed to a fight for a full democratization of finance along with universal pension provision.

The Labor Judge Unleashed: Rule of Law and Labor Rights in “Neoliberal” Chile

Hoping to improve labor justice, some Latin American countries have reformed their labor courts without necessarily buttressing working-class power. Class power theories make us skeptical of these state-centric strategies for labor rights. Will the “rule-of-law” reforms work? This article reports ethnographic evidence collected by the author in the Chilean labor courts during 2009–2010, and secondary sources. It compares contemporary labor courts, reformed but in an otherwise “neoliberal” context, with the unreformed labor courts of the “socialist” years (1970–1972) to gauge the efficacy of rule-of-law reforms. Results show that despite the neoliberal context, the labor courts were more responsive to workers' claims than under socialism. Rule of law and procedural rules matter for effective labor rights.

The Labor Judge Unleashed: Rule of Law and Labor Rights in 'Neoliberal' Chile

Hoping to improve labor justice, some Latin American countries have reformed their labor courts without necessarily buttressing working-class power. Class power theories make us skeptical of these state-centric strategies for labor rights. Will the “rule-of-law” reforms work? This article reports ethnographic evidence collected by the author in the Chilean labor courts during 2009-2010, and secondary sources. It compares contemporary labor courts, reformed but in an otherwise “neoliberal” context, with the unreformed labor courts of the “socialist” years (1970-1972) to gauge the efficacy of rule-of-law reforms. Results show that despite the neoliberal context, the labor courts were more responsive to workers’ claims than under socialism. Rule of law and procedural rules matter for effective labor rights.

Commercialization of Sports and Competition Law

Commercialized sport was one of the growth points of economy at the phase of industrial revolution in the late Victorian era. A substantial rise in working-class spending power, growing urbanization, and a concentration of free time into Saturday afternoons all encouraged the marketing of spectator sports, and in response throughout Britain sport promoters and sport club executives enclosed grounds, erected stadia and charged gate money. It was the way for keeping away from monotonous life. Sports economy came to be developed in the western world following the availability of increased leisure with the working class after World War II. Countries who predominantly played cricket, were left out of the advantages which a developing sports economy could offer largely because the Boards of Cricket in these countries lived off the patronage of the state and aristocracy and the game itself was played largely in erstwhile British Colonies who would be looking up to the Cricket Boards in Australia and England to take a lead. These Boards were content in imagining their supremacy in the game and looked open-handedly at the colonies playing game as best.

Trade unions in transnational automotive companies in Russia and Slovakia: Prospects for working-class power

This article compares industrial relations in production sites in Slovakia and Russia owned by a single transnational automotive firm, Volkswagen. We analyse the empirical data using a working-class power approach. In Slovakia, associational and institutional power is well developed and influenced by the model of German work councils, but structural power is weakly exercised and unions rely on non-conflictual engagement with management. In Russia, structural working-class power remains strong, but the opportunities for transforming this into lasting associational, let alone institutional power, remain limited; thus, new unions make use of unconventional methods of protest to promote worker interests.

Precarization or Empowerment? Reflections on Recent Labor Unrest in China

Labor scholars have highlighted the predicament of “precarization” besetting the working class everywhere in the twenty-first century. Beneath the “proletariat” now stands the “precariat,” for whom exploitation seems like a privilege compared to constant exclusion from the labor market. Amidst worldwide employment informalization and decimation of workers’ collective capacity, media reports and academic writings on Chinese workers in the past several years have singularly sustained a curious discourse of worker empowerment. Strikes in some foreign-invested factories have inspired claims of rising working-class power. Finding little empirical support for the empowerment thesis, this article spotlights the Chinese peculiarity of the global phenomenon of precarization and the dynamics of recent strikes, suggesting the need for Chinese labor studies to rebalance its prevailing voluntarism and optimism with more attention to institutional and political-economic conditions.

"AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL" ILWU Local 10 and the Fight against Apartheid

Abstract This article recovers the valuable role of perhaps the most important union in the U.S. anti-apartheid struggle, the San Francisco Bay Area’s Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). The ILWU first criticized apartheid in 1948 and most dramatically demonstrated its longtime commitment to democratic racial equality in South Africa through its refusal to unload South African cargo for eleven days in 1984. This case study documents and analyzes how rank-and-file longshore workers, Black and white, consciously linked domestic and international struggles for racial equality and working-class power. Generally, the history of the U.S. anti-apartheid struggle has neglected labor’s role, but Local 10’s actions demonstrate why unions demand inclusion in this historiography.

Working-Class Power and Spirituality

Working-Class Power and Spirituality

CHINA'S RURAL MIGRANT WORKERS, THE STATE, AND LABOR POLITICS

ABSTRACTThe proletarianization of rural migrants is distinctive to contemporary China's development model, in which the state has fostered the growth of a “semi-proletariat” numbering more than 200 million to fuel labor-intensive industries and urbanization. Drawing on fieldwork in Guangdong and Sichuan provinces between 2010 and 2014, supplemented with scholarly studies and government surveys, the authors analyze the precarity and the individual and collective struggles of a new generation of rural migrant workers. They present an analysis of high and growing levels of labor conflict at a time when the previous domination of state enterprises has given way to the predominance of migrant workers as the core of an expanding industrial labor force. In particular, the authors assess the significance of the growing number of legal and extra-legal actions taken by workers within a framework that highlights the deep contradictions among labor, capital, and the Chinese state. They also discuss the impact of demographic changes and geographic shifts of population and production on the growth of working-class power in the workplace and the marketplace.

In the Driver's Seat: Chicago's Bus Drivers and Labor Insurgency in the Era of Black Power

During the summer of 1968, hundreds of black bus drivers initiated two wildcat strikes in Chicago. These actions crippled the city's bus routes and left hundreds of thousands of people without service. The strike was unusual because the drivers demanded more of their union than of the company. These Chicago Transit Authority employees protested the antidemocratic structure of the Amalgamated Transport Union, which they believed favored white employees and retirees despite a majority black workforce. As the strike made headlines and worried Mayor Richard J. Daley (and his plans for the Democratic convention), drivers formed alliances with community groups. Fusing the cause of economic justice with that of the Black Power movement, these drivers and their allies formed the Concerned Transit Workers (CTW) as a vehicle for their demands. In this article Erik Gellman addresses the following questions: How did Black Power advocates address economic injustice at work? And how does this case study change previous understandings of black and labor protests during the late 1960s? Historians have only begun to account for the late 1960s stream of black activism by focusing on affirmative action's history from the local level, and Chicago is a vital case study for this approach because it has come to symbolize how whites in the urban North stymied southern civil rights activists when they tried to apply their nonviolent activism above the Mason-Dixon line. Many of these activists saw transit as a key urban space and sought to reverse deindustrialization and persistent job discrimination through black working-class nationalism, which provides a more complex and more contested vision of working-class Black Power as a potential remedy to the growing urban crisis in modern American cities.