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Author: Rohini Hensman Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231519567 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 585
Book Description
While it's easy to blame globalization for shrinking job opportunities, dangerous declines in labor standards, and a host of related discontents, the "flattening" of the world has also created unprecedented opportunities for worker organization. By expanding employment in developing countries, especially for women, globalization has formed a basis for stronger workers' rights, even in remote sites of production. Using India's labor movement as a model, Rohini Hensman charts the successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses, of the struggle for workers' rights and organization in a rich and varied nation. As Indian products gain wider acceptance in global markets, the disparities in employment conditions and union rights between such regions as the European Union and India's vast informal sector are exposed, raising the issue of globalization's implications for labor. Hensman's study examines the unique pattern of "employees' unionism," which emerged in Bombay in the 1950s, before considering union responses to recent developments, especially the drive to form a national federation of independent unions. A key issue is how far unions can resist protectionist impulses and press for stronger global standards, along with the mechanisms to enforce them. After thoroughly unpacking this example, Hensman zooms out to trace the parameters of a global labor agenda, calling for a revival of trade unionism, the elimination of informal labor, and reductions in military spending to favor funding for comprehensive welfare and social security systems.
Author: Rohini Hensman Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231519567 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 585
Book Description
While it's easy to blame globalization for shrinking job opportunities, dangerous declines in labor standards, and a host of related discontents, the "flattening" of the world has also created unprecedented opportunities for worker organization. By expanding employment in developing countries, especially for women, globalization has formed a basis for stronger workers' rights, even in remote sites of production. Using India's labor movement as a model, Rohini Hensman charts the successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses, of the struggle for workers' rights and organization in a rich and varied nation. As Indian products gain wider acceptance in global markets, the disparities in employment conditions and union rights between such regions as the European Union and India's vast informal sector are exposed, raising the issue of globalization's implications for labor. Hensman's study examines the unique pattern of "employees' unionism," which emerged in Bombay in the 1950s, before considering union responses to recent developments, especially the drive to form a national federation of independent unions. A key issue is how far unions can resist protectionist impulses and press for stronger global standards, along with the mechanisms to enforce them. After thoroughly unpacking this example, Hensman zooms out to trace the parameters of a global labor agenda, calling for a revival of trade unionism, the elimination of informal labor, and reductions in military spending to favor funding for comprehensive welfare and social security systems.
Author: Gary Chaison Publisher: Springer ISBN: 1493904884 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 63
Book Description
Globalization is commonly described in trade and cultural terms but its impact on unions and collective bargaining is seldom assessed. The few studies of unions and globalization are mostly collections of cases studies of how unions can work together or with other alliance partners to defend against the power of multinational corporations. This book goes beyond the current research by asking how unions have tried to deal with globalization and how globalization might threaten the fundamental union mission of taking wages, hours and conditions of employment out of competition. The introductory chapter defines globalization and uses the case of the Detroit Three automakers (GM, Chrysler and Ford) to show how globalization can affect employment and union size, influence and relevancy. The second chapter shows how unions deal globalization through collective bargaining regarding outsourcing, alliances, strikes and political action, including lobbying and international work standards. The final chapter argues that the unions cannot continue unchanged in this age of globalization and asks what they must do to be effective and relevant.
Author: Jamie K. McCallum Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 0801469473 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 232
Book Description
News about labor unions is usually pessimistic, focusing on declining membership and failed campaigns. But there are encouraging signs that the labor movement is evolving its strategies to benefit workers in rapidly changing global economic conditions. Global Unions, Local Power tells the story of the most successful and aggressive campaign ever waged by workers across national borders. It begins in the United States in 2007 as SEIU struggled to organize private security guards at G4S, a global security services company that is the second largest employer in the world. Failing in its bid, SEIU changed course and sought allies in other countries in which G4S operated. Its efforts resulted in wage gains, benefits increases, new union formations, and an end to management reprisals in many countries throughout the Global South, though close attention is focused on developments in South Africa and India. In this book, Jamie K. McCallum looks beyond these achievements to probe the meaning of some of the less visible aspects of the campaign. Based on more than two years of fieldwork in nine countries and historical research into labor movement trends since the late 1960s, McCallum’s findings reveal several paradoxes. Although global unionism is typically concerned with creating parity and universal standards across borders, local context can both undermine and empower the intentions of global actors, creating varied and uneven results. At the same time, despite being generally regarded as weaker than their European counterparts, U.S. unions are in the process of remaking the global labor movement in their own image. McCallum suggests that changes in political economy have encouraged unions to develop new ways to organize workers. He calls these "governance struggles," strategies that seek not to win worker rights but to make new rules of engagement with capital in order to establish a different terrain on which to organize.
Author: James A. Piazza Publisher: Lexington Books ISBN: 9780739103517 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 204
Book Description
Can organized labor survive in a globalizing world? Going Global explores the impact of increasingly globalized manufacturing on the labor movement in the industrialized West. In a detailed comparative study of metalworking and textiles unions in the United States, Sweden, and Germany James A. Piazza reveals an international labor movement under threat, crippled by falling union membership and waning political influence. Piazza illustrates--through statistical analysis and industry-specific case studies--organized labor's urgent need for effective structures of collective bargaining, strong political connections, and democratic workplace institutions. Going Global will be of great interest to scholars of international political economy and industrial relations seeking a blueprint for organized labor's survival in the new global economy.
Author: Robert Baldwin Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0881324485 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 104
Book Description
Between 1977 and 1997, there was a precipitous decline in the proportion of US workers with median education (12 years or less) who were represented by a labor union—from 29 to 14 percent; the unionization proportion declined much less among workers with above-median education (19 to 13 percent). The union wage premium also declined for workers with basic education, from 58 to 51 percent, whereas it rose slightly for better-educated unionists, from 18 to 19 percent. Thus, whatever safety net American unions provide was disproportionately lost by the less-educated workers who, arguably, need it the most. In this study, Robert E. Baldwin investigates the role of changes in US imports and exports in explaining this dramatic decline. The main analysis (which includes workers in manufacturing as well as service sectors) relates changes in the number of union workers across industries to changes in domestic spending, imports, exports, and the intensity with which labor is used across these industries for both union and nonunion workers. Baldwin finds that although globalization (i.e., increased trade) seems to have contributed only modestly to the general decline in unionization, it has, more importantly, contributed to the decline in unionization among workers with less education. The study concludes with a discussion on the implication of this and the other findings for governmental policy and for the policy position of unions toward globalization.
Author: Verena Schmidt Publisher: International Labor Office ISBN: Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 220
Book Description
Bringing together papers from national and international experts from the Global Union Research Network (GURN), this book provides an overview of how trade unions around the world are responding to globalisation.Globalisation has proved a complex and multi-faceted process for workers, as are the strategies they must develop to face its challenges. The case studies in this volume demonstrate successful strategies undertaken by trade unions in Brazil, Bulgaria, the Caribbean, Colombia, India, Poland, the United Kingdom, Turkey as well as Southern and Eastern Africa. In the process, the contributors highlight issues crucial to trade unions in this period of fast-paced change, such as the struggle for transparent governance for a fairer globalisation, the implementation of labour standards, employment creation, social protection, poverty alleviation including meeting the UN's Millennium Development Goals and gender equality and more.It shows how trade unions are a key part in influencing the rules of globalisation to achieve a fairer globalisation, while also playing a role in implementing and enforcing these rules
Author: Henk Thomas Publisher: ISBN: Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
This study is the outcome of a series of investigations into the deep crisis in which the organized labour movement in the South finds itself as a result of changes in the global economy. The regional overviews and illustrative case studies from Asia, Latin America and Africa show how trade unions currently face a variety of difficult challenges. These include new management methods, the growing influence of the informal sector and casualization of labour, and the ever-growing participation of women workers who are not currently represented adaquately by trade unions. The volume concludes with an exploration of possible strategies for the future.
Author: Valentine M. Moghadam Publisher: State University of New York Press ISBN: 1438439628 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 355
Book Description
Making Globalization Work for Women explores the potential for trade unions to defend the socioeconomic rights of women in a global context. Looking at labor policies and interviews with people in unions and nongovernmental organizations, the essays diagnose the problems faced by women workers across the world and assess the progress that unions in various countries have made in responding to those problems. Some concerns addressed include the masculine culture of many unions and the challenges of female leadership within them, laissez-faire governance, and the limited success of organizations working on these issues globally. Making Globalization Work for Women brings together in a synthetic and fruitful conversation the work and ideas of feminists, unions, NGOs, and other human rights workers.
Author: Jeffrey Harrod Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134443412 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
This edited collection examines the interaction between industrial relations and international relations in the global economy. The role of trade unions has changed significantly in the era of economic globalization and this book analyzes the key developments in union strategy on a local, national, regional and global level.
Author: Peter Waterman Publisher: Springer ISBN: 1349270636 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 282
Book Description
This is an edited collection of items on unionism worldwide, recognising the crisis that an informatised and globalised capitalism implies for work, workers and the trade-union movement. It considers radical alternatives for labour organisation and action in the 21st century. The book includes contributions by informed academics and unionists and proposes alternative union policies or models in relation to the working class(es), to women, democracy, ecology, internationalism.