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Labor activism is on the rise in the U.S., and workers and organizers are taking new and intriguing steps to have more voice, involvement, and power in their workplaces. This begs the question of whether this new surge in labor activism will have long-term consequences or amount to a "flash in the pan." In this paper, I argue that the success of current labor activism will hinge on two factors: whether organizers successfully confront longstanding racial disparities in workplaces and occupations, and the ability to preempt and survive the resulting state repression and organizational backlash. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In particular, the special issue contributes to the field of social and political movements by offering papers that ask (1) how can contemporary collective action critically advance social theoretical ideas, and (2) what new tools of inquiry can build on existing theoretical approaches to enhance our critical understanding of social movements. Keywords: protest; political contention; social movements; social theory EN protest political contention social movements social theory 3 6 4 02/23/23 20230301 NES 230301 Since its establishment in 1977, I Capital and Class i has provided a critical space for scholars and activists to explore existing and new forms of socio-political struggles and movements in and against capital. His areas of interest include social movement activism on the public sphere, public space and free speech, work and global political economy, voluntary activity, and Marxist theory. [Extracted from the article]

Open Marxists argue that capitalist society is mediated through forms of alienated and dispossessed labour from the means of production. For Open Marxists, then, labour is fluid in its constitution because it is constantly struggling to various degrees in and against its alienated and dispossessed capitalist form. Static sociological concepts of social class therefore cannot fully grasp this fluid and antagonistic relationship between labour and capital. In this paper, we agree that the starting point for an analysis of class under capitalism is the dispossession of labour from its means of production. But we further argue that even at this relatively high level of theoretical analysis, it is still possible to isolate a more complex account of social class than many Open Marxists would accept. We then employ this alternative class perspective to highlight some weaknesses in respective Open Marxist accounts of class and social and political movements. Following these critical observations, and with the theoretical assistance of Gramscian analysis, we demonstrate how Open Marxism can develop a more robust account of the class nature of contemporary social and political movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British trade union renewal has focused on the twin strategies of organising and partnership. Drawing on experience from North America, and fledgling developments in Britain, this paper argues that reciprocal community unionism could provide another weapon in the union movement's armoury for reversing decline. The paper provides a brief historical overview of the intersection between unions and community in Britain before addressing reciprocal community unionism in more detail. The final part of the paper then looks at the work of Battersea and Wandsworth Trade Union Council's Organising Centre in South West London during 2000 and 2001. The case study highlights the ways in which trade unionism can develop when focused on a particular locality, and the advantages of having extra-workplace organisation in any place. The case also illustrates some of the barriers preventing this model of trade unionism being translated to other boroughs, towns and cities in the UK. In the conclusion, the paper then calls for further experimentation in the development of reciprocal community unionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The TUC's ‘New Unionism’ project contains contradictory tendencies in its promotion of both partnership relationships with employers and the adoption of more aggressive organising techniques. This paper investigates the impact of partnership-organising tensions on union activity at the workplace level in local government and the NHS. We explore these tensions by considering three dimensions of workplace union organisation: management-union relations; activist leadership style; and activist full-time officer relations. The paper rejects the argument that partnership and organising can be complementary union renewal processes. Instead, partnership relations detach senior activists from union members and restrict member participation and mobilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the current situation of the left in Spain (excluding traditional social democracy) and its future prospects. Since the so-called 15-M movement of May 2011 and the subsequent creation of Podemos (‘We Can’), there has been a perceived possibility of the overcoming the neoliberal offensive and the so-called regime of 1978, the political structure of the last decades. However, it is argued here that the rise of this ‘new left’ does not necessarily imply a strengthening of the subject of transformation, the labour movement, nor the political framework for achieving social rights in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by considering the effects of the business cycle upon the incidence of industrial accidents in British manufacturing industries, arguing that a generalized discussion of such cycles obscures important aspects of the political economy within individual cycles. In particular, the strength of the labour movement is related to the incidence of accidents at work. Since the trade unions are only one part of the tripartite system of the legal regulation of safety in British manufacturing industries, the paper goes on to consider the effects of recent material and ideological initiatives on the part of both the government and employers upon the ability of the Health and Safety Executive in general and the Factory Inspectorate in particular, to fulfil their role in this tripartite system of self-regulation. As a result of weakened trade unions and emasculated regulatory agencies, it is argued that there has been a virtual demise of this system of self-regulation. While the analysis outlined does not suggest that this demise is causal of the decline in safety performance across much of British manufacturing industry in the present decade, the paper does argue that the role of the law and its (non) implementation is not an insignificant factor in explaining this decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demands presented by Trade Unions for Industrial Democracy remain, despite the lack of success in their realization, an important departure from the traditional bargaining objectives they have pursued in the post-war period. The significance of these demands lie in the fact that they explicitly focus on issues of control, particularly with regard to areas of strategic corporate decision making previously excluded from Trade Union influence. The main purpose of the paper is to consider how far the pursuit of these demands is capable of realizing any significant transfer of control to workers over the enterprises they work in. In doing so the paper considers definitions of industrial democracy, competing formulations offered by those concerned with exploring the functional contribution Industrial Democracy can make to Management purposes, and the objectives Trade Unions seek to achieve through industrial democracy. It is argued that the form of Industrial Democracy through which Trade Unions seek to secure their objectives is of key importance. Two main alternatives, that of worker directors and extending collective bargaining are considered in some detail, and the paper concludes that extending collective bargaining is likely to be more advantageous to Trade Unions both in terms of improving their bargaining power against management, and in their attempts to secure Industrial Democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his discussion of the forms of legitimate domination Weber notes that rational, legal domination is frequently combined with an important element of plebiscitarian democracy. He also suggests that the fact that the chief may be represented as the servant or agent of the people "naturally does nothing whatever to disprove the quality of dominance" (Weber 1978, p. 215). The element of democracy, then, does not mean here that the people rule. Rather it serves in the legitimation of a distinctively modern form of rule that combines a bureaucratic state and significant elements of charismatic domination. Ideas of popular sovereignty and the considerably weaker idea of the mandate are certainly invoked in these societies, and not only when elections are in the air. They play a significant part in political life, but they do not describe it properly. Weber's argument on this point exemplifies an important cautionary thesis concerning the role of ideas in social life. There is a clear sense in which ideas about the workings of particular social institutions may be embedded in the social institutions themselves and may function as essential lubricants in their day-to-day activities, but it does not follow that those ideas properly describe the institutions in which they operate. The ideas of democracy and popular sovereignty are well-known examples. Another example is the idea of politics as class struggle, which has played an important part in socialist and labor movement politics for much of the modern period. This paper makes a similar point about the idea of the person as rational actor. It is a ubiquitous component of Western social thought, figuring prominently both in the life of modern societies and in our attempts to make sense of it. The first part of this paper identifies what is involved in that idea. Next I go on to use a more general model of the actor, considered simply as a locus of decision and action, to under- mine the idea of the person as rational actor. It is necessary to distinguish 1) a capacity to employ conceptual tools and devices to construct a connected chain of reasoning or argumentation, and 2) the rationality (or otherwise) of the tools employed. What matters is to investigate what those tools and other devices are, rather than to make any prior assumptions about their rationality. The final section considers the implications of this argument for our understanding of what Weber calls the "specific and peculiar rationalism of modern culture" (1978, p. 26). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major characteristic of class relations in the United States has been the absence of a self consciously defined and politically cohesive working class. The major form of working-class organization has been trade union organization. Unions were institutionalized during the immediate post-war period with the establishment of a post- war labor capital accord, a major function of which was the institutionalization and narrowing of class conflict along narrow economic dimensions. This paper shows that it is the institutionalized presence of the labor movement that empowers worker militancy and allows workers to strike successfully for higher compensation. Using multivariate time-series regression analysis this paper shows that in times (post-World War II) and industrial sectors in which unions are well established, strikes lead to an increased rate of compensation growth. In the post-war period, in the industrial sectors in which unions are not well institutionalized, strikes are an ineffective weapon in economic class struggles and unionization appears to be economically beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 2000s the coffee crisis emerged as a central object of study for commodity chain scholars. In this paper I revisit the scene of the coffee crisis in Nicaragua to understand violent processes of devaluation and disinvestment that devastated the countryside for more than five years (2000-05). Employing a commodity disarticulations approach, I argue that conventional explanations of the coffee crisis as one of overproduction and devaluation generally failed to unravel the layered spatiality of dispossession that enables coffee chain formations. Digging below the surface text of the crisis narrative, I illustrate how the coffee crisis in the central highlands was exacerbated by an aggressive land grab by a consortium of agroindustrial capitalists called CONSAGRAAGRESAMI that had dispossessed farmworkers of land rights and accumulated the spoils of the Sandinista-led agrarian reform over the previous decade. When CONSAGRAAGRESAMI folded in 2000, an unemployed farmworkers movement surged to reclaim land promised to farmworkers in the popular revolution. Using this alternative reading of the crisis in Nicaragua, I aim to bring into focus the ongoing processes of dispossession that render coffee workers vulnerable to hunger, exploitation, and abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the UK trade union movement’s avowedly secular nature, its antecedents show that religious beliefs greatly influenced many early trade unionists and, in some cases, contributed to the formation of a trade union consciousness. This paper considers the way trade union leaders in the 19th and 20th centuries drew upon religious teachings of social justice to organise their fellow workers. This context provides background for understanding how today a similar ideological commitment to collectivisation and social justice may be held by workers of faith; and how the adoption of a ‘militant secularism’ by some trade unionists may result in the closing of these conceptual spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The first section of this paper establishes the rationale for a trans-European labour movement, based on the conditions brought about by global changes in the dominant mode of production, exchange, distribution and social reproduction, and the main specific socioeconomic circumstances in the European Union. In the second section, the main theories on the phenomenon of social solidarity are briefly discussed, as they pertain to the European labour movement. The third section looks at the limitations of the ideology, practice and institutionalised structures of ‘social partnership’, as a starting point for the fourth section, in which an account of the main existing cross-border union strategies is provided. The final section identifies and discusses some of the more democratic and counterhegemonic strategies, and summarises the main findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Between the early 1970s and the late 1990s, state-sponsored deregulation and its market repercussions, combined with technological change, sparked profound changes for employees in the heretofore highly unionized US telecommunications sector. In this paper I examine the responses that this industry-wide restructuring of technical labor has prompted within two unions--the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA). With some success, the CWA has 'scaled up', employing innovative national bargaining and organizing tactics in the centralized workplaces of the companies once affiliated with the AT&T Bell System and developing transnational relationships with other countries' telecommunications unions. However, these strategies have not prevented the CWA from losing ground. In contrast, the IBEW's inherent capacity to represent workers on a labor-market or 'geographic' scale, and thus to take advantage of the localization of technical work in the industry, has created new opportunities for that union and helped its construction division to reverse a decades-long trend of decline. However, the IBEW has not deliberately 'constructed scale' in this environment. Rather, the union has embraced an opportunity presented by a shift in industrial structure which favors its traditional strengths. Thus, the pursuit of the geographic or 'horizontal' approach does not align the IBEW with the progressive social movements that many labor geographers associate with localized activism. The case study of the two unions suggests that the existence of distinct traditions in the American labor movement--a craft tradition linked to multiemployer bargaining at the local level and an industrial tradition linked with a strong focus on workplace-based bargaining, national norms, and an active national state--has important implications for the understanding of how labor organizations relate to scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides empirical data from the Tyneside Maritime Construction Industry (TMCI) to contribute to the union renewal/resilience debate. The aim of the study is a focus on the effectiveness of shop steward organisation in the industry, levels of activity in membership participation and its significance for union democracy, all of which are important factors in the debate. The paper supports the resilience argument and adds a further development to the debate by presenting evidence which suggests resilient renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a significant dilemma brought about by the crisis of December 2001 for the Unemployed Workers Movement in Argentina: the construction of a political movement to dispute institutional power or the development of territorial community work directed to the construction of a counter-power. The argument put forward is that the differences between these two projects might represent a false dichotomy. This will require further interrogation on the relationship between the state, the labour movement and the anti-institutional forms of resistance which emerged in December 2001. This is a dilemma for the politics of resistance worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the logical and historical determinants of European integration and reflects on the potential and dangers this presents for labour movement renewal. Through the principle of ‘subsidiarity’ a regulatory gap has been established between political mobilisation at the national level and neo-liberal regulation at the European level. The historical determination of this form is traced through an exploration of the social struggles against neo-liberalism that have developed within member states and transnational mobilizations that bridge this regulatory gap by linking resistance across national boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the linkage between trade unions and the US Democratic Party and the UK Labour Party in the twentieth century. A typology suited to longitudinal analysis of labour movement union-party linkages is proposed to help characterise and explain his-torical development of these two national movements through earlier types of linkage, into ‘New Labour’ and ‘New Democratic’ forms. The paper suggests that, from similar starting points, differences through time in the range of types of linkage in the two movements can be explained by a combination of factors of political economy and electoral strategy, a combination that today points towards weaker relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of the MERCOSUR agreement on wages, employment and working conditions in Argentina. It also considers the ways in which MERCOSUR will influence the organisational integrity of the labour movement, and the political implications for organised labour. Evidence demonstrates the erosion of the power of labour and particularly its bargaining position relative to the different elements which constitute Argentinian capital. Argentinian labour has been further weakened by the institutional character of the Trade Union movement and needs to build an alternative grass-roots movement whilst forging links with other MERCOSUR members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While capitalism is increasingly organised on a global basis, effective opposition to capitalist practices tends to be manifest locally. The traditional response of the labour movement to global capitalism has been to try to forge international links between workers' organisations in different countries. This strategy, despite some successes, has generally failed and the paper argues that the relationship between the labour movement and the New Social Movements requires further analysis in terms of the local and the global. The rationale and characteristics of such an analysis are discussed in the context of opposition to the practices of the transnational corporations, the transnational capitalist class and its local affiliates, and the culture-ideology of consumerism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two current approaches to the study of white-collar unionism are identified: a) the 'sociological' approach, which relates patterns of white-collar unionism to the class situation of white-collar workers, b) the 'industrial relations' critique, which rejects the association of class situation and union activity and argues instead that job regulation is the crucial independent variable. Whilst the approach developed in this paper is firmly within the `sociological' tradition, I argue that the neo-Weberian class analysis from which this tradition is derived gives an incomplete understanding of the location of the `white- collar' or `new middle' class in the class structure of advanced capitalist society. I outline an alternative strategy for the analysis of the `white-collar' class situation, drawn from Marxian principles. The essential ambiguity of the white-collar class situation is stressed, and this ambiguity is then related to patterns of white-collar representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks how an existing field of formal organizations influences the formation of social movements around new interests. Data on the Knights of Labor are used to examine how craft organization in the iron and steel industry affected the incorporation of industrial workers into the labor movement. We find that even in the absence of ideological opposition to class-based organization, building on craft associations tended to create a divided and limited labor movement. This study suggests that pre-existing organization can simultaneously help emerging interest groups organize and reinforce the traditional divisions that segment these emerging interest groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]