Andrew Vandenberg

Social-movement Unionism in Theory and in Sweden

Many union leaders and observers of unionism in industrially advanced countries have recently argued for stronger links between unions and social movements but their arguments leave the nature of social movements underspecified. This article reviews the literature on social movements and argues in favour of a minimalist theory of the social actor rather than choose between American and European approaches to studying social movements. Both Meluccis European approach and McAdam, Tarrow, and Tillys American approach to integrating the European and American schools of thought on social movements are inadequate to the task of specifying social-movement unionism. Hindesss minimalist theory of the social actor and articulated arenas of conflict offers a stronger approach to understanding social-movement unionism and appreciating its strategic pertinence in particular times and places. Two episodes of contention in Sweden illustrate the advantages of a minimalist theory of articulated social-movement unionism.

Corporatism, crisis and contention in Sweden and Korea during the 1990s

Debate has long surrounded corporatism’s depictions of power and the state, and the rise of neoliberalism has raised even more doubts about corporatism as an analytical construct. Faltering growth and rising unemployment in Sweden and Korea after financial crises in the 1990s seemed to confirm neoliberal expectations that all varieties of corporatism (state/authoritarian and societal/democratic) are doomed to decline, and that corporatism will converge on liberalism. Closer examination of the 1990s crises suggests that Swedish and Korean institutions have transformed rather than collapsed. Corporatist institutions have been transformed by ideas about networks and governance, interaction between national and international institutions and shifting alliances among export-oriented and competition-shielded employers, private and public sector unions and citizen networks. This article argues that the ‘dynamics of contention’ can explain how these new ideas and alliances transformed regimes in Sweden and Korea and as such constitute an alternative to corporatism as an analytical construct.

Learning How to Engage Students Online in Hard Times

In a context of financial restraint and enterprising university managers, teacher-researchers have reason to be sceptical about the trend towards online teaching and away from learning for its own sake. This article departs from both economic and technological determinism and turns instead to ideas about technology embedded in social and political institutions. Activity theory offers a useful means of analysing such embeddedness. Its Marxian assumptions about human nature specify a non-deterministic approach to technology. Its dynamic model of the subjects, tools, and objects of activity within a context of rules, a community, and a division of labour helps to specify aspects of the author’s process of learning how to use electronic conferencing effectively. A full deployment of activity theory would also analyse the activity of students. Here the evidence comes mainly from the activity of researcher-teachers engaging greater activity among students. The numbers of students involved precludes reliable quantitative analysis but qualitative evidence from students does support conclusions about researcher-teachers learning how to make best use of electronic conferencing.

Why Did the ALP Introduce the My School Website

This chapter reflects on available explanations for why an Australian Labor Party (ALP) government introduced the My School website in 2010. The chapter opens with a description of a union boycott against My School that was called off at the last moment. It then canvasses the responsible minister’s own views and explanations, considers the possibility that the long-standing and extensive influence of News Corp shaped the ALP’s education policies, and considers an explanation based on the way the path dependency of institutions constrains what actors can do. It concludes that a combination of the three explanations provides the best answer to why My School came about when it did.

Is Professional Unionism a Model for Teachers

There are two main strategies unions can deploy to resist the rise of social neoliberal education policies founded upon auditing teachers’ work. This chapter reflects on the first of these: to pursue a strategy of professional unionism that directly confronts the way auditing numeracy and literacy degrades teachers’ autonomy and undermines their wider effectiveness.

Australian Education Union Responses to the GERM

The second strategy that unions can deploy to resist the rise of social neoliberal policies in education is to enliven the traditions of social democracy. This requires interpreting professional unionism as an updated form of industrial democracy that is more pertinent to the problems of auditing in an age of networked information and social media. The chapter looks at how Australian ideas of ‘strategic unionism’, drawn in the 1980s from an interpretation of the Swedish social-democratic labour movement, has led to unions conducting political campaigns independent from the Australian Labor Party (ALP). The dispute between the Australian Education Union and the ALP government over My School in 2010 should be considered within the wider ambitions of Australian unions to maintain connections between pay and working conditions and various campaigns for wider concerns of social justice.

Global Unionism and Global Governance

In 2001, several international unions and union bodies1 met to discuss a wide-ranging review of international unionism (Schmidt, 2005). One upshot of this review was that the international unions began to rebadge themselves as global unions. There were several reasons for this organisational name change. First, it reflected efforts to address the social consequences of neo-liberal policies of economic globalisation and the International Labour Organisation (ILO)-led campaign for decent work for all workers everywhere. Second, it reflected the way global unions seek alliances with other transnational movements against neo-liberal globalisation. Third, after the end of the Cold War, the collapse of apartheid, and union involvement in several democratisation movements, the new name reflects the unions’ attempt to move beyond old tensions between revolution and reformism, or communist, social democratic, and liberal forms of internationalism.