Michael Gillan

Electrolux in Australia: Deregulation, Industry Restructuring and the Dynamics of Bargaining

This paper provides a critical assessment of state deregulation policy, industrial restructuring and the erosion of union-based bargaining by analysing the role of the Swedish whitegoods transnational corporation, Electrolux, which bought out the last remaining Australian whitegoods manufacturer in November 2000. We contend that analysis of the global strategy of a transnational corporation provides insight into the dynamics of competition and changing power relations in a deregulated environment. Our research shows how deregulation intensifies global competition in a way that accelerates mergers and acquisitions, which create a high degree of concentration, further rationalisations and workplace restructuring. The latter has been facilitated by the 1996 Workplace Relations Act (WRA), which disorganises trade unionism and undermines solidarity cultures. This we illustrate through a short analysis of the restructuring Electrolux has implemented at a refrigeration plant in Orange, New South Wales. The corporations mode of bargaining a new enterprise agreement is explored. The power imbalances this process re.ects will only be redressed when there is ‘a new social organisation of labour’.

From Cronyism to Oligarchy? Privatisation and Business Elites in Myanmar

Abstract Privatisation is often contentious yet in Myanmar it has not so much been its merits or drawbacks that have attracted attention as questions around implementation. In Myanmar, the implementation of privatisation has broad significance for the political economy. A first phase of privatisation was focused on small and medium-sized enterprises and did not have a significant economic impact. A second phase, commenced in 2008, consolidated the interests of a business elite with personal connections to the military regime. The impact of this second phase of privatisation was such that some elements of this elite strengthened to the extent that they no longer relied entirely on patronage, creating opportunities for diversification in their strategies of wealth creation and defence. For this reason, it is argued, the wealthiest strata of Myanmar’s business elite is now best conceived as not simply consisting of cronies but rather as a nascent form of oligarchy. In theoretical terms, this suggests that greater attention to the qualitative difference between cronyism and oligarchy is warranted, as is close study of processes – like privatisation and political reform – that enable or require a wider range of strategies of wealth defence.

“Spaces of Hope”? Fatalism, Trade Unionism, and the Uneven Geography of Capital in White Goods Manufacturing

Abstract By engaging the “politics of scale,” the discourse of labor geography challenges the fatalism and consequent passivity that pervades much of the labor movement when it is confronted by corporate restructuring. An optimistic view of agency is central to this theoretical intervention. On the basis of empirical research on workers’ responses to a transnational corporation’s restructuring of a large refrigerator factory in rural Australia, this article highlights contradictory reactions to restructuring, thereby questioning the conception of agency that is at the heart of the labor geography project. Our data suggest a need to refine a theory that tends toward voluntarism in stressing workers’ autonomy by developing a more complex, contradictory, and embedded conception. The latter reveals the unpredictable, dynamic, and contested character of agency in which the strategic response of unionism is a critical variable. The results reveal the power of a new discourse on scale in transforming fatalism. Although this initiative in Australia is now in the first phase of evolving a new institutional expression of this discourse, the data reveal how the union’s policy decision to rescale and network globally within the corporation has empowered those who are determined to act, thereby undermining the passivity and fatalism of the majority. This transformation of social consciousness is a crucial trigger in the shift toward globally networked forms of unionism. To date, the labor geography literature has not adequately addressed the relationship between discourse, consciousness, and action. The article concludes that this new direction may have a wider significance in the global dynamic between corporations and civil society and may point to a more systematic, long-term change in the geographic scale of unionism.

The global union federations in international industrial relations: A critical review

In recent decades, trade unions have been challenged to develop new forms of representation, action and institutional engagement in response to the increasingly transnational character of production and service delivery. This has necessarily required a shift in focus beyond national boundaries, and thus beyond the traditional scale of industrial relations systems. Among the most important actors in these attempts to globalize industrial relations have been the global union federations (GUFs), which represent national sectoral federations in key industries. Over several decades, the GUFs have sought to engage with multinational corporations through various strategies including policy campaigns and the negotiation of Global Framework Agreements (GFAs) and have provided support for workers and their unions in different national settings, including emerging labour movements in the Global South. This article reviews the growing literature on transnational industrial relations, focusing on the historical development of the GUFs, their core repertoires of action and their impact on industrial relations practice both internationally and within national boundaries. In doing so, it identifies and assesses not only the opportunities for GUF interventions in international industrial relations, but also the many obstacles – including resource constraints and dependence on unions at other scales – that limit their reach and ability to achieve these strategic goals.

State, Ideology and the Emergence of ‘Good Faith’ Collective Bargaining Regulation in Australia

The aim of this article is to discuss the emergence and practice of a ‘good faith’ collective bargaining regime in Australia. The core argument of the article is that while Fair Work Australia – the industrial regulatory agency created by a Labor government under this regime – is attempting to fulfil the role of an ‘umpire’ in reaching decisions on good faith bargaining, the requirement to promote both market and social objectives highlights tensions that are characteristic of ‘third way’ governmentality. Reviewing decisions by Fair Work Australia on good faith bargaining illustrates this argument.

Labour Movements and the Age of Crisis: Scale, Form and Repertoires of Action in India and Beyond

Labour movements, in responding to global crises, are themselves confronted by ‘intersecting contradictions’ related to differing trade union forms and repertoires of action. In India, unions have been shaped in powerful ways by their historic articulation to state and politics. The scope and framing of union action has been somewhat limited. However, trade unions in India are also in a process of transition and are now more various in their forms, strategies and spatial relations.

Bengal's past and present: Hindu nationalist contestations of history and regional identity

This paper examines the deployment and symbolic appropriation of popular history and nationalist iconography within the campaigns and discourse of Hindu nationalist organisations in India. It examines how Hindu nationalists have deployed these themes over several decades in the east Indian state of West Bengal. This paper notes that the Hindu nationalist attempt to re-construct popular history and regional identity was contested. Specifically, it considers the political response of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the pre-eminent leftist party in India, within the public sphere at a national and regional level. In so doing, the paper attempts to delineate the varied ways in which the Hindu nationalist deployment of iconic figures from the past are simultaneously articulated and, paradoxically, anomalous, to the regional specificity of political culture and the social construction of historical memory and identity.

Employment relations and the state in Southeast Asia

This article engages critically with the comparative employment relations literature, assessing its capacity to explain and analyse the relationship between state objectives – accumulation, pacification, legitimation – and employment relations. Having engaged with approaches that have influenced the discipline in recent decades, it draws on insights from capitalist Southeast Asia to identify determining factors not accounted for in comparative employment relations models developed from and applied to the Global North. These include the relatively high degree of fluidity in forms of governance characteristic of contexts where there is a dynamic interplay between democratic and authoritarian rule, which challenges the assumption that employment relations are underpinned by a relatively strong, stable and autonomous state. Equally significant is the impact of inter-state and international interests and influences, only some of which are economic, on the balance between different state objectives as they pertain to employment relations.

Revitalising Trade Unions as Civil Society Actors in India

Abstract In the past, leading national trade unions in India failed to develop a strong base among unorganised (informal) sector workers and limited their engagement with civil society. Recent initiatives to redress the latter are assessed with reference to the opportunities and constraints that emerge from the organisational structure and ideological and political affiliations of trade unions.

In search of a living wage in Southeast Asia

Purpose Debates over the definition, processes and outcomes of minimum and “living” wages are heated and often politically contentious in garment-producing countries. Internationally, there have been various initiatives to promote and support the implementation of a living wage for workers in labour-intensive manufacturing, ranging from corporate-driven social responsibility and multi-stakeholder initiatives to the long-standing living wage campaign of the global unions. One prominent regional initiative is the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA). The purpose of this paper is to assess its reach and effect in Southeast Asia. Design/methodology/approach A living wage campaign is assessed with reference to Indonesia and Cambodia, two important garment manufacturing countries in Southeast Asia. The paper draws on data collected in interviews with garment manufacturers, brand representatives, trade unionists and labour NGO activists, including members of the AFWA Steering Committee in Indonesia and Cambodia, complemented by a systematic review of documents and reports produced by the AFWA. Findings As the paper shows, despite a series of initiatives, the Asia Floor Wage has failed to gain traction in Cambodia or Indonesia. This is so, the paper argues, because national economic, political and institutional contexts are the primary drivers of the strategies and priorities of constituent organisations, governments and industry stakeholders. In the absence of robust local and regional coalitions of trade unions, efforts towards a common and coordinated regional approach to living wages are thus unlikely to gain traction. Originality/value To a large extent, the literature on the concepts and practices associated with the living wage has focussed on developed rather than developing countries. This paper extends the literature by providing a systematic examination of a transnational wage campaign in developing Asian countries.