Robert Lambert

Southern Unionism and the New Labour Internationalism

The paper traces the genesis of SIGTUR, a new network/organization of southern unions that has been built over the past decade, which brings together democratic unions from Latin America, Southern Africa, Asia and Australasia. The impact of neoliberal globalisation has spurred this action, and Australian unions—with their rich tradition of labour internationalism—have been at the forefront. The paper shows how the initial hostility of the established trade union internationals has been transformed into strategic alliances as the internationals have come to value SIGTURs campaign orientation. The paper argues that SIGTUR has continued to expand because of its strong emphasis on internal democracy. The new southern alliance is one instance of a search for a new form of unionism—global social movement unionism—that may offer greater scope for a more effective resistance to the logic of globalisation. In the new millennium, this search is critical if unions are to rekindle the vision and the confidence that drove the early movement.

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’.

“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.

Death of a Factory: Market Rationalism's Hidden Abode in Inner-City Melbourne

This article does not have an abstract

Kilusang Mayo Uno & the Rise of Social Movement Unionism in the Philippines

Abstract The paper traces the genesis and development of the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) or May First movement in the Philippines as a significant component of Filipino industrial relations. The argument of the paper is that the growth has been rapid despite employer victimization and violent state repression, because of the attractiveness of a new trade union organizing style, a style which has emerged in certain Third World and other repressive state contexts. While the KMU leadership has adopted the political identity, ‘National Democratic Unionism’, I argue that the analytical concept social movement unionism is an effective way of capturing the dynamic of this new trade union form. Through the rootedness of social movementism in the workplace and in the community, through the movements mass actions challenging state power, and through the leadership conviction that an alternative society is possible, the new form has proven viable. The optimism underlying these developments stands in sharp contrast to t...

Agent of the market, or instrument of justice? Redefining trade union identity in the era of market driven politics

Corporate restructuring is a central feature neoliberal globalization. Despite the adverse social and psychological consequences of this market driven change, unions have, for the most part, viewed restructuring as an inevitable characteristic of the contemporary economy. This article argues that such market accommodation is the result of a political failure to critically engage the free market model and its social impacts. Analysis of this failure and the possible construction of a justice alternative is grounded in an analysis of union developments in Australia, South Africa and Brazil. In each country, unions were empowered and won critical struggles when they assumed a social movement form shaped by justice-orientated human liberation politics. This choice at a national level needs to be synchronized by a new labour internationalism if this challenge against market logic is to have any prospect of sustaining change.

Global labour studies: the crises and an emerging research agenda

Bieler makes this assessment of Grounding Globalization (GG): the book ‘constitutes a significant contribution to our understanding of neo-liberal globalization, its impact on workers and the possible ways of resisting’. Our rejoinder to the four interventions reflects on these three core issues to advance debate on the unfolding crises of neo-liberalism and the prospects this might herald for effective resistance. In the course of this, we identify priority research areas in the new field of global labour studies (GLS). In our view, a core aim of GLS is clarification of the underlying cause of the crises and envisaging alternatives to the free market logic. These questions foreground the strategic question: what kind of movement is needed to successfully mobilize against neo-liberalism? Our book was published before the recent financial crisis and its fallout, which, in our view, underscore some of the issues we raised in the book, but also require a fresh look at opportunities for global countermovement. Analysing the role of finance capital and the ongoing global financial crisis (GFC) is the starting point of this endeavour.

Searching for Security: Case Studies of the Impact of Work Restructuring on Households in South Korea, South Africa and Australia

The reconfiguration of the employment relationship — through the growing intensification, informalization and casualization of work, downsizing and retrenchments — impacts directly on workers’ households and the communities within which they are embedded. To understand these responses, we need to rethink the way we study the changing employment relationship. Employment relations should not only analyse the workplace: we need to research workers in the totality of their lives. To comprehend these processes we surveyed and interviewed workers in the workplace and in their households and communities. Through following workers into their homes and communities in South Africa, Australia and South Korea, the differential impact of the global restructuring of one industry, the white goods industry, on the non-working life of working people emerged. Two types of responses were identified: on the one hand, a retreat from, or an adaptation to, rapid market liberalization; on the other, mobilization to challenge the market. All three research sites evidenced innovative attempts at the local level to search for security. However, these responses lacked an overall vision of alternative possibilities to the realities of the free market paradigm of globalization.

International labour standards: challenging globalization ideology?

Abstract The article centres on the role of differential labour standards in the restructuring of the global economy. The denial of labour rights in Asia is a significant factor in the Asian investment boom and in the employment crises in the OECD countries. The first section outlines the Clinton administrations intervention on labour standards in Asia, the strident reaction from Asian governments and from US business interests, and the administrations rapid retreat into ‘constructive engagement’. The second section considers neo‐liberal arguments advanced in favour of nonintervention in the labour sphere since the freeing up of trade and market forces generates economic growth, which in itself improves labour standards. The assumptions underlying this model are critiqued. Finally, alternatives that recognize the significant influence of labour standards on global investment flows are identified. Here it is argued that the emergence of independent unionism in Asia could have a significant effect on the ...

State of the Union: An Assessment of Union Strategies

Accelerating global economic change reflected in the high degree of capital mobility and integrated global markets has intensified investment competition between states. The union movement reacted through a commitment to strategic unionism and award restructuring. However, the impact of the latter has been limited by the occupationally divided structure of Australian unions. The paper analyses attempts to change this structure through union amalgamations and considers the impact inter-union power struggles, shaped by factional alignments, have had on the process. The paper assesses the organizational problems of conglomerate unionism and evaluates possible counters to likely tendencies.