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

Abstract

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.

Notes

^1. Clawson, The Next Upsurge, 48

^2. Freeman, “Why not eat children?,” 14.

^3. Touraine, The Workers' Movement, 115, 118.

^4. Harvey, “The geography of Class Power,” Burawoy, “For a Sociology of Marxism,” Deutcher, The Prophet Armed, 54, for insights into agency and change.

^5. Huberman, Man's Worldly Goods, 204.

^6. I identify with the strategic position, ‘crucial but equal, Waterman, “Labour Movements and New Social Movements”,’ Labor History, 196; Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, introduces the idea of a movement of the dispossessed, 240; Munck, Globalization and Contestation, grounds analysis of the prospects and obstacles to a Polanyi Counter Movement within the recent history of such initiatives.

^7. Moody, Workers in a Lean World, p269; Waterman, “New Internationalism, Social Unionism…”

^8. Hyman, Understanding European Trade Unionism, 61.

^9. Hyman, op.cit, 3.

^10. Ibid. 4.

^11. Ibid. 4.

^12. Paul Kelly, The End of Certainty, 2.

^13. Gruen, F.H., “How Bad is Australia's Economic Performance and Why?,” 4. These were also golden years in the United States.

^14. Hyman, op.cit., 52.

^15. Australia Reconstructed .

^16. Edward Davis, “The ACTU Congress,” 123.

^17. Leys, Market Driven Politics, 4.

^18. Ogden, International Best Practice, 11.

^19. Muir, Worth Fighting for…

^20. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 111, 112.

^21. Tarrow, ibid., 32.

^22. Muir, ibid., 88.

^23. Presentations at the Mining and Maritime Global conference, Sydney April 2008.

^24. Ibid., 139.

^25. Interview, Kevin Bracken, MUA organizer in Melbourne, who was actively involved in a Your Rights at Work group in the city.

^26. Harvey, The Geography of Difference, 343.

^27. Pusey, Economic Rationaism, p. 215.

^28. Hyman, ibid., 36.

^29. In this section ideas on SMU are drawn from the SACTU (South African Congress of Trade Unions) and COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) experiences in South Africa, 1955–1963 and 1971–1990 respectively and the experience of independent unions in Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s leading to the formation of CUT, Central Unica Dos Tradalhadores in 1981.

^30. See Webster, Sword of Justice, which highlights the decline in South Africa and Sluyter Beltrao, The Rise and Decline…

^31. Harvey, op.cit., 83.

^32. Tarrow, op.cit. 106–123.

^33. Interview, 23 September, 1977.

^34. Fukuyama, “We have reached….”

^35. Williams, Proletarian Order…96.

^36. Lambert, Political Unionism in South Africa, for a historical analysis of these developments. The Phd thesis is based on oral histories of the SACTU leadership and workers. There were four national strikes, represented as stay aways (1957, 1958, 1960 and 1961) where success varied by region. Data reveals that these strikes were most effective in regions where SACTU was relatively strongly organized, most notably Natal and the Eastern Cape.

^37. Lambert, Black Working Class Consciousness & Resistance; and, Political Unionism in South Africa. For an analysis of these campaigns see 370–466 in the latter work.

^38. Lambert, Political Unionism in South Africa.

^39. Clawson, The Next Upsurge, 13. For a critique of this concept, see Hyman…..This was a contribution to the Labor History Symposium on Clawson's book, Vol. 45, Number 3, August 2004.

^40. The Freedom Charter, adopted at the Congress of the People at Kliptown, Johannesburg, on June 25 and 26, 1955.

^41. Touraine, The Workers' Movement, 113.

^42. Lambert, ibid., interview with Billy Nair, 25^th May 1984.

^43. See booklets of the Institute of Industrial Education (IIE).

^44. Maree, The Independent Trade Unions; Friedman, Building Tomorrow Today; Baskin, Striking Back. The South African Labour Bulletin provides a rich texture of the development of the movement during this period.

^45. Baskin, Striking Back, 87.

^46. Seidman, Manufacturing Militancy, 154.

^47. Ibid., 215.

^48. Ibid., 217.

^49. Fairbrother and Webster, ‘Social Movement Unionism: Questions and Possibilities;’ Fairbrother, “Social Movement Unionism or Trade Unions as Social Movements;” Clarke and Clements, “The Raison D'Etre of Trade Unionism;” Hyman, Understanding European Trade Unionism, p60; Hyman, Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unionism.

^50. Hyman, ibid., 2001, pp60–62. The contradictions here identified are also central to Hyman's early work. See, “Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unionism,” 1971.

^51. The rise of democratic unionism upon which this analysis of South Africa and Brazil is based is not the only form of unionism in the global south. See my distinction between business unionism and movement unionism in the global south. Lambert, “Labour Movement renewal…” 188.

^52. Von Holt, “Social Movement Unionism.”

^53. Pusey, The Experience of Middle Australia.

^54. Lambert, “Social Movement Unionism: the urgent task of definition,” which was a rejoinder to Waterman's unpublished paper, ‘Social Movement Unionism: Beyond “Economic” and “Political” Unionism.’

^55. Op.cit., p. 274.

^56. For a more detailed account of the formation and development of SIGTUR see: Lambert and Webster, “Southern Unionism….;” “Transnational Union Strategies;” “Global Civil Society;” “Social Emancipation.”

^57. Silver, Forces of Labor, 13.

^58. Webster et.al. Grounding Globalization, pp. 11–13.

^59. Speech to the Maritime Union of Australia's Western Australian state conference, February 2011.

^60. Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, 237.

^61. Ibid., 5.

^62. Ibid., p. 237 for a paraphrase of the ideas.