The Politics of Privatisation and Trade Union Mobilisation

The Politics of Privatisation and Trade Union Mobilisation
Author: Pablo Ghigliani
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2010
Genre: Electric industry workers
ISBN: 9783039119615

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This is a comparative study of how workers and their unions respond to privatisation. Drawing upon research from a variety of disciplines, the author examines the push toward privatisation in diverse national settings, its profound impact on organised labour, and the often innovative responses of workers and their unions in the affected industries. By means of a detailed analysis of the privatisation of the electricity industries in the United Kingdom and Argentina, and the various initiatives of workers and their trade unions in these two countries, this book offers an engaging comparative case study that sheds new light on key issues in contemporary labour studies: the strategic choices available to workers and their organisations when faced with the radical restructuring of their industries; the types of resources available to trade unions and how they are mobilised; and the impact of widespread worker unrest on their organisations. This book also provides fresh insight into the use of mobilisation theory in the field of labour studies. The author employs mobilisation theory to make sense of worker and trade union responses to privatisation, and he argues that this theoretical framework can be useful for cross-national comparisons.

Do Protests Make a Difference?

Do Protests Make a Difference?
Author: Katrin Uba
Publisher:
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2007
Genre: Labor unions
ISBN:

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The Politics of Privatisation

The Politics of Privatisation
Author: Kate Ascher
Publisher: Basingstoke, Hamp., Macmillan
Total Pages: 320
Release: 1987
Genre: Law
ISBN:

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... A very well researched, informative and thoughtful. It is an authoritative study of a fast changing area and introduces a welcome note of sanity into a highly changed debate.' Stephen Wilks, Parliamentary Affairs.

Russian Trade Unions and Industrial Relations in Transition

Russian Trade Unions and Industrial Relations in Transition
Author: S. Ashwin
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2002-11-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0230598358

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Many commentators expected the Russian trade unions to collapse along with the system of which they were an integral part, but the trade unions survived the storms of the Yeltsin era by adopting a strategy of 'social partnership'. This book, based on case-study and survey research in eight Russian regions, provides a detailed account of the development of trade unionism in Russia since the collapse of the soviet system. Against the background of the role of the trade unions in the soviet system, the book reviews the political role, structure and functions of the trade unions, development of social partnership at federal and regional levels, and provides a detailed account of the activity of the trade unions at the level of enterprise. The book concludes with a critical assessment of the Russian unions' strategy of 'social partnership' and locates it in comparative perspective.

Renewal in the French Trade Union Movement

Renewal in the French Trade Union Movement
Author: Heather Connolly
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2010
Genre: Labor unions
ISBN: 9783034301015

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Drawing on ethnographic research in the breakaway trade union movement Fédération des Syndicats Solidaires, Unitaires et Démocratiques (SUD), this book explores broad questions of trade union renewal in France. The SUD movement emerged in 1988 with the avowed intention to revitalise French trade unionism. Since its emergence the movement has increasingly been cited as a prime instigator of social unrest in France. In a wider context of union decline in Europe, this research considers to what extent and in what ways SUD has been able to develop and sustain collective organisation, identity and mobilisation. Research was conducted in a local-level union of SUD-Rail, a union which emerged in the French public railway sector in 1996 from an ideological split within one of France's largest trade union confederations, the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT). From an ethnographic perspective, the book contributes a thick description of trade unionism at the local level and, drawing on social movement theory, analyses activists' attempts to confront and renew practices and structures in trade unionism. The book evaluates the success of the SUD movement and the prospects for a more sustained renewal of French trade unionism.

Rise and Decline of Brazil's New Unionism

Rise and Decline of Brazil's New Unionism
Author: Jeffrey Sluyter-Beltrão
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2010
Genre: Brazil
ISBN: 9783034301145

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This book explores the political trajectory of Latin America's most important contemporary labor movement. The New Unionism played a central role in Brazil's struggle for democracy in the 1980s and recast the country's subsequent party politics through its creation of the innovative Workers' Party (PT). The author breaks new ground by analyzing this celebrated prototype of «social movement unionism» as a heterogeneous alliance of component factions that evolves in relation to shifting economic, political, and ideological contexts. Through the prism of internal politics, he shows how Brazil's transitions - from military-authoritarian to liberal-democratic rule, from statist to free-market economic policies, and from a Leninist to a post-Leninist left - undermined the independent labor movement's commitments to internal democracy, political autonomy, and societal transformation. The book concludes with a comparative assessment of Brazilian, South African, and South Korean social movement unionisms' shared dilemmas, arguing that an adequate understanding of their relative declines demands more rigorous attention to the dynamic nexus between internal movement politics and shifting external environments.

Liberal Workers of the World, Unite?

Liberal Workers of the World, Unite?
Author: Magaly Rodriguez Garcia
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2010
Genre: Labor unions
ISBN: 9783034301121

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The history of international free trade union organisations during the first two decades of the Cold War is an important but often neglected aspect of the development of post-war labour and liberalism. In this path-breaking book, Rodríguez García fills this void in the historical literature by offering a comparative analysis of two cases, the European Regional Organisation (ERO) and the Inter-American Regional Workers' Organisation (ORIT), which were created in the early 1950s as regional branches of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). The author employs the term 'labour liberalism' to describe their wide variety of functions. She argues that social democratic and reformist trade unions, which made up the bulk of ICFTU members, were fundamentally shaped by liberal values, even while calling for the active participation of organised labour in the planning and implementation of projects promoting liberal democracy and socio-economic development at home and abroad. By placing international free trade unionism centre stage, this book adds significantly to our understanding of post-war labour and liberalism.

Organizing the Organized

Organizing the Organized
Author: Laura Ariovich
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2010
Genre: Industrial relations
ISBN: 9783034301329

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This book studies a «best-practices» example of what is known as the organizing local approach to union renewal. Several unions in the US, the UK, and other countries have embraced this model of unionism as a formula for labor revitalization. Organizing locals aim to strengthen unions by redeploying resources and mobilizing workers around the goal of member recruitment. The union local under study stands out as an exceptional case within the US context. Against the backdrop of a languishing labor movement, this local has succeeded at recruiting workers and keeping its members engaged. The book seeks to unpack this success and examine closely what works, what does not, and how things work. The research design relies on participant observation and in-depth interviews to examine how formal systems of representation and macro-organizing strategies and platforms get translated into micro-level processes, experiences, and relationships. By adopting a micro-social approach, the author reveals what drives union activism in an organizing local, beyond the rhetoric of union officials. Further, the findings identify the conditions for successful union reform, and show formal and informal mechanisms for accommodating opposite orientations in union work, attending to members' expectations of union «help», and changing the status quo through organizing.

Workplace Conflict

Workplace Conflict
Author: M. Atzeni
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2010-06-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0230281621

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Based on qualitative work in car plants in Argentina, this book offers new insights for an understanding of workers' collective struggles in a radical perspective. Criticizing the use of injustice as the basis of mobilization, it argues that workers' collective resistance should be seen as a function of the development of solidarity.