Salamanca Cardona and Choudry (2019) Activist Learning and Temporary Agency Workers in Quebec

Salamanca Cardona, M., and Choudry, A. 2019. “Activist Learning and Temporary Agency Workers in Quebec.” In Ramdeholl, D. (Ed.). New Directions For Adult and Continuing Education, Understanding Social Justice: Learning and Movements in Adult Education 164 (Winter), 37-48.

Activist Learning and Temporary Agency Workers in Quebec

Manuel Salamanca Cardona 

 

Aziz Choudry

First published: 29 December 2019

 

https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.20354

Abstract

This chapter addresses learning and nonformal education in the course of organizing migrant and immigrant (im/migrant) temporary agency workers through the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC) and the Temporary Agency Workers Association (TAWA) in Montreal. The IWC/TAWA organizing approach with agency workers is based on community organizing, activist knowledge production, popular education, and leadership development. Activist education work has helped to foster sustained organizing and campaigns against exploitation by temp agencies in Quebec. This has led to important gains like a recently adopted law that includes several provisions to regulate agencies. We build on critical ethnographic activist research, radical adult education literature concerning social movements, and apply Freire's concepts of limit situations and untested feasibility to TAWA/IWC organizing approaches. We argue that precarious work entails both vulnerability and resistance, and suggest that researchers should attend to the role of activist education, learning, and knowledge production to better understand social and economic justice struggles.

Kim (2019) A Review Essay of Robert O'Brien's Labour Internationalism in the Global South

Scipes, Kim. 2019. A Review Essay of Labour Internationalism in the Global South: The SIGTUR Initiative, by Robert O’Brien. Journal of Labor and Society 22(4): 920-25.

Robert O'Brien's latest book is an interesting look at a generally unknown labor initiative across the Global South that has developed over the past 30 years, uniting trade unions and labor activists for mutual protection and militant labor action, and to advance the interests of workers globally. This book, and the project it describes, deserves the serious attention of transnational activists, those both working in the labor movement and beyond.

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Ellem, Goods and Todd (2019) Rethinking Power (BJIR)

Ellem, Bradon, Caleb Goods and Patricia Todd. 2019. “Rethinking Power, Strategy and Renewal: Members and Unions in Crisis.” British Journal of Industrial Relations, published online 1 October. 

Abstract

Why are some unions unable to rebuild membership and bargaining coverage despite significant changes in strategy? We examine the trajectory of a key union in a vital sector, the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, calling into question aspects of the union renewal literature. Much scholarship sees members’ associational power as a power resource that can cover the loss of other power resources, but we show that this assumption does not necessarily hold. To explain why members are not necessarily a resource in renewal, we argue that studies of renewal must more fully consider the interplay between different forms of power resources — institutional, structural and societal — and locate union strategies within that dynamic. Critically, this interplay also shapes members’ perceptions of their power, which may further limit a union's options as it responds to external threats.

Rosales-Mendoza and Campos-Flores (2019) International Journal of Care and Caring

Rosales-Mendoza, Adriana Leona and Linamar Campos-Flores. 2019. “Family Separation and Emotional Bonds: Women of Chiapas and Yucatan, Mexico, Facing Male Migration to Quebec, Canada.” International Journal of Care and Caring 3(2): 279-94.

Michael Roberts (2019) Strikes in the Long Depression

Michael Roberts. 2019. “Strikes in the Long Depression.” Michael Roberts Blog. June 18. 

Strikes in the Long Depression

Jorg Nowak, a fellow at the University of Nottingham, UK has just published Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India:: popular mobilisation in the Long Depression.  Nowak argues that in the 21st century and in this current long depression in the major economies, industrial action is no longer led by organised labour ie trade unions, and now takes the form of wider ‘mass strikes’ that involve unorganised workers and wider social forces in the community.  This popular mobilisation is closer to Rosa Luxemburg’s concept of mass strikes than the conventional ’eurocentric’ formation of trade unions.

Continue to read: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/06/18/strikes-in-the-long-depression/

Barratt and Ellem (2019) Regional Studies

Barratt, Tom and Bradon Ellem. 2019. “Temporality and the Evolution of GPNs: Remaking BHP’s Pilbara Iron Ore Network.” Regional Studies. Published online on 4 April: 1-10.

Ellem, Sandstrom and Persson (2019) European Journal of Industrial Relations

Ellem, Bradon, Johan Sandstrom and Curt Persson. 2019. “Neoliberal Trajectories in Mining: Comparing Malmfälten and the Pilbara.” European Journal of Industrial Relations. First published on 9 May: 1-16.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680119847873

Abstract

We compare the iron ore sectors and mining regions of Malmfälten in Sweden and the Pilbara in Australia. Both are physically isolated and the product is economically vital, but we find differences in industrial relations which accord with what would be expected in coordinated and liberal market economies. A closer examination, attentive to history and geography and in which changes in institutional form and function are highlighted, reveals, however, that these differences are more apparent than real, and that there is a common neoliberal trajectory. This analysis also suggests that changes in these sites at times drive transformations in national industrial relations.

Keywords Australia, comparative industrial relations, geography, history, mining, neoliberalism, region, sector, Sweden