Trade Union and Precarious Work

Campbell, Iain. 2021. “Trade Union and Precarious Work: In Search of Effective Strategies.” Pp. 93-118 in Democracy, Social Justice and the Role of Trade Unions: We the Working People, edited by Caroline Kelly and Joo-Cheong Tham. London: Anthem Press.  

Sociologias (2021) Digital Platform Work

Sociologias, “Digital Platform Work,” Vol. 23, No. 57, (May – Aug) 2021.

Editors and contributors: Ludmila C. Abílio, Henrique Amorim, Rafael Grohmann

Contributors: Jenny Chan, Cheryll R. Soriano, Earvin C. Cabalquinto, Joy H. Panaligan, Antonio A. Casilli, Matheus Viana Braz, Sofía Scasserra, Flora Partenio.

https://seer.ufrgs.br/sociologias/issue/view/4169/showToc

Tempo Social (V. 33, N. 2, May-Aug 2021)

Tempo Social, revista de sociologia da USP, v. 33, n. 2, May-August 2021

Dossier – Transnational Labor Struggles and Political Repertoires

 

“A joint-effort made by Portuguese and Brazilian labor researchers to reach international audience.”—Leonardo Mello e Silva, Elísio Estanque, Hermes Augusto Costa

 

Presentation: political repertoires in transnational labor struggles and new forms of global labor governance

Leonardo Mello e Silva, Elísio Estanque and Hermes Augusto Costa

 

Building a regional solidarity network of transnational activists: an African Case Study

Warren McGregor and Edward Webster

 

Global economic planning as a challenge for the labour movement

Jörg Nowak

 

The globalization of just transition in the world of labour: the politics of scale and scope

Dimitris Stevis

 

Conditionality and trade union action in the promotion and defence of workers’ rights: the Spanish case

Fernando Elorza Guerrero and Manuel García Muñoz

 

The International Labor Movement as an agent of change: temporary foreign workers and union renewal in Asia

Michele Ford

 

Warring brothers: constructing Komatsu’s and Caterpillar’s globalization

Caleb Goods, Andrew Herod, Bradon Ellem and Al Rainnie

 

Two forms of transnational organizing: mapping the strategies of global union federations

Stefan Schmalz, Teresa Conrow, Dina Feller and Maurício Rombaldi

 

Cross-border trade union networks in transnational corporations: a comparison between sectors

Ricardo Framil Filho, Katiuscia Moreno Galhera and Leonardo Mello e Silva

 

Digital communication as a global challenge for trade unions: lessons from Brazil and Portugal

Hermes Augusto Costa and Bia Carneiro

 

Labor and informal work in North-South relations: a study on Iberian countries and Latin-America

Elísio Estanque and Víctor F. Climent

 

Platform workers in Latin America: transnational logics and regional resistances?

Pablo Miguez and Nicolas Diana Menendez

 

Labour and globalisation: complexity and transformation

Ronaldo Munck

 

ARTICLES

Culture and society in the first Critical Theory

Ricardo Musse

 

Memory and military dictatorship: remembering human rights violations

Myrian Sepúlveda dos Santos

 

The end of the old division? Public and private in the internet age

Luis Felipe Miguel and Adriana Veloso Meireles

Women in the Social Economy: at the heart of action, far from the decision

Alcides A. Monteiro

 

To “decolonize” the common: a critical essay on the work of Dardot and Laval

Rafael Afonso da Silva

 

INTERVIEW

The (auto)biographical method. Interview with Jean Peneff

By Christophe Brochier and Luciano Rodrigues Costa

 

REVIEW

Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro, Impressos subversivos: arte, cultura e política no Brasil 1924-1964

By Luiz Armando Bagolin

 

Global Labour Journal (Vol. 12, No. 3) Sep 2021

Global Labour Journal Vol. 12 No. 3 (2021): Sep 2021 (Special Issue)

FRONT MATTER

Informal Workers and the Politics of Working-class Transformation in the Americas

Ruth Felder, Viviana Patroni

 

ARTICLES

Precarising Formality: Understanding Current Labour Developments in Chile

Gonzalo Durán, Karina Narbona

 

The Dynamics of Labour Informality in Brazil, 2003-2019

Marcelo Manzano, José Dari Krein, Ludmila C. Abílio

 

Rethinking Working-class Politics: Organising Informal Workers in Argentina

Maisa Bascuas, Ruth Felder, Ana Logiudice, Viviana Patroni

 

Reproductive Work, Territorial Commons and Political Precarity in Peripheral Extractive Sites in Ecuador and Bolivia

Cristina Cielo, Elizabeth López Canelas

 

The Fragility of the Labour Corridors to Costa Rica and the United States: Precarious Migrant Workers in Central America

Abelardo Morales-Gamboa

 

 

GLOBAL ISSUES

Mall Attacks and the Everyday Crisis of the Working Class in South Africa

Trevor Ngwane

 

The Politics of Unionisation in Hong Kong: An Interview with Dr Bill Taylor

Hong Yu Liu

 

BOOK REVIEWS

Anne Lisa Carstensen (2019) Das Dispositiv Moderne Sklavenarbeit. Umkämpfte Arbeitsverhältnisse in Brasilien

Laurin Blecha

 

Alessandra Mezzadri (2017) The Sweatshop Regime: Labouring Bodies, Exploitation and Garments Made in India

Natalie J. Langford

 

Benjamin Selywn (2017) The Struggle for Development

Jenny Chan

 

Intan Suwandi (2019) Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism

Madhumita Dutta

 

Adrian Wilkinson and Michael Barry (eds.) (2020) The Future of Work and Employment

Vicente Silva

 

OBITUARY

In Memoriam: Aziz Choudry (1966-2021)

Evelyn Encalada Grez, Katherine Nastovski

Jörg Nowak (2021) Towards an integral theory of workers' power

Nowak, Jörg. 2021. “Towards an Integral Theory of Workers’ Power: Workers in Logistics and the 2018 Truckers Strike in Brazil.” Global Labour Column, 21 September.

Recently, there has been considerable debate about the potential power of workers in logistics and their access to choke points that can slow down or halt the flow of goods. An investigation of the 2018 truckers’ strike in Brazil is a good case to test this hypothesis since about 400 000 truckers erected 700 blockades for 11 days, according to numbers provided by Brazilian police. The economic damage is considered to have been enormous for the national economy, since not only did many shops and pharmacies run out of food and medical drugs, but also many animals used for food production had to be culled due to the lack of animal feed.

In spite of the apparent success in blocking the flow of goods, the Brazilian truckers only gained short-lived relief in the form of lower diesel prices. The measure ran out after six months, and minimum freight prices imposed by the government, a kind of minimum wage for truckers, were never implemented.  In other words, the enormous amount of power of Brazilian truckers to block the flow of goods – their structural workplace power – did not translate into political power to ameliorate their conditions. 

This raises the question about the necessary intermediate strategies needed in order to transform the power to block production or road traffic, and what exactly impeded the Brazilian truckers from succeeding in this transformation.

FULL TEXT: https://globallabourcolumn.org/2021/09/21/towards-an-integral-theory-of-workers-power-workers-in-logistics-and-the-2018-truckers-strike-in-brazil/

Manuel Rosaldo (2021) “Problematizing the ‘Informal Sector’"

Rosaldo, Manuel. 2021. “Problematizing the ‘Informal Sector’: 50 Years of Critique, Clarification, Qualification, and More Critique.” Sociology Compass. First published: 20 July.

First published: 20 July 2021

Abstract

Since its coining in 1971, the concept of the “informal sector” has been used to draw scholarly, political, and philanthropic attention to hundreds of millions of workers who lack basic labor protections. But as the term proliferated, so too did its detractors. Critics claim that the label of “informal” homogenizes the world's poor and distorts understandings of the sources of and solutions to their economic woes. What are the origins of the concept's contradictory nature? What strategies have scholars used to increase the likelihood that it will be used to illuminate and uplift, rather than to distort and denigrate? This article analyzes how scholars have resignified and retheorized the informal economy in response to five conceptual challenges: stigmatization, definitional fuzziness, homogenization, an either/or fallacy, and the presumption of “formalization” as the solution. Such efforts have preserved the concept's analytic potency and political relevance. In the longer term, however, a true testament to the concept's value would be if it outlives its own utility; that is, if it mobilizes enough recognition and resources to the invisibilized majority of the world's workers that scholars and state bureaucrats no longer feel the need to lump them together under a misleading catchall label.

https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12914

Yunxue Deng and Xiaoli Tian (2021) “Triadic Interaction and Collective Bargaining of Autoworkers in South China.”

Deng, Yunxue and Xiaoli Tian. 2021. “Triadic Interaction and Collective Bargaining of Autoworkers in South China.” Journal of Contemporary China. Published online: 15 August.

ABSTRACT

A study of autoworkers in Guangzhou, China found that Chinese workers successfully negotiated wages through collective bargaining. The emergence of collective bargaining comes from the triadic interaction among three conflicting agents: workers, local state and employers. The intention of the local state to shift labor-intensive industries towards more value-added industries and the tendency of the local police to avoid the use of violence have contributed to more political opportunities for the workers. To improve their own position and control labor unrest, regional unions form a vertical coalition with workers while autoworkers invoke their workplace bargaining power by engaging in strikes. At the same time, workers develop low risk strike strategies to reduce potential state suppression and employ anti-Japanese rhetoric to reduce pressure from management.

• https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2021.1966908