Goods, Caleb and Bradon Ellem. 2022. “Employer Associations: Climate Change, Power and Politics.” Economic and Industrial Democracy. First Published 11 March, pp. 1-23.
Thursday, 30 June 2022
Goods, Herod, Ellem and Rainnie (2021) Warring Brothers
Goods, Caleb, Andrew Herod, Bradon Ellem and Al Rainnie. 2021. “Irmãos em guerra: construindo as redes globais de produção da Komatsu e da Caterpillar”/”Warring Brothers: Constructing Komatsu’s and Caterpillar’s Globalization.” Tempo Social 33(2): 123-42.
We detail how the world’s two largest engineering machinery firms, Japan’s Komatsu and the US’s Caterpillar, actively managed geographical concerns to become global actors. We argue that their globalization was not a teleological given but had to be proactively made. Both the state and organized labor played significant roles in shaping their geographical evolutions, as did their efforts to outmaneuver each other spatially. Their globalization, then, was part of a broader spatial politics under capitalism.
Keywords: Geography; Global production networks; Global scale; Komatsu; Caterpillar
O artigo compara os caminhos percorridos pelas duas maiores empresas de máquinas de engenharia do mundo, a japonesa Komatsu e a americana Caterpillar para se tornarem “atores globais”. É investigada a forma como ambas as empresas gerenciavam ativamente as questões geográficas à medida que cresciam. Como “irmãos em guerra”, elas não apenas competiam entre si, mas, ao longo do processo, acabaram por moldar a forma organizacional uma da outra enquanto construíam ativamente a escala global de sua própria existência - sua globalização, em outras palavras, não era um dado, mas teve de ser construída proativamente. Tanto o Estado quanto o trabalho organizado desempenharam papéis significativos no desenho das evoluções geográficas de ambas as empresas.
Palavras-chave: Globalização; Geografia; Redes globais de produção; Escala global; Komatsu; Caterpillar
Leapfrog Logistics (Nowak, Rolf and Wei 2022)
Nowak, Jörg, Steven Rolf and Wei Wei. 2022. “Leapfrog Logistics: Digital Platforms, Infrastructure, and Labor in Brazil and China.” Phenomenal World. June.
In Spring 2018, two significant labor disputes broke out at opposite ends of the earth. The first, in Brazil, was an 11 day mass strike of 400,000 truckers in response to successive price increases unleashed by the state oil company, Petrobras, liberalizing diesel prices. The second, in China, was a large strike which spread across the nation in response to low fees paid by digital trucking platforms, which account for a growing share of China’s road freight market.
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Wednesday, 1 June 2022
New Global Studies Editor’s Forum (2022): Workers’ Movements and the Global Supply Chain
New Global Studies Editor’s Forum: Workers’ Movements and the Global Supply Chain
Vol. 16,
Issue 1 (2022): April
Guest-editors: Robert
Ovetz and Jake Alimahomed-Wilson
Contributors: Andrew
Waterman, Ben Norman, Andrea Bottalico, Nantina
Vgontzas, Carlotta Benvegnù, David Gaborieau, Lucas Tranchant, Ercüment Çelik,
Simon Norbert Schmid
Reportage: Gifford
Hartman
Book
Reviews: Bryonny Goodwin-Hawkins, Brett Bowden, Sarp Kurgan, Steven E. Harris
Volume 16 Issue 1 - Editors’ Forum: Workers’ Movements and the Global Supply Chain; Guest-editors: Robert Ovetz and Jake Alimahomed-Wilson
April 2022
Issue of New Global Studies
Global Labour Journal (May 2022) on African Trade Unions
Global Labor Journal Special Issue: African Trade Unions
Vol. 13,
No. 2 (2022): May
An Update
on Editorial Changes at the GLJ: Maria Lorena Cook, Alexander Gallas, Neethi P,
Ben Scully
Guest-editor:
Mark McQuinn
Contributors: Mark
McQuinn, Samuel Andreas Admasie, F.M.K.
Sallah, Lone Riisgaard, Mihaela Cojocaru
Global
Issues: Mihaela Cojocaru, Mark McQuinn; Steve Crowley
Book
Reviews: Andrea Muehlebach; Carlos Mejia; Maurizio Atzeni;
Jörg Nowak
CURRENT ISSUE
Vol. 13 No. 2 (2022): May 2022 (Special Issue)
African Trade Unions (guest edited by Mark McQuinn)
PUBLISHED: 2022-05-31
Jörg Nowak (2022) Brazil and Bolsonaro
Nowak, Jörg. 2022. “Brazil and Bolsonaro: Political Consolidation and New Corruption Scandals.” SP (Socialist Project). 26 April.
Brazil and Bolsonaro: Political Consolidation and New Corruption Scandals
The arrangements between Brazilian political parties for the upcoming October presidential and state elections are almost complete. Until March 31 of this year, the political system permitted members of Parliament to switch between political parties. As there are 23 parties represented in Parliament, with often very loose ideological frameworks, such changes can be quite significant, and this year was not an exception.
In the first months of this year a huge influx of representatives into the Liberal Party (PL) took place, which President Jair Bolsonaro joined at the end of 2021 after remaining without party affiliation for more than two years. The number of PL delegates in the Congress grew from 43 to 75, and that party is now the largest parliamentary group.
Bolsonaro’s former party, the Social Liberal Party (PSL), was split between his followers and detractors, and it recently fused with the right-wing Democrats Party (DEM) in order to form the new Brazil Union party (União Brasil, UB). Twenty-nine of the 32 new members of the PL in Parliament come from the UB, and in this way, Bolsonaro has consolidated his power base in Congress in quite a spectacular fashion.
....
Katy Fox-Hodess (2022) in Labor History
Fox-Hodess, Katy. 2022. “The ‘Iron Law of Oligarchy’ and North-South Relations in Global Union Organisations: A Case Study of the International Dockworkers Council’s Expansion in the Global South.” Labor History. Published Online: 29 April, pp. 1-20.
ABSTRACT
Global union organisations face recurrent organisational challenges concerning 1) the tendency towards bureaucratisation and oligarchy as they operate at increasing scales and 2) the tendency to reinscribe unequal relations of power between trade unions in the Global North and the Global South. This double problem is investigated through a case study of the International Dockworkers Council (IDC), an independent global union organisation, which underwent a period of rapid expansion in the Global South, particularly in Latin America, in the 2010’s. The IDC has been remarkably successful in adapting its organisational model, developed in Europe, to the Latin American context, building an effective regional-level organisation of rank-and-file activists while relying more heavily than in Europe on a regional coordinator as denser relationships within the regional network develop. At the same time, at the global level, the story is somewhat more mixed. Latin American activists have the autonomy to develop and carry out their own priorities with appropriate financial, industrial and technical support from the global organisation. Yet, the Global South’s influence on shaping the global organisation as a whole is less evident. In addition, organisational changes brought about by global expansion raise concerns about bureaucratisation and oligarchy at the global level.
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