In 2012, the province of Quebec witnessed the largest and longest student strike in North America of the last fifty years. The objective of this article is twofold: first, present an account of the events as they unraveled, by relying on both first and second‐hand sources, in order to lay the ground for future comparative studies. Second, on a more theoretical level, to assess the class character of the 2012 movement, using the concepts of class relations and class recomposition. While the Printemps Érable might not be at first sight a “classed‐based movement,” a study of more recent mobilizations in Québec helps to shed light on its effect on class relations. By doing so, I hope to engage the conversation on the question of class in contemporary social movements.
WorkingUSAVolume 19, Issue 2 p. 289-291 BOOK REVIEW Michael K. Rosenow. Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865-1920. Urbana, Illinois, 2015. 248 pp. $30.00 (paperback) . William Scott Harkey, William Scott HarkeySearch for more papers by this author William Scott Harkey, William Scott HarkeySearch for more papers by this author First published: 26 May 2016 https://doi.org/10.1111/wusa.12242Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume19, Issue2June 2016Pages 289-291 RelatedInformation
WorkingUSAVolume 19, Issue 1 p. 125-140 REVIEW ESSAY Danger! Men Working Jane LaTour, Jane LaTourSearch for more papers by this author Jane LaTour, Jane LaTourSearch for more papers by this author First published: 21 March 2016 https://doi.org/10.1111/wusa.12231Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume19, Issue1March 2016Pages 125-140 RelatedInformation
This essay undertakes an examination of the OWTU and the challenge of Working class Political Party formation and Electoral politics, 1962–2012. This area of study has been neglected by Historians and Political Scientists who have tended to focus on the narrow interpretation of the trade union. From 1965 and 1977, the OWTU played significant roles in the creation of the Workers and Farmers Party (WFP) and the United Labor Front (ULF. This essay contends that the union's involvement with these political parties was fraught with difficulties and challenges, and its efforts did not convince the working class that it was in their best interest to support the movement at the polls.
In What Do Unions Do? Freeman and Medoff argued that researchers need to focus on both the collective voice face (positive) and monopoly face (negative) of unions in their analyses of organized labor. While economists have used this typology in their research, other fields have generally ignored it. This research explores media coverage of organized labor using an original coding scheme based on the work of Freeman and Medoff. The New York Times’, Washington Post's, and Wall Street Journal's coverage of the Employee Free Choice Act were analyzed to determine if the two‐face typology is evident in media coverage of unions, if the articles could be coded reliability using the scheme, and how the results compared to previous content analyses of labor. Results show that the scheme can be used reliably and that, similar to other studies, unions are portrayed negatively. We conclude with suggestions for further research using the two‐face typology in the analysis of organized labor.
This article examines the life and thought of South African radical philosopher Richard “Rick” Turner (1941–1978), a crucial figure in the 1973 anti‐apartheid political conjuncture known as the “Durban Moment.” Though steeped in existentialist philosophy, Turner's real contribution to New Left thought in South Africa came elsewhere. Turner's receptivity to “Black Consciousness,” his vision of radical pedagogy, and his commitment to participatory democracy and “workers’ control” all made a deep imprint on Black working class mobilization and the birth of a democratic trade union movement in South Africa.
WorkingUSAVolume 19, Issue 3 p. 437-441 BOOK REVIEW Espada, Martín. Vivas to Those Who Have Failed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2016. 95 pp. $25.95 (hardcover) Polina Kroik, Polina KroikSearch for more papers by this author Polina Kroik, Polina KroikSearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 September 2016 https://doi.org/10.1111/wusa.12251Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume19, Issue3September 2016Pages 437-441 RelatedInformation
This article traces the various phases in the life of George Rudé (1910–93), starting with the son of a conservative family converting to communism following a chance trip to Russia as a twenty‐two year old. He combined teaching modern languages in secondary schools with being an active functionary of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), and in the late‐1940s he redirected his interests to the study of French revolutionary history, finally securing an academic position in Australia. The purpose of this article is not to write about Rudé’s academic life as such but, rather, to outline the nature and extent of his work on behalf of the CPGB and how this impacted on his life and work. In particular, why did he assume, and then shed, the mantle of party activist, and how did his Marxism affect the type of history he wrote?
WorkingUSAVolume 19, Issue 2 p. 269-278 REVIEW ESSAY Eiland, Howard and Jennings, Michael W.. Walter Benjamin: a critical life. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. 755 pp. $ 39.95 Lecia Rosenthal (edited). Radio Benjamin – Walter Benjamin, London: Verso Press, 2014, 394 pp. $ 29.95 Thomas Klikauer, Thomas KlikauerSearch for more papers by this author Thomas Klikauer, Thomas KlikauerSearch for more papers by this author First published: 26 May 2016 https://doi.org/10.1111/wusa.12238Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume19, Issue2June 2016Pages 269-278 RelatedInformation
This article argues that a movement of domestic workers has developed internationally that through its struggles is promoting elements of a feminist agenda, revalorizing the work of reproduction, forcing a new generation of feminists to again confront the housework question, and in this process generating new forms of subjectivities and new models of gender relations.
In both academic and activist discourse, particularly with regard to India, the concept of the informal sector has come to prominence, particularly after India's liberalization. This article demystifies the idea of the informal sector in India, revealing the multilayered existence of various groups of workers in vulnerable positions which are by no means inevitable or permanent but rather are the product of India's history and political economy. Accordingly, it is the case that certain interventions have the potential to transform the lives of India's unorganized workers, but such policy would need to target the specific needs of each unorganized group of workers. We argue that the concept and discourse of the informal sectors imply the permanence of unorganized, unregulated work. Conceptualizing Indian labor in this way leads to a position that the state should provide support and welfare measures to help workers survive at a bare minimum level of subsistence, but also to a fundamental failure to address the structural and specific causes of workers’ vulnerabilities.
In September 2012, a group of outsourced service workers at the University of London, many from Latin America, launched the 3 Cosas Campaign demanding equal treatment with in-house employees. Drawing from qualitative interviews and social media analysis this article explores the extent to which formal and informal mechanisms of union voice provide effective bargaining and mobilization tools to low-paid outsourced workers. The rank-and-file autonomous union that led the campaign, although excluded from union recognition, developed powerful strategies to expose the employer publicly obtaining key improvements for the workers. The central argument is that a mix of strategies at the edge of informality including unpredictable direct action, community mobilization, and media campaigns provide additional leverage to outsourced workers confronting their multiple employers, while union recognition remains a key strategy of legitimization for relatively disenfranchised migrant workers.
How can we best conceptualize working‐class mobilization in the post‐Fordist regime of flexible accumulation? With the increasing precariousness of employment, how do workers press their demands? While the emphasis thus far has been on the melding of workplace and community organizing, which is a hallmark of “social movement unionism,” I argue that there is a countervailing trend afoot that has received far less attention—that is, a bifurcation of strategies. Only those select workers who are in powerful structural locations, such as transportation and distribution workers, are in a position to take the economic route while the swelling ranks of the precariat have turned instead to the political sphere to press their demands. Additionally, I address what this bifurcation means for labor's power and working‐class formation. Does the separation of economic and political protest lead to a weakened working class? Such a separation has been thought to undermine class‐based solidarities, with community identities undermining workplace‐based ones. I argue, however, that the contemporary context is different in that precarious workers’ mobilizations in the community have become explicitly class‐based. In contrast to the long‐standing notion of the workplace as the hotbed of working‐class consciousness, the community has emerged as a locus of class‐based perspectives and solidarities. Throughout I emphasize not just strategy and material gain for the working class, but also shifts in civil society, organizations, and subjectivity. My argument is developed through a case study of the Chicago Jobs and Living Wage Campaign, which is then compared to other cases of precarious worker mobilization around the globe. Examining the tensions inherent in precarious workers’ political mobilization in the context of the post‐Fordist neoliberal state, the study has implications for labor and social movements, class formation, citizenship, and contemporary capitalism.
In this article, we want to examine the role played by precarious labor in the process of building up and consolidating rank and file unions in Argentina. We speculate about the interaction between precarious labor and union organization in the workplace; and about which elements allow this interaction. This analysis of the interaction (as opposed to the separation) of both processes emerges from our own empirical research, but also from the attempt to establish a theoretical prudence in the face of Social Science's tendency to create new phenomena and isolate them from their procedural frame. The academic logic paradigm of Segmentation (and its conformation of case studies in places where there are only fragmentary processes) forces us to look at precarious labor as a subject itself, dissociated from steady labor, thus separating it into different ways of organization and resistance. The re-composition of rank and file trade unionism in Argentina shows gray areas in which the overlapping of precarious labor and steady labor in the same working area forced the interaction between the new and the old.
This essay examines the slogan, “Worker's Rights are Human Rights” which is the early twenty‐first century echo of the nineteenth's, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” I analyze the implications of the strategy implicit in the twenty‐first century slogan for an anti‐globalization movement and its impact on the precarious wageworkers' struggle in the U.S. and internationally. I conclude that the nineteenth century shibboleth is more politically reliable.
WorkingUSAVolume 19, Issue 4 p. 566-570 BOOK REVIEW Crouch, Colin. The Knowledge Corrupters. Hidden Consequences of the Financial Takeover of Public Life. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press/John Wiley & Sons, 2016. 182 pp. US $11.72 (paperback). Ralf Jeremias, Ralf JeremiasSearch for more papers by this author Ralf Jeremias, Ralf JeremiasSearch for more papers by this author First published: 05 December 2016 https://doi.org/10.1111/wusa.12262Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume19, Issue4December 2016Pages 566-570 RelatedInformation
The union community organizing approach advocates coalition building between unions and community groups. Union leaders must be educated about social concerns in their community, and union activities and campaigns must serve as a means of educating the community. We examine how union and community groups formed a coalition to repeal Ohio Senate Bill 5/Issue 2, a law restricting collective Bargaining in Ohio. Our article uses interviews and an analysis of newspaper coverage of the Ohio Senate Bill 5/Issue 2 campaign to examine how the campaign to repeal the law met the goal of educating the community to understand the right to collective bargaining as a social justice issue. We identify four interrelated themes in the newspaper coverage of the Senate Bill 5/Issue 2 campaign that unions and their allies used to successfully convince the populace of Ohio to vote for repeal.
WorkingUSAVolume 19, Issue 4 p. 563-566 BOOK REVIEW Blunden, Andy. The Origins of Collective Decision Making. Leiden, ND and Boston, USA: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2016. 257 pp. + References and Index. $142.00 (hardcover). Helena Worthen, Helena WorthenSearch for more papers by this author Helena Worthen, Helena WorthenSearch for more papers by this author First published: 05 December 2016 https://doi.org/10.1111/wusa.12261Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume19, Issue4December 2016Pages 563-566 RelatedInformation
