News about labor unions is usually pessimistic, focusing on
declining membership and failed campaigns. But there are
encouraging signs that the labor movement is evolving its
strategies to benefit workers in rapidly changing global economic
conditions. Global Unions, Local Power tells the story of the most
successful and aggressive campaign ever waged by workers across
national borders. It begins in the United States in 2007 as SEIU
struggled to organize private security guards at G4S, a global
security services company that is the second largest employer in
the world. Failing in its bid, SEIU changed course and sought
allies in other countries in which G4S operated. Its efforts
resulted in wage gains, benefits increases, new union formations,
and an end to management reprisals in many countries throughout the
Global South, though close attention is focused on developments in
South Africa and India.
In this book, Jamie K. McCallum looks beyond these achievements
to probe the meaning of some of the less visible aspects of the
campaign. Based on more than two years of fieldwork in nine
countries and historical research into labor movement trends since
the late 1960s, McCallum's findings reveal several paradoxes.
Although global unionism is typically concerned with creating
parity and universal standards across borders, local context can
both undermine and empower the intentions of global actors,
creating varied and uneven results. At the same time, despite being
generally regarded as weaker than their European counterparts, U.S.
unions are in the process of remaking the global labor movement in
their own image. McCallum suggests that changes in political
economy have encouraged unions to develop new ways to organize
workers. He calls these "governance struggles," strategies that
seek not to win worker rights but to make new rules of engagement
with capital in order to establish a different terrain on which to
organize.
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