Strategies for revitalizing labour movements: Union organizing and building alliances with community in Argentina

Abstract

This article examines the labour renewal strategies implemented by Central de Los Trabajadores de la Argentina. It argues that union organizing is conditioned by historical legacies and structural constraints, while social movement unionism, which for the most part promotes building alliances with community groups, can be achieved by taking advantage of political opportunities and mobilizing resources. To maintain these alliances, trade unions and social movement organizations need to build institutionalized partnerships and compensate for their individual weaknesses. The article also argues that organizing the unorganized and building alliances with the community are not a substitute for each other. It is also argued that labour’s power derived from its location in the economic system still stands as an essential source of labour renewal.

The political agency and social movements of Japanese individually-affiliated unions

“…Matsuri Takahashi, a young female employee who graduated from Japan's most prestigious University of Tokyo, committed a suicide as a result of exhaustion and depression from excessively long working hours (Asahi Shimbun, 2016). In the context of significantly weakened power of labour unions vis à vis employers against a background of low economic growth and the spread of neoliberalism, labour scholars have examined factors that may be able to revitalize unions and identified 'social movement' as a way to revitalize the labour movement (Engeman, 2015;Serdar, 2012;Sullivan, 2010). According to these scholars, unions should reorient their political strategies to social movement (including unions' alliance with civil society organizations).…”

Social movement unionism in contemporary Japan: Coalitions within and across political boundaries

“…Finally, collaboration with community groups could serve as an agent of union revitalization by providing union activists with social movements’ experience. Alliance formation with civil society groups has been an important strategy of rebuilding union power, not only for labor unions in the United States but also for unions in many other countries (Bloom, 2010; Frege et al, 2004; Holland and Pyman, 2011; Milkman, 2006; Serdar, 2011; Tattersall, 2010; Wills, 2008).…”

Spectrum, trajectory and the role of the state in workers' self-management

“…Most workers felt betrayed by the CGT (Argentina's only legally recognised union confederation), because it had used its corporatist prerogative within the Peronist government to tacitly support structural adjustment. The more pluralist CTA confederation, established by dissident unions in 1992 and which opposed President Menem's neoliberal reforms (Serdar, 2012), also remained paralysed when confronted with the radicalisation of workers' and other social movement s (Svampa, 2007). The ERTs emerged out of the tension between workers' perceived right to work and the business-owner's legal right to maintain possession of the firm -a contradiction which could not be satisfied.…”