The Crisis of “Social Democratic” Unionism

Upchurch, Martin; Taylor, Graham; Mathers, Andrew

doi:10.1177/0160449x08324739

Cited by 18 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Continuously high, if not rising, unemployment, notably in sectors where unions had been strong in the past, undermined workers' bargaining power. As a result, the price‐wage‐spiral slowed down at the expense of workers—whose share in national income began to fall (see Tables , Upchurch, Taylor, & Mathers, ). Governing parties who promised a return to prosperity and full employment after a period of hard but unavoidable belt‐tightening had increasing difficulties winning elections.…”

Section: Neoliberal Ascendancementioning

confidence: 99%

Crisis, ideas, and class: A fresh look at British Labour, French socialists, and German social democrats during the neoliberal wave of accumulation

Schmidt

2019

Journal of Labor and Society

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This article traces the fortunes and misfortunes of social democracy in Britain, France, and Germany during the neoliberal age. The first part of the article offers a short discussion and critique of self-reflections offered by leading social Labor and Society. 2019;22:509-526. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/lands 509 2 | SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC SELF-REFLECTIONS The internationalization of capital, indicated by the breakdown of the Bretton Woods regime of fixed exchange rates, increasing capital mobility, and the rise of multinational corporations, rendered Keynesianism unfeasible. Rather than stimulating production and employment, Keynesian measures SCHMIDT 523

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Section: Neoliberal Ascendancementioning

confidence: 99%

Crisis, ideas, and class: A fresh look at British Labour, French socialists, and German social democrats during the neoliberal wave of accumulation

Schmidt

2019

Journal of Labor and Society

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“…Combined, these processes have exacerbated the ongoing crisis of organised labour in advanced capitalist labour markets (Camfield, 2011; MacDonald, 2014; Upchurch et al, 2009). Long-standing factors contributing to this crisis include the geographic fragmentation of production, which undercut the power of industrial unions through deindustrialisation and the relocation of manufacturing; the spread of neoliberal approaches to labour market regulation, which undermined forms of labour relations established in the post–World War II (WWII) era; and the rapid growth of service economy workplaces, which create many new challenges to labour organising and union representation.…”

Section: Austerity Populism Labour and The Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Enabling dissent’: Contesting austerity and right populism in Toronto, Canada

Thomas

Tufts

2016

Econ. labour relat. rev.

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Following the 2008 financial crisis, austerity measures have been introduced in many national contexts to reorganise public sector work and redesign labour laws and labour policies. At the same time, right-populist discourses and movements have arisen in ways that give both legitimacy and voice to the politics of austerity. Toronto, Canada, provides a world-renowned case of populist experimentation at the metropolitan scale, as the actions of Mayor Rob Ford typified this nexus of austerity and populism. Set in the context of Ford's term as Mayor of Toronto (2010-2014), this article asks how the combined rise of austerity and right populism creates both new challenges and new opportunities for public sector labour in urban spaces. We argue that public sector unions are central in both the making and unmaking of populist austerity and identify potential trajectories for organised labour in the face of the continuation of austeritydriven politics. JEL Codes: H76; J45, J48, J51

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“…There are not insignificant signs that OECD unions and workers in neoliberalizing regimes are dedicating their efforts to a complex strategy for labor revitalization, one that includes the battle for parties of labor. In Britain, the first OECD country to undergo full regime change during neoliberalism’s second wave, the country’s largest unions – Unite, Unison, and the General Union of Britain – have focused part of their efforts on challenging and changing the Labour Party from within, while the Rail, Maritime, and Transport Union has swung between supporting left faction candidates of the Labour Party and supporting the formation of a new party – all in addition to their community strategies (Ludlam and Taylor, 2003; Upchurch et al ., 2009; Connolly and Darlington, 2012). In 1998 Australia, in the midst of a dogged campaign by John Howard’s Liberal government against the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the MUA and ACTU developed and then wielded a new citizen repertoire in part to pull the Australian Labor Party (ALP) back to their side (Gentile, 2011).…”

Section: The Political Unionism Path To Oecd Labor Revitalization In mentioning

confidence: 99%

Labor repertoires, neoliberal regimes and US hegemony: what ‘deviant’ Italy tells us of OECD unions’ paths to power

Gentile

2014

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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This paper notes the tendency of 'social movement unionism' scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic to focus on and prescribe the citizen repertoire as the single most important repertoire of labor for challenging neoliberal globalization. Consistent with liberal conceptions of civil society and theories of participatory democracy, it implicitly dismisses political unionism as a path to labor's revitalization. It also assumes epochal change and confines neoliberalism to the post-Washington Consensus era. Deviant case analysis of Italian labor's use of two repertoires (the citizen and the labor repertoire) and of its two regimes of capitalism (in succession, a post-WWII neoliberal regime and a post-1970 corporatist regime) over the course of the 'American Century' gives pause to both these contentions. This study relates labor's citizen repertoire to the era of US hegemony that promotes changes in party-government that tend to reproduce the image of the archetypically neoliberal American polity: a polity that is devoid of 'labor' as a recognized category of the political community, is low in social rights, and, relatedly, is devoid of a party of labor. In this neoliberal political order, labor is perennially locked into the category of 'citizen' and reliant on the citizen repertoire. By contrast, the survival of parties of labor in non-US polities during the post-war wave of neoliberalism permitted union movements a route away from labor-decategorizing orders -political unionism. Now, in the postWashington Consensus wave of neoliberal regime change, that route is more onerous owing to Third Way changes in parties of labor. The major challenge for labor movements that have experienced regime change to a neoliberal polity is in directing their efforts and even their new citizen repertoire to the task of recapturing parties of labor or to creating new ones -or risk long-term US-style labor decategorization. . 2 The episode of contention described in this section, focusing on the 'Trainstopping' action, was compiled by the author by means of ethnographic research conducted in 2005 in Florence, Genova, Livorno, Ravenna, Rome, and Salerno. Semi-structured and unstructured interviews of between 1 and 3 hours were conducted with disobbedienti activists and union officials, and all information provided by each interviewee was cross-referenced with others and with available newspaper and online coverage.

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The Crisis of “Social Democratic” Unionism

Cited by 18 publications

References 40 publications

Crisis, ideas, and class: A fresh look at British Labour, French socialists, and German social democrats during the neoliberal wave of accumulation

Crisis, ideas, and class: A fresh look at British Labour, French socialists, and German social democrats during the neoliberal wave of accumulation

‘Enabling dissent’: Contesting austerity and right populism in Toronto, Canada

Labor repertoires, neoliberal regimes and US hegemony: what ‘deviant’ Italy tells us of OECD unions’ paths to power

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