The Spirit of Outsourcing: Corporate and State Regulation of Labor under H-1B Visa and TANF Policies in the U.S.

Contingent Government Workers and Labor Solidarity: The Case of Contract Welfare-to-Work Staff and Their Clients

“…Tilly (1988), for instance, has argued that expanding labor pools increase worker substitutability, and thus expendability, leading to intra-labor hostilities and lack of worker solidarity. Such is the case with frustration in recent years over globalization, downsizing, outsourcing and general job insecurity, which, though potential rallying points for transnational and cross-industry labor solidarity, have had a relatively muted effect, likely because variously situated workers have been unable to make connections between themselves and others given the complexity and adversarial tone of new contingent work structures (Ridzi and Banerjee 2006). Historical studies in the USA and France indicate that level of governmental support for labor is critical to labor solidarity success as well (Hanagan 2003).…”

“…1 The global elite that has arisen in the New Economy, however, appears so far to have a greater sense of unity than the masses of global laborers that they have been able to pit against one another with the specter of global outsourcing, downsizing and off-shoring (Ridzi and Banerjee 2006). Also of note is the importance of what some (notably Cohen 1990in Hanagan 2003 have called common popular culture.…”