Understanding labour politics in an age of precarity

Trade unions in Zambia and in several other developing countries have been understood to create 'detribalising' class consciousnesses. In contrast, we argue that Zambian understandings of unionism have developed through similar political economic processes to those that generated 'tribes'. Values and structures that enable concepts of the good life more commonly found among Bemba speakers and Eastern Zambians have been naturalised into Zambia's mining unions, guiding union policy and practice in a manner which limits North Western Zambians' union participation. Utilising Lazar's (2018) understanding of unionism as kinship, we explore how Zambians of various tribes attempt to utilise unions to achieve what they see as human flourishing and social justice. We foreground that people's understandings of the good life frequently incorporate gendered and gerontocratic hierarchies and we demonstrate that intra-national unionisms are cocreated through (and influence) local cultural norms and political histories. This encourages anthropologists of trade unionism to ask what values and hierarchies are rendered invisible in other union 'families', and to explore intertwinements between unions and communities enabled through kinship, rather than through Civil Society Organisations.

Section: Tribe and Union As Kinship Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘We are not just a union, we are a family’ class, kinship and tribe in Zambia’s mining unions

Kapesea

McNamara

2020

“…The Workers of the World forum series interrogates the links between multiple, locally embedded working classes, their representatives and mobile global capital (Lem and Marcus 2019). Our works are deeply indebted to the insights of Lazar and Sanchez's (2019) special issue on Labour Politics in an Age of Precarity. Another key event was the International Labour Workshop organized by Paul Durrenberger at the University of Iowa, where an international group of anthropologists and sociologists discussed the relationship between work and trade unions in a period of great depression.…”

Section: Anthropologies Of Unionism and Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast to these normative definitions, Lazar and Sanchez's (2019) issue of Dialectical Anthropology explored how the meanings, as much as the practices of unionism, have changed in response increased precariousness. We expand upon both Durrenberger (2017) and Lazar's (2017) analysis, conceptualizing unions through locally-embedded histories, cultures and collective ethical-political projects.…”

Section: Anthropologies Of Unionism and Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction—trade unions in times of austerity and development

McNamara

Spyridakis

2020

This special issue seeks to understand how unions resist and are reshaped as they confront global capital and neoliberal austerity. It was born out of panels at the annual conferences of European Association of Social Anthropologists and the American Anthropology Association and through ongoing conversations about the similarities and differences between the challenges unions face from austerity in the Global North and from Global South aspirations for national 'development'. The papers explore unions' interactions with 'actually existing neoliberalisms', where the state and other actors express extreme faith in markets as policy devices, and in the superior efficiency of the private sector (Rizzo 2017). We describe unions responding to the growing criticism (from the right) that they imped the economic growth that would assist all of society and (from the left) that they represent a privileged and increasingly irrelevant minority of workers. While we explore unions' attempts to dispute these narratives, our special issue is equally invested in detailing how unionism is re-constructed inside a community and, through this, how unions respond to, and co-create, legal, economic and cultural structures. In analysing how unionism shapes and responds to economic practices and workplace subjectivities, we foreground that the obligations and entitlements of being a 'unionist' and a 'worker' are negotiated through intra-community expectations and political histories. We therefore link unions to recent breakthroughs in the anthropological study of capitalism, where political economies are enacted through sociality and subjectivity (cf. Bear et al. 2015 andHann andParry 2018). Unionism is only beginning to be analysed using this framework, yet we show that unions are crucial to the concepts of self and relationships that shape and enable intra-national capitalisms (c.f. Kasmir 2014 and Lazar 2017). We explore how unions guide and respond to what it means to be a miner, steelworker or longshoreman, while simultaneously influencing what it means to be Zambian, Congolese, Greek or Dialectical Anthropology

“…The way unionists try to achieve these goals differs substantially in the Global North and Global South. In the low GDP countries, where workers face conditions of precarity on a daily basis, they organize collectively in different ways, such as traditional trade unions, cooperatives, or union-like associations (Lazar and Sanchez 2019). This article focuses on traditional trade unions that represent the rights of employees with a stable job and salary.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Patronage, social proximity, and instrumentality in the mining industry in the Democratic Republic of Congo: the union elections explored

Geenen

2019

This article examines which factors influenced the votes of the workers during union elections in the mining companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018. Although incumbent and challenging candidates recurred to lavish spending during the electoral campaign, this behavior had turned out hardly decisive on election day. Rather, workers voted for those candidates who had managed to become perceived as a patron. Patronage was acquired above all by improving the labor conditions and securing jobs. As such, workers voted following an evaluative rationale, although social proximity turned out an important factor as well. Regardless of these free elections and the secret ballot, however, the grip of the management upon the chosen union delegation remains very tight, both during and after the elections.