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Post by Harald - Admin on Apr 29, 2013 13:07:14 GMT 1
How have unions responded to the challenges that arise in formal sectors of the economy where the labor movement has had core density but the composition of the workforce has changed due to new configurations of employment in the same workplace that range from full-time to contingent?
¿Cómo han respondido los sindicatos a los desafíos que surgen en los sectores formales de la economía donde el movimiento obrero ha tenido una gran densidad, pero la composición de la fuerza de trabajo ha cambiado debido a las nuevas configuraciones del empleo en el centro mismo de trabajo, que van desde el trabajo de tiempo completo hasta el trabajo casual o temporal?
Como os sindicatos têm respondido aos desafios que surgiram dos setores formais da economia, em que o movimento sindical tem presença mas a composição da força de trabalho tem mudado devido às novas confirgurações de emprego no mesmo local de trabalho que vão de tempo integral a eventual?
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Post by mfichter on May 2, 2013 9:58:09 GMT 1
Over the past decade, unions in Germany have been faced with an enormous increase in atypical employment, especially in the form of agency temps and sub-contracting. This has resulted in considerable pressure on wages both within the workplace and across the economy - the latter in particular having undercutting effects on wage standards throughout the EU. German unions have responded to this challenge with two different - and in part contradictory - approaches. Where core density has been decimated, for example in (privatized) services and food processing, unions have mounted a rather successful political campaign for a comprehensive legal minimum wage. Although not yet fully realized, it is front and center on the political agenda. The second approach is industry-focused and has resulted in contract provisions to bring wages and working conditions of temps up to the standards of the core workforce. This has been successfully achieved in metalworking, autos, chemicals and energy sectors through agreements negotiated by the IG Metall and the IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie. The question is, though, what about the other sectors? Will such agreements undermine the efforts for a comprehensive political solution?
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Post by jennyholdcroft on May 2, 2013 13:38:30 GMT 1
Campaigning against precarious work was identified as a major priority at the founding congress of IndustriALL in 2012. The encroachment of all types of precarious employment, but particularly contract and agency labour, is drastically eroding union capacity to organize workers in all industries and in all countries where IndustriALL affiliates are present. This is not a new fight. Affiliates from all three founding GUFs that make up IndustriALL have been developing strategies to address precarious work and the decline in union power it brings. Many strategies have been targeted at bringing pay and conditions of precarious workers in line with their permanent colleagues – the equal treatment principle. This has been an effective means of recruiting precarious workers to the union and getting coverage for them in collective bargaining agreements. While this work continues, there is a growing realization that union efforts must focus on stopping the spread of precarious work by whatever means possible. In practice this has meant pursuing restrictions on precarious work through both legislation and collective bargaining. In Malaysia, unions managed to stop legislative changes that would legalise labour suppliers. In South Africa, unions are still trying to achieve a legislative ban on labour brokers and meanwhile are using collective agreements at industry level to ban labour brokers. There have been several such agreements in the metal sector. There are more examples of union strategies to stop precarious work in IndustriALL’s publication ‘The Triangular Trap’ at www.industriall-union.org/issues/social-justice-and-globalization/stop-precarious-workLosing union density in core areas is a threat to the union movement’s survival. All new organizing efforts draw to a greater or lesser extent on existing union strength. Maintaining that strength is vital if unions want to be able to reach out to unorganized workers. Not to mention the inevitable decline in political power that comes with reduced density, without which there will be no prospect of unions being able to prevent further expansion of precarious work through legislation. Unions are often accused of focusing on their core members and ignoring workers in precarious jobs and unorganized industries. But if unions do not protect their core, their capacity to organize these potential members will be critically undermined.
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Post by ewebster2013 on May 5, 2013 12:32:27 GMT 1
Overcoming the Representational Gap - Edward Webster It is widely accepted that the traditional labour movement in advanced industrial countries is in decline. It is possible to identify two dominant responses by formal sector unions to this growing representational gap. The first is to ignore the changing composition of the workforce and to continue to focus all organizing efforts on those in standard employment relationships. This is a short-sighted approach that leads to growing numbers of workers without an institutional voice. The second response is to try to organize the growing number of informal workers into traditional union structures. This may involve simply extending existing bargaining arrangements to all workers or it could involve experimenting with new types of membership and new types of benefits.
From research amongst vulnerable immigrant clothing workers in the inner-city of Johannesburg, we have found this response to be inadequate. Often these workers operate in family type micro enterprises that blur the boundaries between employer and employee. Instead of joining unions, they prefer faith based organisations, such as the growing number of Pentecostal churches, which often perform economic as well as spiritual functions. They assist in job searches, find accommodation for new comers to the city, and even act as ‘bankers’ by carrying money to home villages.
There is, however, a third response that recognizes that new forms of organization are required. These new initiatives, organizational forms and sources of power are emerging at the periphery of traditional labour. There is, as Jennifer Chun argues, a “growing interest in a new political subject of labour ….women, immigrants, people of colour, low-paid service workers, precarious workers…Groups that have been historically excluded from the moral and material boundaries of union membership” (Chun, 2012: 40). Some of these initiatives have been created by informal workers; some by unions traditionally organizing in the informal economy, but reaching out to organize informal workers; and some have been conceived and sponsored by NGOs, women’s organizations and migrant worker organizations.
We are, I suggest, in a situation not unlike 1932 in the United States when solemn pronouncements were made by labour ‘experts’ predicting the end of labour. These dire predictions were, of course, issued literally on the eve of the dramatic and widespread upsurge of labour organizing into industrial unions that began in 1934. The rise of Fordism had led to a shift from craft unionism – where the power of the worker lay in their skill – to industrial unionism, where their power lay in a new political subject, the semi-skilled workers, and their new source of power at workplace level. Will the current challenge to labour lead to a new kind of labour movement based on new sources of power emerging from inside the existing union structures – reform from within? Or will it, as has happened with the CIO industrial unions in the US some eighty years ago, lead to the formation of a new worker movement, with different strategies, different political values and different political subjects? This is the challenge facing labour; these are the choices we face if we are to achieve labour’s historic goals.
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kjeld
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Post by kjeld on May 6, 2013 23:51:30 GMT 1
The Brazilian CUT started some years ago to work through national and international trade union networks trying to liaise workers foram different plants of the same MNCs. When relevant information was raised about the behaviour of the company regarding workers and other stake holders, when good public information to disseminate this information was available and when good conections were established among the networks members it was possible to achieve interesting results in many cases. Particularely in some European MNCs because it is more often to find Unions there interested in networking in a permanent way.
However, this initiative has not be sufficient to respond to the issue of the new profile of the working class. I always remember the history of the AFL in the 1930ies not accepting the membership of the industrial unions of the CIO because among other reasons these workers were non skilled workers at the contrary of the craft workers represented by the Federation.
Ironically, the organizational model of the industrial workers turned to be the model adopted in the twentieth century as a pattern all over the world even to organize agriculture workers and public servants. The question we need to raise today is whether this model still should be mantained as the pattern and my opinion is clearly no.
How can we expect to organize and represent the rights and interests of self employed people, home workers, part time workers, migrants, subcontracted as they were stabil employees of a factory easy to reach, to talk with and to stop at a picket line? What does collective bargainig mean to informal workers of diferent kinds? To undocumented migrant workers? Nothing at all because their interests and basic rights are covered through other means.
Not to talk about the lack of identity of young people, women, black and indigenous workers with white, middle age, male trade union officers.
It was possible in the past to move from craft workers unions to industrial unions and the chalenge now is to move again to a new model able to also include the present working class but this requires changes in mentalities and a lot of militancy not easy to find in many industrial unions at the present.
Kjeld Jakobsen
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Post by iufpeterrossman on May 7, 2013 11:37:09 GMT 1
Replacing direct, open-ended employment with various forms of precarious jobs has been among the most powerful solvents for dissolving labour’s global bargaining strength. While precarious employment is not new, and has always played a large role in the agricultural and service sectors, it has grown enormously in every IUF sector in the past 20 years, invading “core” manufacturing and posing significant obstacles to union membership, organizing and bargaining capacity. The problem is squared when companies outsource significant manufacturing or other operations and these in turn outsource employment to an agency or contractors. The following remarks concentrate on areas where the IUF, as a global union federation, has been able to bring its international membership into play as a lever in fighting for the conversion of precarious to permanent jobs inside transnational companies.
In key companies in our sectors – e.g. Unilever, Coca-Cola, Nestlé – well-prepared local organizing to rebuild bargaining units through the conversion of casual to permanent jobs, backed by additional pressure using precisely calibrated international campaigning, has succeeded in creating thousands of permanent jobs and with it new union members. In the case of Unilever and Nestlé, campaigns to win permanent jobs for contract workers were a key ingredient in winning international recognition of the IUF. We use that recognition to build a global platform to support our affiliates struggles to reduce precarious work with every company which recognizes the IUF.
Converting significant numbers of precarious jobs to permanent has brought new members, new bargaining strength, a new spirit of solidarity and struggle and in many cases has sparked an upsurge of organizing in the company, sector or national context. The successful experience at Unilever Pakistan encouraged our affiliate’s fight for permanent jobs and trade union rights and recognition at Coca-Cola. Our affiliate built on a key local victory to organize and register unions at two unorganized plants, as a result of which all Coca-Cola plants in Pakistan are now unionized and members of the IUF. This in turn has boosted successful fights for permanent jobs at Coca-Cola globally.
Successful challenges to casualization have not been limited to developing countries. In the UK, for example, when Unite began an organizing drive to rebuild union strength in the poultry processing industry, agency workers accounted for some 70 percent of employment. In 2008, the union launched a campaign with strong support from the IUF and affiliates around the world to win equal treatment for agency workers employed at meat producers supplying the UK-based retailer Marks & Spencer. As a result of the campaign, by year’s end thousands of UK agency workers were employed on permanent contracts - giving employment security to many newly arrived migrant workers for the first time. The union added 13,000 new members and 300 new shop stewards; the percentage of precarious to permanent workers was reversed and union density in the poultry sector increased dramatically.
Of course only a minority of workers (though a strategically important minority) are employed by TNC’s and their flanking suppliers etc. Organizing politically is the other key element – fighting for laws and regulation to limit casual employment, pushing up the minimum wage and social security floors, and rolling back the agencies’ lobbying offensive spearheaded by their global lobby association CIETT, are vitally important for reaching out to the unorganized, the poor and the vulnerable – labour’s natural constituency.
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mundh
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Post by mundh on May 8, 2013 15:57:20 GMT 1
“To change in order to remain successful” has been the motto of a comprehensive internal restructuring program that the German IG Metall has started in 2009. After three years it is fair to say that the program has been successful. In 2013 there has been – for the second consecutive time – a net increase of membership (of almost 20.000 to roughly 2.3 million members).This is all the more remarkable as membership has gone down for almost twenty years in a row. Plus, due to the demographic structure of IG Metall’s membership every year appr. 100.000 new members must join the organization just to maintain the membership figure.
Recruiting new members has become the crucial issue for IG Metall. There has been a major re-allocation of resources, away from headquarters and in favor of the more than 160 local offices. More than 100 staff members at the head office were relocated to the locals. Every year the local structure get additional funds for membership projects amounting to roughly 20 mio €.
Rather than merely “representing” members IG Metall aims to activate members and enable them to actively get involved in the union’s activities (“Mitmach-Gewerkschaft”). This requires a change of the mindset of both, union office bearers and “ordinary members”.
As the amount of atypical employment is on the rise in Germany (s. Mike Fichter’s contribution) IG Metall is particularly addressing the problem of temporary agency workers. At the company level IG Metall has concluded hundreds of so called “Better agreements” that guarantee equal pay to temps. In addition, there has been an collective agreement with the federation of temporary employment agencies that stipulates gradually growing wage supplements to temps bringing them closer to the wage level of permanent workers. Thirdly, the 2012 collective agreement of the metal industry, for the first time, gave works councils a co-determination right in the use of temps. The various elements of IG Metall’s strategy have produced positive results. Within three years the IG Metall membership figure among temps has grown from 13.000 in 2010 to almost 45.000 by 2012. In addition, the working and wage condition of temps has been placed high on Germany’s political agenda.
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Post by Harald - Admin on May 9, 2013 21:26:28 GMT 1
agnes wrote:
In the past years, German trade unions have repeatedly responded to employers’ strategies of fragmentation of the workforce in core and peripheral employees (through out-sourcing, temp agency work and contract work) with collective agreements to maintain employment and to accept wage reductions or lower standards for newly hired employees. Today, ver.di and other trade unions increasingly choose a different path: pushing employers through organizing and mobilizing strategies at the company level to extend collective bargaining agreements to outsourced segments of production, to reduce temp agency work and limit the application of temporary employment contracts through collective bargaining agreements. For the first time ever, in the metal, chemical and printing industries union negotiated collective bargaining agreements that provide wage increases above the statutory minimum wage for agency wages in move towards equal pay for equal work. In addition to intense political lobbying, trade unions strategically use numerous law suits to ensure and enforce full protection of employees and representation of temp agency workers and precarious workers through work councils and staff committees. These are attempts to counter the fragmentation of the work force at the company level by pursuing a deliberate strategy to cover all workers working at a company site through collective bargaining agreements and extending the mandate and practice of works councils to represent the core workforce as well as workers in atypical forms of employment.
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Post by unvape on May 10, 2013 9:56:45 GMT 1
Question 1:
The Swiss trade unions have responded to the shift from manufacturing to services in the economy and the precarisation of the employment relationship through organisational and political reorientation.
Concerning organisation, two points were decisive. Firstly, mergers between strong trade unions, e.g. from the construction and metal sectors, created synergies and freed up resources for organizing activities in the service sector. Secondly, a “strategy of association” has been developed by the trade union confederation to develop a cooperation with professional organisations outside the trade union structure.
Part of this process was, and still is, reviving the capacity of the unions to mobilise and to take strike actions as an answer to prevailing neo-liberal politics, which fundamentally challenge the concept of collective agreements and social partnership.
To implement this strategy we put the main focus on re-building a network of shop stewards and activist. Creating space in the organisation for organising women and migrants was absolutely essential for this and we have so far gained substantial know-how in this regard.
Shifting trade union policy priorities resulted among other things in: - a successful campaign against wage dumping over several years; - a collective agreement covering the whole temporary employment sector; - an initiative for a public referendum for a statutory minimum wage for workers not covered by sectoral collective bargaining agreements. In Switzerland with 100 000 signatures (roughly 2% of the electorate) the people can demand a public referendum. If a majority supports the referendum the parliament has to enact a law implementing the will of the people. - a new campaign to make it easier to extent collective bargaining agreements to all enterprises in a sector.
To achieve our goals, we build on trade union power but as well on the particularities of our political system with strong elements of direct democracy (as the example of the popular initiative shows). During this reorientation phase we also revised our relationship with political parties and social movements. The Social-democratic Party does not play the same role anymore it used to do in the past. Depending on the issue we build and uphold changing alliances. By and large we assess the outcome of this reorientation process positive.
Vasco Pedrina, Unia/USS (CH)
8.5.2013
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Post by zeynep on May 10, 2013 12:17:16 GMT 1
I would like to share with you the attitude of Public Employees Trade Union's Confederation (KESK) in Turkey:
With respect to the precarious employment, it is important to underline that it is not only the jobs that is become precarious and unsecure but the whole societal life itself and the future of the new generation. Therefore it is not enough to organize in formal sector and paid workers; but the organized struggle should be urgently socialized.
Taking into the account the currently applied policies, unemployment seems to be a very big problem in the future, besides the social rights will be cut more, it is very obvious threat that especially women workers will be working/living under precarious conditions more than everyone.
As an another dimension, international law, domestic law and constitutional based rights are the main resources that needs to be taken into consideration to determine the struggle line for preserving acquired rights ! but in Turkey, under the power of current government (AKP), we witnessed sharply that international law is overlooked by the government, moreover, the government is going further and even is eliminate the constitutional security under the policy of “legal transformation with AKPâ€. Regarding all these dimensions, it is very clear that only legal struggle is very insufficient.
Considering the demands of civil servants in public sector (KESK) in Turkey – in Turkey civil servants and workers are subject to different labour laws, different trade union laws – have not been independent from the struggle for re-establishing Turkey on the base of equality and freedom. That’s why trade unionists in KESK are fighting for both free, accessible, quality public services for everyone. Because this is also the responsibility of the state. So trade unionist should fight against both liberalization of services and privatization of the public institutions.
Based on this, fight against precarious work and unsecure employment relations is the most effective ground to struggle. But how ? the answer is the united and organized struggle. This is an attack against all working class; that’s why the effective struggle should cover not only workers and civil servants, but students, farmers, unemployed people, women working in the houses etc.
Zeynep Ekin Aklar GLU Alumni Turkey
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Post by hayter on May 10, 2013 14:16:54 GMT 1
With the increasing numbers of contingent workers working alongside those in regular full-time employment, unions face a new set of challenges. First, the growing gaps between the pay of those in full-time employment and those in temporary or fixed-term undermine union bargaining power and create cost incentives for enterprise to hire non-regular workers, which further erodes union membership and strength. Second, high degrees of economic vulnerability and weak attachment of non-regular workers to a particular workplace for a length of time - compounded by triangular employment relations - pose challenges in respect of the organization of non-regular workers and establishment of effective and meaningful bargaining units. Third, worker protection and worker entitlements are embedded in the employment contract and achieved through the joint regulation of employment relations in collective agreements. If non-regular precarious workers in the same workplace are excluded from these protections and entitlements (e.g. health and safety training) this increases the economic and social risk of all workers.
In order to address these challenges, trade unions have shifted to more inclusive strategies of representation. In Japan, dedicated strategies to organize part-time and address their issues, both through the annual shunto and the opening of non-regular worker centre at the headquarters of RENGO, resulted in an increase in membership. Trade unions in many countries are now engaging in solidarity bargaining demanding equal pay for temporary workers and equal access to workplace training. For example, a collective agreement signed in 2012 between IKEA Swedwood and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) in the United States requires temporary workers to undertake safety training before they enter the workplace. This was achieved with support from the Global Union Federation, BWI.
Solidarity bargaining has also facilitated the transition of those in precarious work arrangements to regular employment. For example, a sectoral agreement in the Metal and Engineering Industry in South Africa (2011 – 2014) limits temporary contracts (through temporary employment agencies) to four months, after which time employment is regularized. There are instances in which trade unions put a brake on accelerating segmentation or at least make this the subject of joint regulation. For example in the metal and engineering industry in Germany, a collective agreement signed in 2012 between IG Metall and two employers’ federations (BAP and iGZ) requires the agreement of the works council on the engagement of temporary agency workers. These are all examples of union strategies to reach out to precarious workers that, overcome divides and represent the interests of all workers.
While there are notable achievements at the enterprise level, the most innovative strategies are found at an industry and national level where for example, unions have reached out to those in precarious employment negotiating equal pay for equal work or portable social security entitlements. The extension of collective agreements to all workers in an industry, irrespective of their employment status has been a powerful tool in closing wage gaps. What is notable in examining the strategies of unions is the degree to which international solidarity has played a role in shaping and supporting union strategies.
Susan Hayter ILO
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Post by Harald - Admin on May 10, 2013 15:46:23 GMT 1
wandera48 wrote:
Traditionally, promotion, protection and enforcement of the trade union rights of collective bargaining, organizing and representation relied on trade union power, the nature of national labour legislation and labour administration. However, the introduction of labour clauses in the public procurement process by organisations like the International Finance Cooperation (IFC) heralded an additional leg on which the workers' movement can stand and sustain the struggle for better conditions of work. This observation draws from the experiences of Uganda’s Building workers' Union with Bujagali Hydroelectric Power Project. This was a USD 900m project that employed thousands of workers. Although the Building Workers’ Union is known for its effective recruitment and organizing machinery, employers often refuse to recognize the union and to engage in collective bargaining. Upon reporting of the first worker at the project, the union swung its recruitment machinery into motion. Efforts bore fruits with the union being able to secure recognition and to engage in collective bargaining. The unique thing about organizing workers at this project is that gaining recognition and being able to engage in collective bargaining was not as protracted as it had always been. The process of trade union recognition was expedited by provisions of IFC’s standard performance 2 (labour and working conditions) that were included in the lending agreement between IFC and Bujagali Energy Limited. As a result the union recruited over 1000 workers at the project, improved their wages and the general conditions of workers at this dam project. In addition, aided by provision of IFCs standard performance 2 guidelines, the union was able for the first time to monitor the conditions of workers of sub-contracted firms especially with regard to occupational safety and health. Furthermore, the culture of harmonious industrial relations witnessed at this project has offered a good reference point for the Building workers’ Union in its effort to demonstrate that union recognition does not affect successful implementation of civil works projects However, important as it is to include labour protection clauses in lending and procurement agreements of such large scale civil projects, the ultimate protection of workers’ rights rests with the strength, initiative, consistence and resilience of a trade union. This should include the ability of trade unions to keep a tab on who international institutions are lending to and whether such lending has labour protection clauses. To this end, international solidarity will be crucial. For example without Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) sharing information about the labour clauses in the agreements signed between IFC and Bujagali Energy Limited, Uganda’s Building workers’ Union would perhaps have remained uninformed about the same. Furthermore, successful protection of workers’ rights also depends on the extent to which domestic labour law and administration facilitate the efforts of trade unions in promoting workers’ rights. In Uganda this is where the challenge for trade union has lay for several years. Although Uganda’s labour legislation conforms in most respects to ILO recommended standards, implementation has been largely ineffective. This has been largely due to weak political will manifested through meager budgets to labour administration and the failure to recruit labour officers and inspectors (for example only about 30 of the 112 districts in the country have a labour officer). Further, the Labour Court provided for in the law has not been operationalized since the Labour Disputes Settlement Act came into force in 2006. In the absence of effective labour inspection and a sound and expeditious labour dispute settlement mechanism, actualization of the protection of workers’ rights as is the intention of including labour clauses in public procurement agreements will be undermined. Therefore a number of things have to be done for labour clauses in public procurement agreements to have optimum effect. First, trade union must endeavour to educate themselves about the labour protection clauses in public procurement processes. Secondly, trade unions must strengthen their organizing capacity. Thirdly, the international trade union solidarity framework should join the local trade union endeavors aimed at ensuring that the government recruits labour inspectors, funds labour administration adequately and operationalizes the labour court.
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Post by brunodobrusin on May 14, 2013 0:15:18 GMT 1
The case of Argentina represents a remarkable example of the diverse behavior unions can have at the time of crisis. During the 1990s the neoliberal model imposed by the IMF and with the support of important sectors of the Argentine political class, basically led to a process of deindustrialization, massive unemployment figures and extended poverty (similar situation to the one experienced in the Southern European countries at the moment). We can outline several responses to that crisis: 1) self-reform in the trade union movement; 2) organization of the unemployed workers in social movements; 3) factory takeover; 4) the combination of the previous three under a common “roof”.
With the sell-out to the neoliberal administration of some of the most traditional trade unions (affiliated to the CGT), several unions dominated by the public sector organized in a new workers organizations, the Argentine Workers’ Central (CTA), which was created to reorganize working class Argentina. The novelty of CTA was the policy of direct affiliation, therefore allowing workers to join the confederation and have a voice within it, without the need to have a union. This was a particularly successful strategy to attract informal and young workers, who either never had a union in their workplace or their unions did not incorporate them into the decision-making. CTA was the only confederation that actually grew in size during the worst economic times, and partially this is due to the re-thinking of union structures and representation, to include historically excluded sectors.
A second situation was the organization in the so-called piqueteros groups (picket-line organized in the shanty towns), who were formally employed and lost their jobs during the crisis. This group of workers organized not around an idea of a factory or company as a unifying element, but rather around the question of territory, using the slums as the area of organization and taking public spaces (especially highways) as the space to strike. The picket lines were a direct confrontation with state authority, and it managed to place enormous pressures on the administrations to review the retrenchment of social policy.
The third movement is perhaps the most known one, that of the recovered factories. In brief, the factories that were shut down during the economic recession (mainly in the Small and middle size sector) begun to be retaken by the former workers, who resisted policy repression and eventually formed workers cooperatives that are now running the factories and enterprises. This was, and remains, the most symbolic sign of workers’ resistance to the logic of capitalist organization, since it placed labour at the centre of the process and gave away with the need for the capitalist class to control production. The recovered factories represent today roughly 10,000 workers throughout Argentina, and despite their small numbers and economic impact (less than one percent of GDP), they produced a massive symbolic impact on workers organizations, on the unemployed, and on society as a whole.
The fourth element is considered as the most relevant for the re-organization of the trade union movements. Originally the unemployed and the recovered factories were not considered by the majority of the trade unions, since they were too focused on their own survival. However, and in the lead-up to the 2001 economic crisis, unions begun to respond and coordinate struggles with these novel movements. The capacity of the trade union movement was actually reinforced by incorporating the new social actors in the working class. Argentina’s economic recovery is due to an economic boom, a political change to the centre-left, but also to the immense social organization that came out of the crisis. The capacity to coordinate common struggles, demands, resistances and proposals lies at the heart of the transformation the country witnessed in the last ten years.
The challenge today is to transfer this experience elsewhere, but also to renew it according to the current characteristics of the labour market, with a diminishing but still high rate of informality (35%) and about one third of the youth unemployed and out of school. These challenges have to be faced, and the experience of the 1990s can be a good point to start and re-think organization.
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Post by mphoshadrackmaru71 on May 28, 2013 20:46:11 GMT 1
In Botswana the issue of privatization has significantly played a part in trade union density, as the government which is the main economic player in the country has clearly started outsourcing some of its enterprises as cost cutting measures. Despite trade union rebuttals against the idea, the government forged ahead with its intention. The campaigns, which were vigorously executed via demonstrations, press releases, policy papers and debates, could not influence the legislators not to endorse the motion at the National Assembly to become a law. The Department of Water Affairs, which was privatized had to lose a substantial number of employees as most of the workers were laid off, therefore compromising trade union density. Trade unions concerned are public employee trade unions, and as such the government officially and legally recognizes trade unions members who are employees in the public service and once retrenched and/or retirees you cease to become a member. As trade unions depend on monthly check-offs, the laying off of trade union members works against the organization. Nevertheless trade unions have maintained membership of such members despite not being public service workers. The union has maintained their membership and still represents them during disciplinary cases and on matters affecting their work related problems. The trade union also has ties with financial institutions, which borrow money to union members with better negotiated interest rate, which also covers employees which were previously their members. The other major impediment to trade union growth in membership is attributed by deliberate casualization of labour which is more prevalent in the country and deliberately perpetuated by the government with its poverty eradication interventions through creating temporary employment, which plays a critical factor in declining trade union members as the stipends attracted can not afford them fulfill trade union subscriptions. Trade unions have failed dismally to convince the public or legislators on this aspect.
Mpho Shadrack Maruping Engage 2012 Glu alumni
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Post by buiduyen on Aug 17, 2015 7:55:43 GMT 1
How can we expect to organize and represent the rights and interests of self employed people, home workers, part time workers, migrants, subcontracted as they were stabil employees of a factory easy to reach, to talk with and to stop at a picket line? What does collective bargainig mean to informal workers of diferent kinds? To undocumented migrant workers? Nothing at all because their interests and basic rights are covered through other means. I think so !
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Post by lexFlierty on Nov 1, 2020 20:30:30 GMT 1
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Post by Isacdok on Jan 25, 2022 0:51:54 GMT 1
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Post by Isacdok on Feb 25, 2022 15:43:52 GMT 1
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