Conference on Organized labour
Responses to the Conference Paper
Lowell Turner
Professor, Cornell University, USA
17 Aug 1998
This note is in response to the 21
st
Century program and the call for academic participation. I am a political scientist at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labour Relations, in the field of International and Comparative Labour. My expertise (and published books and articles) are on contemporary labour in Germany, the US. and other industrial societies. My particular interest is in sections 2 (change in labour-management relations) and 5 (international economy) of your write-up.
Here is a brief comment on the question "how have unions responded?":
There are four prominent responses in the US, all of which are showing promise, and which together are making viable the possibility of labour movement revitalization.
The first is GRASS-ROOTS MOBILIZATION. This takes shape in the US in a shift away from our traditional business unionism to a new "organizing model", emphasizing rank-and-file involvement in organizing drives, job actions such as strikes, and political election campaigns (in local, state and national politics). Victories include major recent organizing successes at US Airways and American Airlines, for example, the UPS strike victory last year and the Bell Atlantic strike victory this year (both major victories), and the fast-track victory in Congress last year and the surprising defeat of anti-labour legislation in California this year. All of these victories have been based on new rank-and-file, movement-type mobilization.
The second is COALITION BUILDING. This includes corporate campaign efforts targeted at particular firms, community coalitions with churches and other groups around political and economic issues including collective bargaining
campaigns, and high-profile political coalitions such as the labour-environmental coalition that defeated fast-track. Much of this work happens at the local level, through revitalized central labour councils, and is a major new emphasis for the American labour movement.
The third is SOCIAL PARTNERSHIP, although we Americans don't call it that (but I think it is helpful to call it that, to facilitate international comparisons and analysis). In the US, this refers to cases where unions are strong and are using this strength to influence the shape of new work organization and bargain for positive economic outcomes for the firm as well as for the members. It can be simple "win-win bargaining," or it can include more of a vision of the workplace of the future. Examples include ATT, Bell Atlantic, Saturn, and others. It only works, by the way, where unions are strong -- thus we don't yet have any national or industry-level social partnership in the US This is a goal for the future.
And finally, new INTERNATIONAL UNION SOLIDARITY is increasingly important. This includes US-Mexico union collaboration in the context of NAFTA, and it also includes many specific solidarity efforts that include German, British and other unions, targeted at multinational firms doing business in two or more of these countries. This is still small in the overall picture, but growing and increasingly important for the future.
I think that analysing labour movements today in terms of the above four categories could help make sense of the prospects for organized labour's renewal in many other countries as well.
I look forward to working with you to build this new Network.
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