scholarly journals The depletion of narrative resources in the Kenyan trade union movement.

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 704-713
Author(s):  
Collins Ogutu Miruka
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Union Leadership ◽  
Union Leaders ◽  
Labour Legislation ◽  
Depth Interviews

We discuss in this study the problems of mobilization and effectiveness faced by Kenyan trade unions. In a country with high levels of unemployment and weak labour legislation, it is imperative that the labour movement devise ways of remaining relevant and effective. We combine in-depth interviews with a qualitative assessment of secondary documents on trade unions in Kenya. We do this by looking at topics addressed, characterizations of unions as well as major actors such as union leaders, workers, and political leaders. We argue that labour leaders need to enrich their vocabularies of persuasion in order to neutralize the current discourses around trade unionism in Kenya. Such an approach would enable the union leadership to acquire new repertoires of action to enhance their capacity to mobilize.

Globalisation and the dilemmas of international trade unionism

2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Economic Developments

This article presents the author's reflections on the possibilities of a restructuring of the international trade union movement, on the basis of a collective research project to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) which seeks to open a debate within the movement over the lessons to be learned from its history as a guide for its future action. The most important question facing the trade union movement today is what is generally called 'globalisation', a phenomenon that goes back many years, both in terms of economic developments and labour struggles. From this perspective, the paper examines the basis for the existing divisions of the international labour movement, before going over the work of the ICFTU and of the International Trade Secretariats (ITSs) to achieve the regulation of the multinational corporations and of the international economy, and concluding on the prospects for unity of action in the unions' work around the global economy.

Challenges of Trade Union Movement in India

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Ravinder Jit
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Financial Stability ◽  
Physical Work ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Union Leaders ◽  
The Face

The trade union movement in India is facing many challenges. The finances of the unions are generally in a bad shape. Multiplicity of unions and inter-union rivalry makes it difficult to take a constructive approach to problems and issues. Heterogeneity of membership renders the unions unstable, weak, fragmented, uncoordinated and amorphous. Besides this, majority of unions are managed by professional politicians and lawyers who have no experience of physical work and no commitment to the organization. These outside leaders may give precedence to their personal interests and prejudices than welfare of the workers. Development of internal leadership is also not encouraged by unscrupulous politicians in the garb of union leaders. Keeping in mind all these challenges various scholars and practitioners have suggested certain measures to strengthen trade union movement in India. Developing internal leadership, presenting a united labor front for bargaining, ensuring financial stability of unions, having paid full time union office bearers, extending the boundaries of trade unions to unorganized sector and ensuring strong central legislation for recognition of representative union are some of the measures that can change the face of trade unionism in India.

scholarly journals Manufacturing Consensus? New Zealand Press Attitudes Toward the Labour Movement in 1890

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
James Keating
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Press ◽  
National Significance ◽  
Transformative Impact

<p>This thesis investigates the attitudes of New Zealand newspapers to the social and economic tensions exacerbated by the emergence of a newly assertive labour movement in 1890, culminating in the August-November Maritime Strike, and the 5 December General Election. Through detailed analysis of labour reporting in six newspapers (Evening Post, Grey River Argus, Lyttelton Times, New Zealand Herald, Otago Daily Times, Press) this thesis examines contemporary conceptions of New Zealand society and editors’ expectations of trade unions in a colony that emphasised its egalitarian mythology. Although the establishment of a national press agency in 1880 homogenised the distribution of national and international news, this study focuses on local news and editorial columns, which generally reflected proprietors’ political leanings. Through these sites of ideological contest, conflicting representations of the ascendant trade union movement became apparent. While New Zealand newspapers sympathised with the striking London dockers in 1889, the advent of domestic industrial tensions provoked a wider range of reactions in the press. Strikes assumed a national significance, and the divisions between liberal and conservative newspapers narrowed. To varying degrees both considered militant action by organised labour a threat to the colony’s peace and prosperity – sentiments that pervaded their reporting. The New Zealand Maritime Strike confirmed these prejudices and calcified the perception of organised labour’s malevolence. Despite the year’s upheavals, this thesis contends that the press struggled to comprehend labour’s political ambitions, ignoring the unprecedented mobilisation of thousands of new voters, shifting public opinion, and the transformative impact of electoral reform. Distracted by the mainstream political obsession with land reform and convinced that public prejudices, stoked by their own reporting, would obviate a labour presence in the new parliament, the victory of the Liberal-labour coalition confounded the publishing establishment.</p>

British Trade Unions and European Union Integration in the 1990s: Politics versus Political Economy

2002 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Strange
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Economic And Monetary Union ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
British Trade ◽  
Careful Assessment

This article evaluates the changing assessments within the British trade union movement of the efficacy of European Union integration from the viewpoint of labour interests. It argues that there has been a marked further ‘Europeanisation’ of British trade unionism during the 1990s, consolidating an on-going process which previous research shows began in earnest in the mid 1980s. A shift in trade union economic policy assessments has seen the decisive abandonment of the previously dominant ‘naive’ or national Keynesianism. While there remain important differences in economic perspective between unions, these are not such as would create significant divisions over the question of European integration per se, the net benefits of which are now generally, though perhaps not universally, accepted. The absence of fundamental divisions is evident from a careful assessment of the debates about economic and monetary union at TUC Congress. The Europeanisation of British trade unionism needs to be seen within the context of an emergent regionalism, in Europe and elsewhere. It can best be understood as a rational response by an important corporate actor (albeit one whose national influence has been considerably diminished in recent decades) to globalisation and a significantly changing political economy environment.

scholarly journals The International Trade-Union Movement and the Founding of the International Labour Organization

2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reiner Tosstorff
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
International Labour Organization ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Union Movement

Accounts of the founding of the International Labour Organization (ILO) usually emphasize the role of social-reformist intellectuals and politicians. Despite the indisputable role of these actors, however, the international labour movement was the actual initiator of this process. Over the course of World War I, the international labour movement proposed a comprehensive programme of protection for the working classes, which, conceived as compensation for its support of the war, was supposed to become an international agreement after the war. In 1919, politicians took up this programme in order to give social stability to the postwar order. However, the way in which the programme was instituted disappointed the high expectations of trade unions regarding the fulfilment of their demands. Instead, politicians offered them an institution that could be used, at best, to realize trade-union demands. Despite open disappointment and sharp critique, however, the revived International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) very quickly adapted itself to this mechanism. The IFTU now increasingly oriented its international activities around the lobby work of the ILO.

scholarly journals Labor Education in the Caribbean: A Critical Evaluation of Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad

2016 ◽  
Vol 90 ◽  
pp. 186-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Roberts ◽  
Lauren Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Skill Sets ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Union Leadership ◽  
The Caribbean

The achievements of the labor movement in the Caribbean are generally historicized without highlighting the contribution of labor colleges to the function and survivability of trade unions. For more than fifty years, labor colleges have played a critical role in developing the knowledge and skill sets of union members who had an interest in labor studies. Many will attribute the heydays of the Caribbean labor movement in the mid-1900s to the intellectual thrust given to the trade union movement by labor colleges. During this period, trade unions relied heavily on labor colleges for intellectual support and advice primarily on matters that required in-depth academic investigation. Support from the labor colleges enhanced the reputation of the labor movement by shifting popular notions that the trade union movement consisted only of the poor and illiterate working class. The effects of these parallel training activities have been positive for both the leadership of the trade union movement and the overall impact they have had on labor-management relationships. There has been a noted change in the pattern of trade union leadership where “the first generation leaders, considered by many as demagogic and messianic, have given way increasingly to a younger and more formally educated second and third generation leadership”.

scholarly journals Power in Practice: Trade union education in Sierra Leone

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 531-549
Author(s):  
John Stirling
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Union Education

This article presents an analysis of the development of a trade union education program in Sierra Leone in the geo-historical context of British colonialism. It places the argument in relation to the contradictory trends of trade unionism more generally and alongside their antagonistic cooperation with capitalism. It discusses the limits and potentialities of a radical pedagogy when trade unions are constrained to engage with existing power structures that use English as the dominant language. It places more theoretical arguments within the context of a country characterized by major inequalities and facing the neo-liberal challenges of globalization and a trade union movement seeking to be representative of an informal workforce but rooted in the formal economy.

scholarly journals Getting to the CORE of the Chicago Teachers’ Union Transformation

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Brogan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Teachers Union ◽  
The Core ◽  
The North ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Teacher Unionism

This article draws on a comparative study of urban change and rank-and-file teacher rebellion in New York City and Chicago, to explore the contemporary dynamics of what Jamie Peck (2013) calls “austerity urbanism” and its relationship to a rebirth of a social justice, grassroots teacher unionism in US urban centres. Tracing the trajectories of one group of rank-and-file teacher dissidents in Chicago, it argues that municipal unions are uniquely situated to lead the fight against austerity urbanism and the crisis tendencies of contemporary capitalism. To do this, however, trade unions will need to be reinvented and a different form of working class politic forged, grounded both in and outside of the trade union movement. Only then may we see organized labour in North America contribute to a movement for radical and systemic change, which is key to building a more socially just urbanism and society more broadly. The case of the Chicago teachers is highly instructive for activists, both inside and outside of the North American labour movement.

Post-Fordism: Historical Break or Utopian Fantasy?

1992 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 562-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Fieldes ◽  
Tom Bramble
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Niche Markets ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Workforce Skills ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Consensual Approach

Since the mid-1980s there has been substantial debate about changes in the nature of production systems in Europe and North America. A range of writers, operating within a paradigm of post-Fordism, contend that traditional Western manufacturing methods, based on mass markets, mass production and Taylorism, are being replaced by strategies premised on niche markets, small-batch production and the upgrading of workforce skills and autonomy. In Australia it has been argued, chiefly by Mathews, that such changes have important implications for the labour movement. In particular, the new circumstances require a move from a confrontationist to a consensual approach to industrial relations by the trade unions. These claims are challenged in this article, both because of the determinist framework that informs them and because of their inability to explain the complexity of the changes that are taking place in the areas they address. An interpretation of recent developments, which places competitive accumulation at its centre, is suggested as an alternative paradigm. The implication that a post-Fordist strategy will reinforce the strength and integrity of the trade union movement is also questioned in the light of the later experience of the Accord.

Trade Unionism and Caste in South India

1976 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. A. Ramaswamy
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Diverse Workforce ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Beaten Track

Studies of Indian organized labour have followed the beaten track for three decades. In their obsessive concern with the political links of trade unions and their control by middle-class intellectuals and professionals, the students of Indian labour have barely paused to consider the social consequences of unionization. The origin of the labour movement in India goes back to the turn of the century, and over five million workers are now unionzed. A movement of this proportion cannot be without consequence for the attitudes and behaviour of workers. In the specifically Indian context the crucial question is how a trade union movement whose very cornerstone, at least ideally, is a sense of camaraderie among a socially diverse workforce interacts with a traditional society whose foundation is the caste system.

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