Leadership and Followership in the Context of Trade Unionism

Trade union leadership and followership are complimentary and symbiotic. Pragmatic followership serves to engender effective trade union leadership. Union leaders are expected to work with and stand by their members in order to attain union mandates. Union ethos demands that leaders must place the interest and welfare of workers as their most paramount goal and work assiduously towards satisfying them. Union members must consider the antecedents and pedigree of aspirants and ensure that only unionists with track records of tenaciously and selflessly championing the union's cause should be elected as leaders. Through leadership by example, trust, integrity, and candor, union leaders can bring about positive changes to both workers and their union. Finally, the authors called on union leaders to be alive to their responsibilities and demonstrate ethical and servant forms of leadership in order to cope with the challenges of giving vent to the aspirations of their members.

Understanding leader evaluations in European Parliament elections

Leader evaluations are a crucial aspect in representative democracy. We analyse the patterns, antecedents and consequences of European Union leader evaluations against the backdrop of the 2019 European Parliament elections in ten countries. The article shows, firstly, that leader evaluations are unidimensional, both among voters with low and high knowledge as well as partisans and non-partisans. Secondly, among the antecedents of leader evaluations, European Union trust and performance evaluations are positively associated with leader evaluations, while European identity hardly plays a role compared to other factors. Lastly, the positive effect of leader evaluations on vote choice is conditional upon the individual leader and their party affiliation. Our results have important implications for expectations towards and evaluations of European Union leadership in the long term.

Geen makke schapen.

In 1964, the Netherlands experienced an average gross wage increase of 17 percent. In the economic literature, this wage explosion is mostly explained by the contrast between labour market developments and the restrictive wage policies by the Dutch government, which until that year adhered to central, state led wage determination. Overfull employment pressured employers to circumvent and ignore government regulations, and induced trade unions to increase wage demands, which, under labour market pressure, in 1963/64 were easily and willingly met by both employers and the government. In this article, it is argued that this explanation is too one sided, as it only takes marketplace bargaining power of workers into account (the power that results directly from tight labour markets), and ignores associational power (the power that results from the formation of collective organizations of workers). Focussing on unofficial strikes in the metal industries between 1959 and 1963, it is shown that in the run up to the wage explosion, tensions between rank and file and union leadership increased, which eventually forced the leaders to change their attitude. Remnants of the post-war, but now dissolved, communist trade union “Eenheidsvakcentrale” in the Amsterdam shipbuilding industry played a pivotal role in the mobilisation for these wildcat strikes.

INFLUENCE OF CORPORATE LEADERSHIP TRAITS ON EARLY ADOPTION OF ICT FARMING SYSTEMS BY FARMER UNIONS

The study sought to determine the effects of leadership trait towards promoting utilization of ICT farming systems for maize production in Zimbabwe. The study adopted qualitative approach and utilized 219 participants. The research also adopted an ordinal regression model to analyze the data. The study contributed the knowledge that leadership who are dominant, who are not flexible to change and conserved hinder the adoption of ICT farming systems for maize production just like leaders under small scale maize farmer union. In order to facilitate early the adoption which has taken place under the large scale maize farmer organization, farmer leadership, must possess radical, flexibility, and participatory traits to facilitate change and not inhibit change. In order to promote the early adoption of ICT farming systems in the maize value chain the farmer union leadership must be flexible and less dominance to change.

The Establishment of a Construction Union-Based Member Assistance Program: An Interview With Kyle Zimmer

Kyle Zimmer is the health and safety director and Members Assistance Program director of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 478, which represents operating engineers in Connecticut. Mr. Zimmer successfully gained support from union leadership and employers in initiating a union-based member assistance program to address mental health, suicide, and substance use among his members and their families. The member assistance program is helping to change the culture of the workplace by decreasing stigma and making it easier for workers to seek out treatment for substance use disorders and mental health issues. The program has been effective in getting workers quick access to treatment while also establishing a peer network for continued sobriety and recovery support. In this interview, Mr. Zimmer explains the operational challenges of creating such a program and how he was able to overcome the challenges to create a successful member assistance program.

Clements Kadalie, the trade unionist, and prophet Shepherd Bushiri

The gold rush in South Africa required many workers, both skilled and unskilled, to work on the surface and underground in the recently discovered gold deposits on the Witwatersrand. Mining companies ventured to lure such labour across South(ern) Africa. As such, in the past century, trade union leadership and religious leadership in South Africa shared similar objectives. Clements Kadalie is one of those workers who reached South Africa to offer cheap labour and ended as a union leader. The post 1994 South African democratic dispensation attracted many people to pursue better economic opportunities. Shepherd Bushiri is one of them. This article engages in some theological reflections on these two leaders and their influence among the poor and destitute in South Africa, and by employing case study analysis.

Organization and organizing in revolutionary times: The case of Tunisian General Labor Union

Adopting Barker’s (2011) Marxist approach of a social movement “as a whole”, this article addresses the question of whether and how mass-membership movement organizations can break out of oligarchic authority and support a radical political protest movement. Using an ethnographic approach, this article explores how the UGTT (the Tunisian General Labor Union) responded to organizational challenges during the Tunisian popular uprising in 2010 by examining its intra-organizational processes as well as its interactions with other parts of the protest movement and how their struggles mutually aided the fall of Ben Ali’s regime. The findings highlight that two correlated aspects were critical to a radical transformation of UGTT’s conservative goal. First, unionists with activism experience outside the labor organization played a key role as “mediators,” deriving meaning from the organizational culture of the union to interpret the course of the event, supporting the popular uprising, and forcing the union leadership to join the revolutionary process. Second, the unpredictable and unprecedented regime repression radicalized the protest movement and its claims, and ruptured the union’s traditional bureaucracy. The article concludes by elaborating on the potential of organizational studies to help us understand the role of trade unions in protest movement organizing and, more broadly, the role of formal mass-membership organizations in social movements.

Central and Local Authority Policy in the Sphere of Land Management and Crimean Resettlement in the 1920s

The problem of demographic processes in Crimea is acutely relevant in the light of recent political events. Besides, this issue is gaining more scientific importance due to the fact that during the Soviet period, Crimea conducted special demographic and migration policy, different from all adjacent regions. The consequences of the Soviet demographic and migration policy now impact the elaboration of a stable position and action plan of Ukraine on the deoccupation of the peninsula, the development of state policy towards the indigenous peoples of Crimea, etc. It is worth mentioning that Crimea was of special strategic importance for the USSR, and therefore the demographic structure of the population of the peninsula constituted a subject of particular attention as for the Union leadership so for the heads of local executive and party bodies. In addition, Crimea had special conditions for economic activity, different from other regions, and thus migration processes within the peninsula were to be planned and carried out according to the policy of the Soviet government and the Crimean socioeconomic situation. The scholarly research has not yet properly reflected the problem of the migration policy of the USSR in Crimea in the 1920s, so this blank space must be filled. The article considers the policy pursued by the Bolshevik Party and its subordinate Soviet authorities on the issue of relocation and resettlement of the Crimean population within the peninsula. The research is based on the analysis of materials of the State Archives of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which are currently inaccessible to Ukrainian scholars due to the occupation of the peninsula. The article also provides the analysis of the Soviet leaders’ plans on relocating the population to Crimea and its settlement, the prerequisites and factors that influenced the development and implementation of local demographic and migration policies. It studies some aspects of the Soviet leadership plans on resolving the national question in the USSR in general due to the resettlement policy in Crimea, namely creating there a Jewish republic. Special attention is paid to the resettlement of Tatar families to Crimea. It is noted that the migration policy of the Soviet government within the Crimean peninsula had a contradictory character, which led to the overall failure of the developed large-scale plans.

Labour Union Leadership and Gender Equality Challenges: Evidence from Kenya’s Electrical Traders and Allied Workers Union

The research investigates the challenges female union members encounter while seeking or assuming labour union leadership positions. Using evidence from Kenya’s Electrical Traders and Allied Workers Union, this article aims at identifying sociocultural barriers, role conflict, and structural constraints on women in relation to gender inequality. The article is based on exploratory research using data comprising both qualitative and quantitative data obtained from interviewing 63 female respondents who were identified using a non-probability sampling procedure referred to as snowballing. The research revealed a significant proportion of the respondents observed that patriarchal union structures favour men, but hinder women from accessing leadership positions. Most viewed the trade union leadership roles as demanding and burdensome and therefore incompatible with their culturally designated family roles. Institutionalised sexism in the trade union discouraged women from assuming leadership positions, since they are unlikely to penetrate the male-dominated informal leadership lobbies and networks in the trade union. The study concludes that the union, and by extension the umbrella trade union movement, should adopt and implement affirmative actions that are focused to maintain women in union leadership structures.