Cross-border Trade Union Networks in Transnational Corporation: A comparison between sectors

This article analyses cross-border trade union networks in Transnational Corporations (TNCs) in the metal and chemical, garment, retail, and commercial banking sectors in Brazil. Conceptualized as global union responses to the growing reach of TNCs, such networks have been established in different settings in the country and have engaged major corporations outside of traditional industrial relations frameworks, venturing into the controversial field of social dialogue, corporate responsibility, and private governance. From different research backgrounds, our findings suggest that union networks in TNCs can be used to rearrange union prerogatives across different levels but remain embedded in previous institutional structures. In this sense, such unions incorporate existing union boundaries, including the exclusion of relevant groups of workers, even as they can scale up the scope of trade union action.

Conditionality and trade union action in the promotion and defence of workers’ rights: the Spanish case

Conditionality, among other aspects, determines that the regulatory development of the countries that make up the European Union can be carried out, as is usual in the social sphere, without the intervention, or at least minimally, of the workers’ representatives and entrepreneurs, and also from other political formations in the legislative field. Logically, this absence of social or political participation can promote response actions against them, either traditional (strikes, demonstrations, withdrawal of parliamentary support in adoption of legislative measures etc.), or new types (spontaneous concentrations in public places, general assemblies of citizens without a defined convener, appearance of social and political formations of less visible typology, or other similar ones). The financial crisis unleashed at the end of 2007 and the one derived from the health emergency situation due to the global spread of Covid-19, at the beginning of 2020, have precisely encouraged the use of conditionality in the European Union space. However, the way in which conditionality has been developed in one and another crisis in the Spanish State can be said that it has not been identical. Neither have been the reactions of social and political subjects, because if in the first crisis these subjects have experienced a reduction in their functions of participation or intervention in legislative action and in the proposal of political actions, in the second the possibilities of action have been much more significant, and also their contribution to efforts to overcome the crisis situation.

Two forms of transnational organizing: Mapping the strategies of Global Union Federations

It has become a commonplace belief among academics and trade union officials that globalization has weakened trade unions. However, the expansion of global capital has also led to a rise of transnational labor organizing. Since the 2000s, Global Union Federations have developed different strategies to tackle the challenges of globalization. In this article, we analyze two such forms of transnational organizing: A network-based and an event-based form of organizing. While the network-based approach brings together unions from different countries in a company or industry-wide cross-border network, the event-based strategy is built on the engagement of the GUFs at large international events to wage local struggles with a lasting impact on labor relations. By drawing on a power resource approach and labor geography and by using empirical data from two case studies, the Building and Woodworkers International’s Fifa World Cup campaign of 2014 and the International Transport Workers Union’s Latam Union network, we demonstrate how GUFs are using different pathways of transnational activism to link the global with the local and why local trade union action is crucial for success in transnational organizing.

Workplace gender equality in the post-pandemic era: Where to next?

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed and accelerated many gendered labour market inequalities in Australia and around the world. In this introduction to our special issue, ‘Workplace Gender Equality: Where are we now and where to next?’, we examine the impact of the pandemic on women’s employment, labour force participation, earnings, unpaid care work and experience of gendered violence. We identify five key areas where action is urgently required to create a more equitable post-pandemic recovery: addressing gender-based labour market segregations and discrimination; building access to mutually beneficial flexibility; ensuring a more gender-equitable distribution of unpaid care; confronting gender-based violence at work and beyond; and mobilising union action through gender equality bargaining.

The instruments of Eurozone fiscal surveillance through the lens of the soft law/hard law dichotomy—Looking for a new approach

The past decade has profoundly reshaped the fiscal governance system of the Eurozone. Supranational prerogatives vis-à-vis State budgets have been significantly expanded, thereby redefining the nature of Union action in the field of fiscal policy and transforming the dynamics between the Union and its Member States. In spite of its overhaul and the practical effects that Eurozone fiscal governance now produces on the ground, the paper shows that overall, this regulatory system still formally qualifies as soft law. This results in a deep disconnect between the form and substance of Eurozone fiscal surveillance in the Eurozone, which raises a number of constitutional challenges. The paper shows that the source of this disconnect is to be found in the strict apprehension of the hard law/soft law divide and the narrow understanding of bindingness attached to it, which currently prevails in the legal discipline, but no longer corresponds to the realities of the EU’s regulatory practice. From there on, the paper offers an alternative approach towards the distinction between hard and soft law, based on a renewed, more open and contextual, understanding of the concepts of bindingness and legal effects, which might reconcile the form and the reality of Eurozone fiscal governance nowadays.

Power resources and supranational mechanisms: The global unions and the OECD Guidelines

This article uses the power resources approach to analyse the Global Union Federations’ (GUFs) use of the specific instances mechanism associated with the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. While this mechanism has serious limitations, it has proved to be a useful tool when combined with public campaigns and the exercise of other power resources at multiple scales. This is so, we argue, because the fact that multi-national enterprises themselves operate across national boundaries creates an incentive to engage power resources at a supranational level, as well as within the countries where they, or their suppliers, are present. As this finding suggests, consideration of unions’ power resources benefits from deeper consideration of the multi-scalar and interrelated character of union action and of the role that intermediary coordinating organizations like GUFs play in supporting the exercise of power at the supranational level.

Physician unionisation in the USA: ethical and empirical considerations and the free-rider problem

While American physicians have traditionally practised as non-unionised professionals, there has been increasing debate in recent years over whether physicians in training (known also as interns, residents or house staff) are justified in unionising and using collective action. This paper examines specific ethical criteria that would permit union action, including a desire to ameliorate patient care as well as the goal of improving the conditions of working physicians. We posit that traditional rebuttals to physician unionisation often lean on an infinite conception of a doctor’s energies and obligations, one that promotes burnout and serves to advance the financial motives of hospital management and administration. Furthermore, this paper explores the empirical justifications for collective action, which include substantial reductions in medical error. Finally, we address the free-rider problem posed by non-union physicians who might benefit from working improvements garnered through union action. We conclude that in order to maintain a notion of justice as fairness, resident physicians who benefit from union deliberations are impelled to acquire union membership or make a commensurate donation and that the healthcare organisations for which they work ought to share in the responsibility to improve patient care.

Trade union responses to precarious employment: the role of power resources in defending precarious flight attendants at Ryanair

Drawing on a case study on the civil airline industry in Portugal, this article addresses the impact of precarious employment on trade union action and examines the conditions under which trade unions defend precarious workers’ interests. Using a power-resource theoretical framework, findings in this article highlight that cost-cutting employment practices are used strategically by employers to curb collectivisation and trade unionism. In addition, this article shows that when trade unions engage in an inclusive strategy to defend precarious workers’ interests, the compounded and inter-linked effect of trade union power resources, network embeddedness and international solidarity may be key to achieving success. S’appuyant sur une étude de cas portant sur l’industrie du transport aérien civil au Portugal, cet article traite de l’impact de l’emploi précaire sur l’action syndicale et examine les conditions dans lesquelles les syndicats défendent les intérêts des travailleurs précaires. À partir d’un cadre théorique fondé sur les ressources du pouvoir, les conclusions de cet article soulignent que les pratiques de réduction des coûts de l’emploi sont utilisées de manière stratégique par les employeurs pour freiner la collectivisation et le syndicalisme. En outre, cet article montre que lorsque les syndicats s’engagent dans une stratégie inclusive pour défendre les intérêts des travailleurs précaires, les effets combinés et interdépendants des ressources de pouvoir des syndicats, de leur ancrage dans les réseaux et de la solidarité internationale peuvent être la clé du succès. Der vorliegende Artikel beruht auf einer Fallstudie über die zivile Luftfahrt in Portugal und befasst sich mit den Auswirkungen prekärer Beschäftigung auf gewerkschaftliches Handeln sowie mit den Bedingungen, unter denen die Gewerkschaften die Interessen prekär beschäftigter Arbeitnehmer wahrnehmen. Die Autoren nutzen den Rahmen der Machtressourcentheorie für ihre Untersuchung und kommen zu dem Schluss, dass kostensenkende Beschäftigungspraktiken von Arbeitgebern strategisch genutzt werden, um gegen kollektives Handeln und Gewerkschaftsbewegung zu agieren. Darüber hinaus zeigt der Artikel, dass es für die Gewerkschaften ein Schlüssel zum Erfolg sein kann, wenn sie zur Wahrnehmung der Interessen prekär beschäftigter Arbeitnehmer eine inklusive Strategie nutzen, die auf sich gegenseitig verstärkende und ergänzende gewerkschaftliche Machtressourcen, Einbettung in Netzwerke und internationale Solidarität setzt.