Global Labour Journal

Labour’s Response to Climate Change

Jacklyn Cock — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:23:37 PDT

Review of Andreas Bieler and Ingemar Lindberg's 'Global Restructuring, Labour and the Challenges for Transnational Solidarity'

Edward Webster — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:23:35 PDT

Review of Ari Sitas' 'The Mandela Decade 1990-2000: Labour, Culture and Society in Post-Apartheid South Africa'

Devan Pillay — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:23:34 PDT

Building Informal Workers Agenda: Imagining ‘Informal Employment’ in Conceptual Resolution of ‘Informality’

Supriya Routh — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:23:32 PDT

There are two major theoretical conceptualizations that explain the formal/informal divide – ‘dualism’ and ‘structuralism’. Neither of these theories offers a complete picture of informal economic activities without running the risk of excluding a large section of informal workers from the purview of its analysis. A better theoretical basis of informal economic activities could be achieved by merging the insights from both of these theories. The ‘informal employment’ concept bridges the gap between the ‘dualist’ and the ‘structuralist’ theories in analytically providing a much wider coverage to workers working informally.

Colombian Labor, Globalization and a Ray of Hope

James Rochlin — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:23:31 PDT

While Colombian labor has been loathe to the country’s recent consideration of a series of free trade agreements (FTAs), paradoxically debates surrounding the recently approved US-Colombia FTA have spawned greater security for unions and have attracted a global panoptic gaze with a capacity to protect and promote labor rights. But is too early to determine whether that capacity of liberation associated with global connectivity can translate into the establishment of human security for Colombian labor, the most besieged on the planet, from the wave of depletion it has endured since the 1990s. Between 2005 and 2010, 55 percent of all assassinations of trade unionists globally occurred in Colombia. We shall begin with an historical overview from which to consider the current plight of Colombian labor, and will then focus on pivotal events since the 1990s. Concentric spaces between classical realism, neo-Gramscian approaches, and Foucauldian thought are enlightening when analyzing both historical trends and future prospects. This piece will focus on unions in Colombia’s petroleum sector, which historically have been a flagship for the country’s labor movement, and which have attracted added significance in the context of the current global commodity boom.

Theorising International Trade Unionism

Keith Abbott — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:23:28 PDT

This paper uses neo-functionalist and institutionalist theories of geo-political integration to develop a theory of international trade unionism. In brief, the theory asserts that the type of international ‘context’ in which international trade unions operate presupposes the types of ‘imperatives’ that will dominate their interests and concerns. These imperatives are taken to operate along one of three dimensions – industrial, political and ideological, and are seen as evolving in accordance with the ‘logic of spill-over’ in global and sub-global integration processes. Using this interpretation the discussion provides reasons as to why ideological imperatives have historically dominated international trade union thinking, the only significant exception being regional trade unions operating in Europe, which have evolved beyond the ideological to embrace industrial and political imperatives in their modes of organisation and operation.