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Alienated Politics: Labour Insurgency And The Paternalistic State In China, Eli Friedman Apr 2015

Alienated Politics: Labour Insurgency And The Paternalistic State In China, Eli Friedman

Eli D Friedman

Is there a labour movement in China? This contribution argues that China does not have a labour movement, but that contestation between workers, state and capital is best characterized as a form of ‘alienated politics’. Widespread worker resistance is highly effective at the level of the firm be-cause of its ability to inflict losses on capital and disrupt public order. But authoritarian politics in China prevent workers from formulating political demands. Despite the spectacular repressive capacity of the state, the central government has in fact responded to highly localized resistance by passing generally pro-labour legislation over the past decade. The …


Organizing In The Nafta Environment: How Companies Use “Free Trade” To Stop Unions, Kate Bronfenbrenner Apr 2013

Organizing In The Nafta Environment: How Companies Use “Free Trade” To Stop Unions, Kate Bronfenbrenner

Kate Bronfenbrenner

[Excerpt] These findings point to both an enormous challenge and a great opportunity for American unions. Clearly, under NAFTA and other free trade agreements more and more employers will feel emboldened to threaten to close the plant during organizing campaigns, and workers and unions will find organizing increasingly difficult. At the same time, unions have an opportunity to overcome these barriers to organizing if they commit enough resources to run large-scale, aggressive campaigns which mobilize the rank-and-file workers to build a union in their workplace, regardless of the intensity of the employer’s campaign.


Les Relations Industrielles Mexicaines Et La Democratic Dans Le Context De L'Alena [Mexican Industrial Relations And Democracy Under Nafta], Maria Lorena Cook Jan 2013

Les Relations Industrielles Mexicaines Et La Democratic Dans Le Context De L'Alena [Mexican Industrial Relations And Democracy Under Nafta], Maria Lorena Cook

Maria Lorena Cook

Le Mexique est presentement en train de vivre une importante transition, qu'il s'agisse de son modele de developpement economique ou de son systeme politique. Sur le plan economique, le Mexique est passe d'un modele d'industrialisation sous une logique de substitution d'importations par des biens domestiques, modele forge dans les annees 30 et 40, a une strategie de developpement axee sur l'exportation et basee sur un modele neo-liberal. Sur le plan politique, le regime mexicain a subi de tres fortes pressions pour que son systeme, de type autoritaire, domine depuis plus de 60 ans par le Parti revolutionnaire institutionnel (PRI), fasse …


Regional Integration And Transnational Labor Strategies Under Nafta, Maria Cook Jan 2013

Regional Integration And Transnational Labor Strategies Under Nafta, Maria Cook

Maria Lorena Cook

[Excerpt] This paper argues that while the internationalization of the economy has tended to weaken national labor movements, the internationalization of domestic politics may expand the traditional arenas for strategic action for labor unions. In particular, the North American Free Trade Agreement has been portrayed by some of its many critics as representing the consolidation of a neoconservative or neoliberal project that will not only shape the future economic development of the region, but also constrain its social policies and limit its political options (Grinspun and Cameron 1993: Chapter 1). However, these same critics have also noted that the debate …


A Strange Case, Lance A. Compa Nov 2010

A Strange Case, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] The disconnect reflected in Bosch's action at the Wisconsin plant between promise and performance is the theme of a new Human Rights Watch report titled A Strange Case: Violations of Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States by European Multinational Corporations. The report details ways in which European firms have exploited weak US labour laws to carry out aggressive campaigns against workers' organising and bargaining in the United States. "A Strange Case" comes from Robert Louis Stevenson's famous The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.


Ensuring A Decent Global Workplace: Labor Rights Belong In Trade Agreements, Lance A. Compa May 2009

Ensuring A Decent Global Workplace: Labor Rights Belong In Trade Agreements, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Linking workers' rights to international trade is an idea whose time has come and stayed, despite the best efforts of free trade ideologues to chase it away. In looming congressional debates about "fast track" negotiating authority, the Bush administration and Congress confront powerful demands from workers, trade unionists and a wider public for rules protecting human rights and labor rights, not just corporate investments, in trade agreements.