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Labour Worldwide in
the Era of Globalization
Alternative Union Models in the
New World Order
Edited by
Ronaldo Munck
and
Peter Waterman
First published in Great Britain 1999 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-27065-1 ISBN 978-1-349-27063-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-27063-7
First published in the United States of America 1999 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-21768-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Labour worldwide in the era of globalization: alternative union
models in the new world order / edited by Ronaldo Munck and Peter
Waterman.
p. cm. - (International political economy series)
A collection of 15 essays.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-21768-6 (cloth)
1. Trade-unions. 2. International division oflabor.
3. International labor activities. I. Munck, Ronaldo.
II. Waterman, Peter. III. Series.
HD6476.Ll4 1998
331.88---dc21 98-28942
CIP
Selection and editorial matter © Ronaldo Munck and Peter Waterman 1999
Chapter 1 © Ronaldo Munck 1999
Chapter 8 © Richard Hyman 1999
Chapter 15 © Peter Waterman 1999
Chapters 2-4, 9, 11-15 © for copyright-holders see acknowledgements 1999
Chapters 5-7 and 10 © Macmillan Press Ltd 1999
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 6th edition 1999
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with
written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by
the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xv
List of Abbreviations XVll
Notes on the Contributors XIX
PART I CONTEXT
1 Labour Dilemmas and Labour Futures 3
Ronaldo Munck
PART II THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
2 The Crisis of Trade Union Representation: New Forms
of Social Integration and Autonomy-Construction 27
Ana Maria Catalano
3 A New Task for the Unions: The Liberation of Time
from Work 41
Andre Gorz
4 Multiple Identities and Multiple Strategies: Confronting
State, Capital and Patriarchy 64
Amrita Chhachhi and Renee Pittin
PART III LABOUR WEST AND EAST
5 The Future of the US Labour Movement in an Era of
Global Economic Integration 83
George DeMartino
6 The Russian Trade Unions: From Chaos to a New Paradigm 97
Kirill Buketov
7 The Future of the Japanese Automobile Industry:
Coexistence with the World, Consumers and Employees 107
Confederation of Japan Automobile Workers' Unions
v
vi Contents
8 Five Alternative Scenarios for West European Unionism 121
Richard Hyman
PART IV LABOUR SOUTH
9 The Labour Movement, Radical Reform and the Transition
to Democracy in South Mrica 133
Glenn Adler and Eddie Webster
10 Restructuring of Labour and Trade Union Responses in
Brazil 158
Jose Ricardo Ramalho
11 Labour, Industry and the State in India and Pakistan 175
Christopher Candland
PART V KEY ISSUES
12 Ecology and Labour: Towards a New Societal Paradigm 199
Laurie Adkin
13 Global Unionism: The Challenge 218
Vic Thorpe
14 Trade Unions, Computer Communications and the New
World Order 229
Eric Lee
PART VI PERSPECTIVES
15 The New Social Unionism: A New Union Model for a New
World Order 247
Peter Waterman
Index 265
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
8.1 Models of interests/agendas 127
11.1 Pakistan: trade union strength, 1951-93 181
11.2 Pakistan: industrial disputes, 1947-93 181
11.3 India: trade union strength, 1947-86 182
11.4 India: industrial disputes, 1947-93 182
Tables
8.1 Five alternative trade union identities 128
11.1 Major Indian trade union centres and their political party
affiliations 179
vii
Preface
1998 is the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto. This ended
with the stirring - or blood-curdling - cry: 'Workers of the world unite!
You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win.'
Living at the beginning of industrial capitalism, Marx and Engels had a
clear idea of the nature of the working class, the centrality of class con
flict, and the emancipatory role of its industrial and political struggles,
nationally and internationally. Living 150 years later, under a high capi
talist modernity, both informatized and globalized, we need to funda
mentally reconsider the role of that class and its basic organizational
form, the trade union. We need to do so in the light of contemporary
economic and political developments, of contemporary emancipatory social
movements, of the latest critical social theory. And we need to do so not
by projecting European experience and ideologies or strategies onto the
rest of the world but by reflecting on the experience of trade unionism
globally.
In confronting this daunting task, we are both stimulated and challenged
by earlier collections in the International Political Economy Series and
its subseries. There is a family resemblance between the present book
and those of Robert Cox on The New Realism, of Stephen Gill on
Globalization, Democratization and Multilateralism and even of David Hulme
and Michael Edwards on NGOs, States and Donors. This family is one of
a perplexed and humbled left, or democratic, intelligentsia, still commit
ted to the search for an alternative to a capitalist - or at least a neo
liberal capitalist - civilization, and recognizing that this requires a
non-dogmatic and pluralist disposition, platform and dialogue. It is a family
that still also addresses itself, implicitly or explicitly, to social movements,
civil society, people's organizations and non-governmental organizations
as providing the dynamic for progress or transformation. It is also a family
acutely aware of the transformations of both society and understandings
being wrought by globalization. We are also, however, aware of being
the black, or possibly red, sheep in this family, not only by reminding it
of the continued centrality of work to an increasingly post-industrial capi
talism, but also of a 'social movement around labour' as essential to any
alternative civilizational project.
This book is intended for teachers and students, as well as a growing
public concerned with labour and other social movements, with inter
national politics and with democratization as a worldwide issue. It joins
a growing number of studies concerned with developing a credible radical
IX
x Preface
alternative to the new world (dis)order. We hope - and expect - that the
work will be useful to labour and other social movement activists not
only in Western Europe and North America, but also in the Third World
and in the ex-communist countries.
Labour worldwide in the era of globalization is, undoubtedly, in diffi
cult straits. The trade union movement internationally has been increas
ingly stymied or peripheralized by a series of increasingly interlocking
crises. One is the on-going world economic crisis. Another is the uneven
transition from an industrial to the information phase of capitalist devel
opment. A third is the deleterious effect on labour and unions of the
economic policies of neo-liberalism. A fourth is the collapse of commu
nism and thirdworldism (radical nationalism), two international political
projects with which major union tendencies have been allied. A fifth is
the gradual decline of the reformist option traditionally associated with
labour and social-democratic parties. The last is globalization - economic,
political, social and cultural - which seems to be undermining the very
nation-state to which labour's hopes have been pinned and to the fate of
which it seems to be tied.
Labour's loss of direction or, at least, uncertainty on the way forward,
is not confined to those countries in which it has been most dramatically
undermined by neo-liberalism or marginalized by the growth of new social
movements. It can also be found in such countries as South Africa and
Brazil - places in which the unions have played a major, if not a leading,
role in recent processes of democratization. The trade union crisis is not
confined to the national level either. The International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions, the major union beneficiary of the collapse of com
munism and radical nationalism, is seeing its West European reformist
member unions increasingly dwarfed by its new or potential members
from the ex-communist East, from East Asia and Latin America. As a
reformist international centre of nation-state-defined and nation-state
oriented unions, it seems as needy of reorientation and transformation
as the United Nations.
The editors of this volume, and many of the contributions to it, would
argue that the crisis outlined above has, paradoxically, provided an op
portunity for labour to recover itself as both a political and as a moral
force. This will not happen, however, by harking back to a mythical golden
era. Nostalgia about labour's past, or infinite pragmatic adjustment to
capitalist 'realities' need to be replaced by a critical engagement with the
waves of energy coming from the so-called new social movements such
as those of women, ecology or human rights.
The collection opens with a broad overview chapter by Ronaldo Munck
which seeks to layout the dilemmas and prospects for labour in a global
or comparative context. A survey of 'new times' and 'new theories' allows
