Transnational Labour Organizing Instead of Global Competition ? Limits and Possibilities
Sprache des Vortragstitels:
Englisch
Original Tagungtitel:
Momentum2021: Arbeit
Sprache des Tagungstitel:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
Globalization has led to globally interconnected productive structures in many sectors and regions. So-called global production networks or commodity chains are controlled and governed by transnational corporations which transfer capital and jobs to locations which offer specific advantages, be it cheap labor, lax environmental legislation or tax gifts. Global competition between localities in attracting foreign investors has generated a ?race to the bottom? that pressures on wages and collective labor rights.
Labor organizing along the chain is probably the most effective means of counteracting corporate strategies of globalized competition. But it is also clear that transnational organizing is anything but easy. Many attempts to win gains through cross-border organizing collapsed related to conflicts which emerge along divides caused by ideological and strategic differences, resource inequalities and differentiated priorities and access to decision makers and elites.
In our presentation we present insights and theoretical and methodological approaches derived from case studies on transnational organizing. The case studies will be published in a special issue of the Austrian Journal of Development Studies (Journal für Entwicklungspolitik/JEP) on this subject that we coordinate. The case studies cover transnational labor alliance campaigns, the role of global framework agreements and global unions in the garment and textiles industry, cotton farmers/workers and all-day labour unionism in Africa, voluntary initiatives on workers` rights in sports shoe production in Asia, cross-national organizing of precarious platform workers in Latin America and organizing initiatives in South Africa?s platinum mines.
Sprache der Kurzfassung:
Englisch
Englischer Vortragstitel:
Transnational Labour Organizing Instead of Global Competition ? Limits and Possibilities