{"title":"Review of: Jason Resnikoff (2021) Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work","authors":"Dan Smith","doi":"10.15173/glj.v14i1.5303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v14i1.5303","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67246078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of: Mohammad Amir Anwar and Mark Graham (2022) The Digital Continent: Placing Africa in Networks of Work","authors":"P. Carmody","doi":"10.15173/glj.v14i1.5264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v14i1.5264","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48013698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Ordinary People\" and Fascism: A Conjunctural Perspective on (Pre)War Russia","authors":"O. Reznikova","doi":"10.15173/glj.v13i3.5305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v13i3.5305","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45620503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article contributes to debates on global apparel workers’ health and well-being through an examination of how Sri Lankan workers were affected and treated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on qualitative interviews in and around the Katunayake Export Processing Zone, the article takes the Sri Lankan apparel industry as a case study. It reconceptualises the “precarious working body” as a “collective body” in order to demonstrate how workers’ health was a matter of collective precariousness. Workers’ health was not only dependent on that of others around them inside densely populated factories, but was also shaped by systemic material and discursive practices that affected workers collectively. These material practices included labour control and incentive structures that prevented workers from seeking medical attention and taking leave when needed, which in turn led to the spread of the virus across factories. The discursive practices comprise the social stigma and devaluation of women apparel workers that facilitated the blaming of workers for spreading the virus and enabled their inhumane treatment during the pandemic response. We argue that conceiving of apparel workers as a “collective body” enables a recognition of the systemic forces that create ill health at work and that expose certain (but not all) working bodies to the risks of infection. KEYWORDS: labour regimes; social stigma; occupational health; apparel industry; COVID-19
{"title":"The Collective Working Body: Rethinking Apparel Workers' Health and Well-being during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Sri Lanka","authors":"S. Wickramasingha, G. De Neve","doi":"10.15173/glj.v13i3.5082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v13i3.5082","url":null,"abstract":"This article contributes to debates on global apparel workers’ health and well-being through an examination of how Sri Lankan workers were affected and treated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on qualitative interviews in and around the Katunayake Export Processing Zone, the article takes the Sri Lankan apparel industry as a case study. It reconceptualises the “precarious working body” as a “collective body” in order to demonstrate how workers’ health was a matter of collective precariousness. Workers’ health was not only dependent on that of others around them inside densely populated factories, but was also shaped by systemic material and discursive practices that affected workers collectively. These material practices included labour control and incentive structures that prevented workers from seeking medical attention and taking leave when needed, which in turn led to the spread of the virus across factories. The discursive practices comprise the social stigma and devaluation of women apparel workers that facilitated the blaming of workers for spreading the virus and enabled their inhumane treatment during the pandemic response. We argue that conceiving of apparel workers as a “collective body” enables a recognition of the systemic forces that create ill health at work and that expose certain (but not all) working bodies to the risks of infection.\u0000KEYWORDS: labour regimes; social stigma; occupational health; apparel industry; COVID-19","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45875176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article analyses the re-regulation of labour in the German meat industry during the COVID-19 crisis. While working and employment conditions have long been criticised with only minor results, the massive coronavirus outbreaks in German slaughterhouses led to a rapid reform of work in the meat industry. We argue that unions were able to exert influence on policy-makers based on the discursive power that they accumulated prior to COVID-19, but that they needed to adapt their framing strategies by including public health concerns to their criticism. That was possible because the outbreaks endangered local residents as well as the slaughterhouse workers, which decisively increased the pressure on policy-makers. The article contributes to the approach of discursive power resources and strategic framing by unions, and elaborates the relevance of the process of gaining discursive power over time as well as the unforeseeable changes that can dramatically increase a union’s chances of political influence. KEYWORDS: coronavirus; COVID-19; power resources; unions; meat industry
{"title":"The Influence of the Discursive Power of Unions in the Swift Re-regulation of Slaughterhouse Labour during the COVID-19 Crisis in Germany","authors":"M. Seeliger, M. Sebastian","doi":"10.15173/glj.v13i3.4768","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v13i3.4768","url":null,"abstract":"The article analyses the re-regulation of labour in the German meat industry during the COVID-19 crisis. While working and employment conditions have long been criticised with only minor results, the massive coronavirus outbreaks in German slaughterhouses led to a rapid reform of work in the meat industry. We argue that unions were able to exert influence on policy-makers based on the discursive power that they accumulated prior to COVID-19, but that they needed to adapt their framing strategies by including public health concerns to their criticism. That was possible because the outbreaks endangered local residents as well as the slaughterhouse workers, which decisively increased the pressure on policy-makers. The article contributes to the approach of discursive power resources and strategic framing by unions, and elaborates the relevance of the process of gaining discursive power over time as well as the unforeseeable changes that can dramatically increase a union’s chances of political influence.\u0000KEYWORDS: coronavirus; COVID-19; power resources; unions; meat industry","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46050145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The aim of this paper is to analyse empirically the importance of union strategies as a moderating variable between unions’ structural and associational power and their bargaining and mobilisation power. To this end, we selected three unions, one from each of three strategic industrial sectors in the Argentinian national economy – automotive, chemical and edible oils – and analysed their dynamics of collective bargaining and labour conflict in the 2003–2015 period. The research is based on a review of secondary sources (collective bargaining agreements and conflict databases) as well as primary sources (semi-structured interviews with managers, trade union leaders, worker representatives and activists). Whereas workers in each of these sectors have a similarly high degree of structural power, we observed differences among the sectors in working, wage and organisational conditions. These differences are associated with three different union strategies for building union power, which we identify as partnership, confrontational and combative. KEYWORDS: strategic position; trade union power; union strategies; sectoral analysis; Argentina
{"title":"Strategic Position and Trade Union Power: An Analysis of Trade Union Strategies in the Automotive, Chemical and Edible Oil Sectors in Argentina, 2003-2015)","authors":"Clara Marticorena, Lucila D’Urso","doi":"10.15173/glj.v13i3.4929","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v13i3.4929","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this paper is to analyse empirically the importance of union strategies as a moderating variable between unions’ structural and associational power and their bargaining and mobilisation power. To this end, we selected three unions, one from each of three strategic industrial sectors in the Argentinian national economy – automotive, chemical and edible oils – and analysed their dynamics of collective bargaining and labour conflict in the 2003–2015 period. The research is based on a review of secondary sources (collective bargaining agreements and conflict databases) as well as primary sources (semi-structured interviews with managers, trade union leaders, worker representatives and activists). Whereas workers in each of these sectors have a similarly high degree of structural power, we observed differences among the sectors in working, wage and organisational conditions. These differences are associated with three different union strategies for building union power, which we identify as partnership, confrontational and combative. \u0000KEYWORDS: strategic position; trade union power; union strategies; sectoral analysis; Argentina","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67245937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of: Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen (2021) The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism","authors":"Ger Steffens","doi":"10.15173/glj.v13i3.5247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v13i3.5247","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42773891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of: Sonia Hernández (2021) For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900-1938","authors":"Joshua Savala","doi":"10.15173/glj.v13i3.5232","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v13i3.5232","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44307957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"COVID-19, Migrant Labor and Inclusion in South America","authors":"L. F. Freier","doi":"10.15173/glj.v13i3.5304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v13i3.5304","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44065575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}