Beleaguered labour movement advocates are turning to the “labour rights as human rights” framing to address labour issues that have traditionally been tackled by labour unions. Human rights language is indispensable in making the normative case that labour is not a commodity, but an unstructured adoption of the human rights frame poses the spectre of a diminished role for collective labour rights and an overburdened human rights regime. Under the principle of subsidiarity, the notion of human rights substitutes for core labour rights (i.e., freedom of association) where they are absent and reinforces them when they are present. Beyond simply suggesting that both regimes are used to protect labour rights, we propose using the principle of subsidiarity to structure and reinforce the interdependence of human and labour rights. KEYWORDS: labour rights; human rights; core labour standards
{"title":"Disciplining the Notion of \"Labour Rights as Human Rights\"","authors":"Cedric E. Dawkins, Christina Dawkins","doi":"10.15173/glj.v13i1.4477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v13i1.4477","url":null,"abstract":"Beleaguered labour movement advocates are turning to the “labour rights as human rights” framing to address labour issues that have traditionally been tackled by labour unions. Human rights language is indispensable in making the normative case that labour is not a commodity, but an unstructured adoption of the human rights frame poses the spectre of a diminished role for collective labour rights and an overburdened human rights regime. Under the principle of subsidiarity, the notion of human rights substitutes for core labour rights (i.e., freedom of association) where they are absent and reinforces them when they are present. Beyond simply suggesting that both regimes are used to protect labour rights, we propose using the principle of subsidiarity to structure and reinforce the interdependence of human and labour rights.\u0000KEYWORDS: labour rights; human rights; core labour standards","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46608084","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: Maurizio Atzeni and Immanuel Ness (eds.) (2018) Global Perspectives on Workers' and Labour Organizations","authors":"É. Florence","doi":"10.15173/glj.v13i1.5069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v13i1.5069","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44898628","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}
Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, this article offers a close reading of the Hawker Sangram Committee (HSC), an independent street vendors’ union in the city of Kolkata in the state of West Bengal in eastern India; I explore the manner in which the politics of the HSC expand or complicate our understanding of street vendor politics and informal worker organising in the Global South. I argue that the HSC’s ability to implement its politics and successfully organise rests heavily on its dual strategy of organising (simultaneously building the struggle at the macro and micro level), which widened from space-bound little struggles to larger collective action (while still holding on to the former). I contend that the execution of this dual strategy is possible because of its structure, in which its member unions function autonomously, with member union organisers/leaders connecting the local hawkers to the central HSC leadership. Thus member unions comfortably negotiate a relationship where they participate as the HSC, with no political party banners, on work and livelihood issues related to hawking, while retaining their autonomy and various political identities at all other times. This parallel relationship has arguably built a stable base from which the HSC movement was able to scale city-wide, nationally and internationally, without disintegrating at the local level. KEYWORDS: informal workers; street vendors; hawkers; Hawker Sangram Committee; Global South
{"title":"Formal Organising in the Informal Sector: The Hawker Sangram Committee and the Politics of Hawking in Kolkata, India","authors":"Koyel Lahiri","doi":"10.15173/glj.v13i1.4412","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v13i1.4412","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, this article offers a close reading of the Hawker Sangram Committee (HSC), an independent street vendors’ union in the city of Kolkata in the state of West Bengal in eastern India; I explore the manner in which the politics of the HSC expand or complicate our understanding of street vendor politics and informal worker organising in the Global South. I argue that the HSC’s ability to implement its politics and successfully organise rests heavily on its dual strategy of organising (simultaneously building the struggle at the macro and micro level), which widened from space-bound little struggles to larger collective action (while still holding on to the former). I contend that the execution of this dual strategy is possible because of its structure, in which its member unions function autonomously, with member union organisers/leaders connecting the local hawkers to the central HSC leadership. Thus member unions comfortably negotiate a relationship where they participate as the HSC, with no political party banners, on work and livelihood issues related to hawking, while retaining their autonomy and various political identities at all other times. This parallel relationship has arguably built a stable base from which the HSC movement was able to scale city-wide, nationally and internationally, without disintegrating at the local level.\u0000KEYWORDS: informal workers; street vendors; hawkers; Hawker Sangram Committee; Global South","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47305014","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 power resources of working-class train commuters in Tshwane, South Africa. I examine the organisational strategy of Mamelodi Train Sector (MTS), considering the crisis of representation characteristic of the South African labour movement currently. With changing composition of membership in the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the article begins with the question, what strategies and avenues are there for both unions and unorganised members of the working class? Through the case study of MTS, I suggest a need to rethink power resources and strategies in order to appreciate various non-union ways in which workers continue to organise under conditions that are at times hostile to unions. Drawing on the Power Resources Approach, I argue that MTS can utilise its strategic site of operations and associational power to link unorganised workers with relevant unions. Through its on-train organising, MTS strategically uses its associational power to achieve two things: 1) to empower non-unionised workers, and 2) to influence local-level politics during the morning and afternoon commutes. KEYWORDS: Mamelodi Train Sector; train; comrades’ coach; associational power; political agency
{"title":"Working-class Commuters and Innovative Use of Associational Power: The Case of Mamelodi Train Sector in South Africa","authors":"M. Mmadi","doi":"10.15173/glj.v13i1.4346","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v13i1.4346","url":null,"abstract":"The article analyses the power resources of working-class train commuters in Tshwane, South Africa. I examine the organisational strategy of Mamelodi Train Sector (MTS), considering the crisis of representation characteristic of the South African labour movement currently. With changing composition of membership in the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the article begins with the question, what strategies and avenues are there for both unions and unorganised members of the working class? Through the case study of MTS, I suggest a need to rethink power resources and strategies in order to appreciate various non-union ways in which workers continue to organise under conditions that are at times hostile to unions. Drawing on the Power Resources Approach, I argue that MTS can utilise its strategic site of operations and associational power to link unorganised workers with relevant unions. Through its on-train organising, MTS strategically uses its associational power to achieve two things: 1) to empower non-unionised workers, and 2) to influence local-level politics during the morning and afternoon commutes.\u0000 KEYWORDS: Mamelodi Train Sector; train; comrades’ coach; associational power; political agency","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48681486","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}
Workers shut down production and transportation of strawberries during the peak of the 2015 harvest in San Quintín, Mexico, which supplies winter berries to US markets. In the years since the strike, strike-settlement wage increases have eroded, commitments to register workers in the national social security system fell far short, and no workers gained representation by a union in collective bargaining with their employer. This case analyses the limited strike outcomes and persistent gaps in labour law compliance based on interviews and observation in 2019 and 2020. Building on the power resources approach, it highlights the historical character of structural power. Falling short of achieving strike demands underscored constraints on workers’ disruptive capacity. The case suggests that reading structural power as a dynamic complex of actions by employers, national states and workers enhances the concept’s ability to predict effects of collective action on social relations of production. KEYWORDS: Mexico; agriculture; supply chains; bargaining power; structural power
{"title":"Structuring Workers' Bargaining Power in Mexico's Strawberry Fields","authors":"Matthew Fischer-Daly","doi":"10.15173/glj.v13i1.4456","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v13i1.4456","url":null,"abstract":"Workers shut down production and transportation of strawberries during the peak of the 2015 harvest in San Quintín, Mexico, which supplies winter berries to US markets. In the years since the strike, strike-settlement wage increases have eroded, commitments to register workers in the national social security system fell far short, and no workers gained representation by a union in collective bargaining with their employer. This case analyses the limited strike outcomes and persistent gaps in labour law compliance based on interviews and observation in 2019 and 2020. Building on the power resources approach, it highlights the historical character of structural power. Falling short of achieving strike demands underscored constraints on workers’ disruptive capacity. The case suggests that reading structural power as a dynamic complex of actions by employers, national states and workers enhances the concept’s ability to predict effects of collective action on social relations of production.\u0000KEYWORDS: Mexico; agriculture; supply chains; bargaining power; structural power","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44785043","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: Stephanie Barrientos (2020) Gender and Work in Global Value Chains: Capturing the Gains?","authors":"Salil R. Sapre","doi":"10.15173/glj.v13i1.4866","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v13i1.4866","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47275160","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}
Central American migration flows take place mostly through two main corridors: the northern corridor to the United States, and the southern corridor to Costa Rica. Using the concept of fragility, in this article I analyse how migration combines the precarity and vulnerability that Central American workers face, both in their home country and in the corridors toward the destination labour markets. Their movements and the conditions they encounter reflect a new scale of local and transnational labour relationships. Migrant workers constitute a segment of the workforce in transnational corridors, which circulates between several informal activities but also among key sectors of the formal economy; the latter often takes advantage of their social, occupational and even legal difficulties. Keywords: Central America; migrant workers; labour markets; informal economy; labour corridors
{"title":"The Fragility of the Labour Corridors to Costa Rica and the United States: Precarious Migrant Workers in Central America","authors":"Abelardo Morales-Gamboa","doi":"10.15173/glj.v12i3.4444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v12i3.4444","url":null,"abstract":"Central American migration flows take place mostly through two main corridors: the northern corridor to the United States, and the southern corridor to Costa Rica. Using the concept of fragility, in this article I analyse how migration combines the precarity and vulnerability that Central American workers face, both in their home country and in the corridors toward the destination labour markets. Their movements and the conditions they encounter reflect a new scale of local and transnational labour relationships. Migrant workers constitute a segment of the workforce in transnational corridors, which circulates between several informal activities but also among key sectors of the formal economy; the latter often takes advantage of their social, occupational and even legal difficulties.\u0000Keywords: Central America; migrant workers; labour markets; informal economy; labour corridors","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42670632","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":"Intan Suwandi (2019) Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism","authors":"Madhumita Dutta","doi":"10.15173/glj.v12i3.4925","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v12i3.4925","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45250700","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":"Mall Attacks and the Everyday Crisis of the Working Class in South Africa","authors":"Trevor Ngwane","doi":"10.15173/glj.v12i3.4935","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v12i3.4935","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48896945","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 examines the labour and political dimensions of non-salaried women workers in the extractive peripheries of Bolivia and Ecuador, to show how the appropriation of racialised and gendered work is a foundational aspect of the extractive logic of capital. We consider extraction in its broadest sense as the dispossession not only of resources but also of informal and reproductive work, and examine the ways in which the territorialised commons produced by, and necessary for, the interdependent activities to sustain life also form the basis of political identification and organisation. Territories as the making of places are fundamental for the constitution of marginalised collective identities. In peripheral sites where extractive logics have been socio-culturally and institutionally established, the literal and figurative common grounds for women’s social reproduction are reduced, individualising livelihoods and increasing physical, economic and subjective vulnerability. As such, the extraction of resources and of territorialised networks intersects with the historical appropriation of reproductive work to configure both material and political precarity. KEYWORDS: informal work; reproductive labour; extractivism; territory; commons
{"title":"Reproductive Work, Territorial Commons and Political Precarity in Peripheral Extractive Sites in Ecuador and Bolivia","authors":"Cristina Cielo, Elizabeth López Canelas","doi":"10.15173/glj.v12i3.4376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v12i3.4376","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the labour and political dimensions of non-salaried women workers in the extractive peripheries of Bolivia and Ecuador, to show how the appropriation of racialised and gendered work is a foundational aspect of the extractive logic of capital. We consider extraction in its broadest sense as the dispossession not only of resources but also of informal and reproductive work, and examine the ways in which the territorialised commons produced by, and necessary for, the interdependent activities to sustain life also form the basis of political identification and organisation. Territories as the making of places are fundamental for the constitution of marginalised collective identities. In peripheral sites where extractive logics have been socio-culturally and institutionally established, the literal and figurative common grounds for women’s social reproduction are reduced, individualising livelihoods and increasing physical, economic and subjective vulnerability. As such, the extraction of resources and of territorialised networks intersects with the historical appropriation of reproductive work to configure both material and political precarity.\u0000KEYWORDS: informal work; reproductive labour; extractivism; territory; commons","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41411143","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}
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