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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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":null,"pages":null},"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}
M. Bascuas, Ruth Felder, Ana Logiúdice, V. Patroni
Our article engages with discussions about the implications of precarious work and its impact on workers’ capacity to organise by analysing the case of Argentina’s Confederation of Popular Economy Workers (CTEP, Confederación de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular). The organisation was created in 2011 with the aim of representing a broad and heterogeneous group of workers in varying conditions of informality, precarious self-employment and workfare programmes. We trace the history of the organisation and analyse its development by focusing on the role of social assistance as a crucial expression of the changing relations between precarious workers and the state. Social assistance has provided some resources for addressing the reproduction needs of precarious workers and of the territories in which they live, and also the material means through which an organisation like CTEP has sought to consolidate its political work among precarious workers. Nonetheless, social assistance has also worked as a means to circumscribe broader demands for change into issues to be addressed through social policy. Our argument is that central to CTEP’s trajectory as an organisation of precarious workers was its attempt to break away from the narrow confines of social assistance, pushing for changes that would allow its members to gain some autonomy both materially and institutionally. KEYWORDS: Argentina; precarious worker organisations; CTEP; social assistance policy
我们的文章通过分析阿根廷大众经济工人联合会（CTEP，Confederación de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular）的案例，讨论了不稳定工作的影响及其对工人组织能力的影响。该组织成立于2011年，旨在代表一个广泛而多样化的工人群体，他们处于不同的非正规条件、不稳定的自营职业和劳动福利计划中。我们追溯了该组织的历史，并通过关注社会援助的作用来分析其发展，社会援助是不稳定工人与国家之间不断变化的关系的重要表现。社会援助提供了一些资源，用于解决不稳定工人及其居住地区的生育需求，也为像CTEP这样的组织寻求巩固其在不稳定工人中的政治工作提供了物质手段。尽管如此，社会援助也作为一种手段，将更广泛的变革需求限制为通过社会政策解决的问题。我们的论点是，CTEP作为一个由不稳定的工人组成的组织，其发展轨迹的核心是试图摆脱社会援助的狭窄限制，推动变革，使其成员在物质和制度上获得一定的自主权。关键词：阿根廷；不稳定的工人组织；CTEP；社会援助政策
{"title":"Rethinking Working-class Politics: Organising Informal Workers in Argentina","authors":"M. Bascuas, Ruth Felder, Ana Logiúdice, V. Patroni","doi":"10.15173/glj.v12i3.4473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v12i3.4473","url":null,"abstract":"Our article engages with discussions about the implications of precarious work and its impact on workers’ capacity to organise by analysing the case of Argentina’s Confederation of Popular Economy Workers (CTEP, Confederación de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular). The organisation was created in 2011 with the aim of representing a broad and heterogeneous group of workers in varying conditions of informality, precarious self-employment and workfare programmes. We trace the history of the organisation and analyse its development by focusing on the role of social assistance as a crucial expression of the changing relations between precarious workers and the state. Social assistance has provided some resources for addressing the reproduction needs of precarious workers and of the territories in which they live, and also the material means through which an organisation like CTEP has sought to consolidate its political work among precarious workers. Nonetheless, social assistance has also worked as a means to circumscribe broader demands for change into issues to be addressed through social policy. Our argument is that central to CTEP’s trajectory as an organisation of precarious workers was its attempt to break away from the narrow confines of social assistance, pushing for changes that would allow its members to gain some autonomy both materially and institutionally.\u0000KEYWORDS: Argentina; precarious worker organisations; CTEP; social assistance policy","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46148394","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":null,"pages":null},"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}
{"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":null,"pages":null},"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}
{"title":"Adrian Wilkinson and Michael Barry (eds.) (2020) The Future of Work and Employment","authors":"V. Silva","doi":"10.15173/glj.v12i3.4873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v12i3.4873","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44737,"journal":{"name":"Global Labour Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45481249","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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