Globalization and Labour in the Twenty-First Century

Globalisation has adversely affected working-class organisation and mobilisation; but international labour movement demobilisation is not necessarily an irreversible trend. Globalisation has prompted workers and their organisations to find new ways to mobilise. This book examines international labour movement opposition to globalisation. It chronicles and critically scrutinizes the emergence of distinctively new forms of labour movement organisation and mobilisation that constitute creative initiatives on the part of labour, which present capitalism with fresh challenges. The author identifies eight characteristics of globalisation that have proven problematic to workers and their organisations and describes and analyses how they have responded to these challenges since 1990 and especially in the past decade. In particular, it focuses attention on new types of labour movement organisation and mobilisation that are not simply defensive reactions but are offensive and innovative responses that compel corporations to behave more responsively and responsibly towards employees and society at large. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of globalisation, political economy, labour politics, economics, Marxism and sociology of work

Vanguards and avant-gardes : The reason in revolt online project on political and cultural radicalism

The 'Reason in Revolt' project aims to bring together primary source documents of Australian radicalism as a readily accessible digitised resource. By 'radical' we refer to those who aimed to make society more equal and to emancipate the exploited or oppressed. As it grows and develops, the project website will become an expanding record of the movements, institutions, venues and publications through which radicals sought to influence Australian society. Burgmann, Macintyre and Milner intend to utilise the technological benefits of this website in the production of a monograph on the role of intellectuals in the development of radical thought and practice

The green bans movement : workers' power and ecological radicalism in Australia in the 1970s

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Med betongen som argument. De australiensiska byggnadsarbetarna samhällsengagerade verksamhet

Between 1971 and 1975, construction workers in Australia organised in the New South Wales branch of the Builders Labourers’ Federation engaged in strikes (”bans” in Australian industrial terminology) to prevent ecologically damaging development and in support of other radical causes, such as women’s liberation, homosexual liberation and indigenous rights. Proclaiming the principle of ‘the social responsibility of labour’, this union became especially famous for its “green bans” that halted huge development projects. This union prefigures the development of ‘social-movement unionism’ from the 1990s onwards in its militancy, ultra-democratic forms of organisation, its agenda for radical social and economic change, its determination to overcome working-class fragmentation and its capacity to lead community struggles

Refuting Marx and Engels : Australian utopianism in the 1890s

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'A greater concentration of purpose' : the intellectual legacy of Eric Fry and Robin Gollan

Terry Irving and Sean Scalmer argue that the establishment of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History (ASSLH) in 1961 and commencement of Labour History in January 1962 symbolically marked the 'second generational moment' of labour history. The first generation of Australian labour historians had produced significant work, but the second generation proceeded with 'a greater concentration of purpose' than their predecessors and so labour history 'arrived' as a complex and rewarding intellectual project. Eric Fry and Robin Gollan were central figures of this second generation and their concentration of purpose is manifest. In assessing their intellectual legacy, it is interesting to reflect on the nature of their sense of purpose and how it nourished and nurtured a labour history that was distinctive. Firstly, Fry and Gollan encouraged labour history that was sympathetic to the subjects under scrutiny; and this commitment to the working class and labour movement, in the Cold War circumstances of the time, required courage. Secondly, it was rigorous in its attention to empirical research and exacting standards of scholarship. Thirdly, it was critical and sceptical, not slave to accepted wisdoms of any school of thought, whether conservative or progressive. Fourthly, it aspired from the outset to breadth of scope and orientation and became increasingly wide-ranging. These distinguishing attributes, which were causally connected and mutually reinforcing, enabled labour history to arrive, survive and flourish – and then adapt to subsequent historiographical trends and political developments

From 'jobs versus environment' to 'green-collar jobs'

Since the 1980s, a ‘jobs versus environment' paradigm has depicted job protection and environmental protection as incompatible. This paper investigates the power relations at play in this popular representation of the incongruity of labour and green imperatives; and how trade unions both connived in this process but also occasionally contested this representation as a ‘false dichotomy'. Significantly, the climate crisis and the global financial crisis have, together, altered the balance of forces and dramatically changed understandings about the relationship between ‘jobs and environment'. Indicative of this transformation is the emergent discourse of ‘Green New Deal' and ‘green-collar jobs', which argues that climate change can be mitigated and economic recession averted at one and the same time by the conversion of existing ‘brown' jobs to ‘green' jobs and the creation of new green jobs. Many Australian unions have turned decisively away from the old ‘jobs versus environment' paradigm to articulate a new vision that depicts jobs and climate change mitigation as compatible rather than incompatible. This paper explores this development by examining union policies and practices around this issue. It also enquires whether this newfound congruence between labour and green imperatives has significance for the long-running debate amongst theorists of social movements about the decline of ‘old' social movements based on working-class organisations, such as trade unions, and the rise of ‘new' social movements, such as the environmental movement-or climate movement as it has increasingly become