Solidarity Action in Global Labor Networks. Four Cases of Workplace Organizing at Foreign Affiliates in the Global South

Globalization transforms workforces of transnational corporation from predominantly home countrydominated workforces into foreign-dominated, multinational workforces. Thus, the national grounding of trade unions as the key form of labor organizing is challenged by new multinational compositions and cross-border relocations of corporate employment affecting working conditions of employees and trade unions in local places. We assume that economic globalization is characterized by expanding global corporate network of vertically and horizontally integrated (equity-based) and disintegrated (nonequity-based) value chains. We also assume that globalization can both impede and enable labor empowerment. Based on these premises the key question is, how can labor leverage effective power against management in global corporate networks? This question is split into two subquestions: a) How can labor theoretically reorganize from national unions and industrial relations institutions into global labor networks that allow prolabor improvement in global workplaces? b) How and why has labor in a globalized economy secured the core International Labor Organization (ILO) international labor right to organize companies and conduct collective bargaining? The Global Labor Network perspective is adopted as an analytical framework. Empirically, a comparative case methodology is applied comprising four more or less successful industrial disputes where labor achieved the right to organize and undertake collective bargaining. The disputes took place in affiliated factories of foreign transnational corporations located in Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Turkey. The conclusion is that the combination of global labor capabilities and global labor strategizing must generate strategic labor power that adequately matches the weaknesses of the counterpart’s global corporate network in order to achieve prolabor outcomes. The most efficient solidarity action was leveraged by a cross-border alliance of workplace collectives, national industrial unions, and a global union federation using global framework agreements (GFAs) with key customers of the employer. The least efficient campaign relied primarily on domestic developing country state institutions supported by a foreign labor nongovernmental organization (NGO)

The Uniform Soybean Tests: Northern Region 2002

United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service Cooperating with State Agricultural Experiment Station

The Uniform Soybean Tests: Northern Region 2010

United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, West Lafayette, Indiana, Cooperating with State Agricultural Experiment Stations, Northern States

State-driven Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)?: mediating offshore outsourcing and CSR in Malaysia

Offshore outsourcing of business activities from the Global North to the Global South does not only relocate investments and jobs, but has also brought about new business demands on suppliers activities and their social and environmental impact. The article explores whether, how and why offshore outsourcing transactions between foreign firms and Malaysian firms affect the upgrading of the CSR activities of Malaysia incorporated firms, taking the particular institutional context of Malaysia into consideration. The focus is on recipient country vendors, contract manufacturers or subcontractors and their reception of and strategising about corporate social responsibility. The findings of the study indicate, firstly, that the amount of foreign (sub)contracting influences the CSR strategising of domestic firms while the global value chain position is only conditioning the offshore outsourcing portfolio. Secondly, both the corporate governance of Malaysian affiliate and the Malaysian government play an important role shaping the perception, rhetoric and organisation of CSR activities by firms in Malaysia with a domestic value chain position. Hence, firms in Malaysia are squeezed by international business linkages and the local institutional context

The Uniform Soybean Tests: Northern Region 2012

United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, West Lafayette, Indiana, Cooperating with State Agricultural Experiment Stations, Northern States

The Uniform Soybean Tests: Northern States 2011

United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, West Lafayette, Indiana, Cooperating with State Agricultural Experiment Stations, Northern States