Union struggles

Onitsha? It's Always Like that in Onitsha: CUPE 3903 on Strike

It is possible to see the recent strike at York University as the ‘symptom’ of the neo-liberalization of Canadian universities and the Canadian bargaining process: the demands of members of CUPE local 3903 to stop the increasing maltreatment of graduate students and contract faculty resulted in a labour stoppage, which was itself stopped with legislation. It is also possible to talk about the strike in terms that place it outside the limits of the bargaining process: In addition to a symptom whose causes are to be uncovered, the strike can be understood as a symptom that is to be ‘enjoyed’. This is to say that the capacities that were developed in the organization of the strike are in themselves an end that, if expanded, could give birth to a new form of university. The neo-liberalization of York and the internal organization of the local are sketched in an attempt to describe their significance in this struggle. It is suggested that reform and revolution are not necessarily antithetical, but that concrete demands are necessary in any struggle; that a continued belief in the legitimacy of the ‘big Other’ in all its forms is a conservative force that sustains social and economic inequalities; that while during the strike the possibility of deepening organizational capacities did exist, without effective leadership and organization from the local’s executive this possibility is difficult to achieve.

Menage a trois: the ITF, the TGWU and the Liverpool Dockers

This paper analyses the relationship that developed between the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) and the Liverpool Dockers during their dispute with their employer, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company and Torside Ltd, between 1995-98. The dispute remained outside the orbit of the ITF until January 1996, but it soon developed into an uncomfortable issue between the ITF, the TGWU and the ITF’s affiliates. Via a careful analysis of the communications kept in the ITF’s archives, I consider the difficulties of organising international industrial action within existing international union structures. This paper argues that different understandings of internationalism competed against each other (Hyman 2005). On the one hand, an internationalism rooted on the concrete circumstances of workers, which required immediate action, based around agitation. On the other hand, an internationalism based around existing legal frameworks, characterised by diplomacy.

Wal-Mart Joins The Union

In China there are two ways of organizing trade unions. There is the ‘grassroots’ way of organizing, which is organizing the workers to support the union, the traditional way in the West, and the one they used with Wal-Mart. Then, there is the ‘top down’ organizing: asking the manager of the company to support a union. I will show examples of two very different kinds of union organizing (top down vs. grass roots) to demonstrate which is more beneficial to workers. I will show how the state and the ACFTU (the union) exert their power over workers, and how workers respond to this.