Precarious Workers’ Movements and the Neoliberal State

Abstract

How can we best conceptualize working‐class mobilization in the post‐Fordist regime of flexible accumulation? With the increasing precariousness of employment, how do workers press their demands? While the emphasis thus far has been on the melding of workplace and community organizing, which is a hallmark of “social movement unionism,” I argue that there is a countervailing trend afoot that has received far less attention—that is, a bifurcation of strategies. Only those select workers who are in powerful structural locations, such as transportation and distribution workers, are in a position to take the economic route while the swelling ranks of the precariat have turned instead to the political sphere to press their demands. Additionally, I address what this bifurcation means for labor's power and working‐class formation. Does the separation of economic and political protest lead to a weakened working class? Such a separation has been thought to undermine class‐based solidarities, with community identities undermining workplace‐based ones. I argue, however, that the contemporary context is different in that precarious workers’ mobilizations in the community have become explicitly class‐based. In contrast to the long‐standing notion of the workplace as the hotbed of working‐class consciousness, the community has emerged as a locus of class‐based perspectives and solidarities. Throughout I emphasize not just strategy and material gain for the working class, but also shifts in civil society, organizations, and subjectivity. My argument is developed through a case study of the Chicago Jobs and Living Wage Campaign, which is then compared to other cases of precarious worker mobilization around the globe. Examining the tensions inherent in precarious workers’ political mobilization in the context of the post‐Fordist neoliberal state, the study has implications for labor and social movements, class formation, citizenship, and contemporary capitalism.

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