Global Unions, Local Power

Abstract

News about labor unions is usually pessimistic, focusing on declining membership and failed campaigns. But there are encouraging signs that the labor movement is evolving its strategies to benefit workers in rapidly changing global economic conditions. This book tells the story of the most successful and aggressive campaign ever waged by workers across national borders. It begins in the United States in 2007 as Service Employees International Union's (SEIU) struggled to organize private security guards at Group 4 Securicor (G4S), a global security services company that is the second largest employer in the world. Failing in its bid, SEIU changed course and sought allies in other countries in which G4S operated. Its efforts resulted in wage gains, benefits increases, new union formations, and an end to management reprisals in many countries throughout the Global South, though close attention is focused on developments in South Africa and India. The book looks beyond these achievements to probe the meaning of some of the less visible aspects of the campaign. The book reveals several paradoxes. Although global unionism is typically concerned with creating parity and universal standards across borders, local context can both undermine and empower the intentions of global actors, creating varied and uneven results. At the same time, despite being generally regarded as weaker than their European counterparts, U.S. unions are in the process of remaking the global labor movement in their own image. The book suggests that changes in political economy have encouraged unions to develop new ways to organize workers.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 84 citations exist upstream.