Labour internationalism and the public sector: The case of the Public Services International

This paper sets out the need to conceptualise labour internationalism in the public sector, given its distinct political character and orientation. Our analysis adds to a literature on labour internationalism that hitherto has mainly depicted strategies of unions in private sector industries. To better understand the reasons for upscaling trade union efforts in a sector where the main employer remains the institutional apparatus of the nation-state, we have interviewed office bearers in the most important global union federation organising across different public services – Public Services International (PSI) – asking them to explain their political and strategic considerations. We find that the distinct role of the nation state as an employer, the public character of work and specific relations between public sector workers and the users of services, are all determinants in shaping labour transnationalism in the public sector. This in turn leads to a greater emphasis on alliances with social movements and oppositional campaigns, representing a radical global political unionism. Neoliberal austerity and privatisation measures have reinforced the importance of such political relationships and power, but also challenged their organisational foundations. However, alliance-building is not PSI's sole strategy. We find that office bearers at the transnational level combines three strategic rationales through orientations that we have labelled the political-institutional, the movement-popular and the industrial-corporate. We also suggest that employing these sensitising concepts can bolster the scholarly treatment of understanding labour internationalism and its strategy repertoires more generally.     

Belgian labour in World War II: Strategies of survival,organisations and labour relations

A system of collective bargaining at sector level emerged in Belgium after the First World War. The commissions paritaires, in which unions and employers were equally represented, became the centres of power of the pillarised Belgian trade union movement. This system of industrial relations was challenged during the general strike of 1936. Some employers tried to compete with the unions by creating factory councils, yellow unions and 'mutual societies' at company level. The strategic aim was to remove the centre of labour relations from sector to factory level. This tendency was reinforced during the Second World War. Pre-war trade unions were abolished, employers tried to take over the role of the unions by creating all kinds of social provisions at company level. The factory became a basic element of the survival strategy of the workers. Moreover, from 1941 a clandestine and more radical trade union movement, which opposed the pre-war pillarised trade unionism, emerged. These clandestine unions were organised at factory level. In their view, the factory and not the sector had to become the locus of industrial relations after the war. The organisational framework that was established between 1944 and 1952 was a synthesis of the pre-war model of industrial relations and newly established councils at company level.     

Austerity,Right Populism,and the Crisis of Labour in Canada

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, neoliberal governments embarked on austerity programs that include reducing public services, imposing public sector wage restraint, and reorganizing public sector working conditions and labour relations. In this context of economic crisis and austerity, populism has risen across North America and Europe on both the right and left of the political spectrum. The rise of right populism in particular confronts unions with key organizational and strategic challenges as neoliberal governments seek to mobilize right populist discourses in their efforts to restructure work and labour relations. Using a socio‐geographic framework, and based on an examination of post‐2008 legislative and policy measures undertaken at the federal, provincial, municipal levels in Canada, this paper explores the nexus between “uneven austerity”, rising populism, and union strategic capacities. We examine this intersection of austerity and populism at multiple scales to reveal the implications for organized labour.     

“British Tribute to Virginia Valor”: Unveiling the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Statue

This article outlines the political agendas surrounding the dedication of the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Statue, an early Confederate monument commissioned in Britain in 1863 and unveiled with much fanfare in Richmond, Virginia in 1875. It argues that the statue’s British provenance made it an ideal means of expressing the distinctive claims of the Conservative Party of Virginia. By commemorating both General Jackson and Britain’s Confederate sympathizers, modernizers in the Conservative Party presented themselves as representatives of an Anglo‐Saxon Christian value system, guardians of the “Old Dominion’s” immemorial character, and defenders of political views that held national and international significance. Thus the Conservatives dedicated an international monument to a transatlantic and implicitly racist cultural tradition as part of their larger effort to facilitate Virginia’s integration into the reconstructed national union on terms favorable to the former Confederates.     

阿普尔加斯与19世纪英国工人运动的发展

19世纪中期,随着新模范工会在各行业的发展,英国工人运动进入了一个新的历史阶段,在阿普尔加斯等人为代表的新一代工会领导人的努力下,工会不仅成功地克服了1866年谢菲尔德暴行带来的巨大危机,而且在各阶级进步人士的帮助下,推动议会在19世纪70年代相继通过了有利于工会运动的立法,使工会从此成为英国产业制度中一个不可缺少的组成部分。而新模范工会所倡导的自助自制精神、阶级合作和劳资和解的政策,不仅为工会运动的合法化开辟了道路,同时也为19世纪中期英国社会的和谐稳定,经济的繁荣发展提供了保障。     

Propositions on Trade Unions and Informal Employment in Times of Globalisation

The purpose of this contribution is to identify some of the issues which need to be addressed in order to advance the organisation of workers, and in particular women workers, in informal employment. The organisation of these workers, collectively described as the "informal sector", represents an existential challenge to the trade union movement: unless and until it puts itself in a position to effectively address this challenge, it cannot halt its decline, but in order to do so it has to undergo fundamental changes in its culture, its self-awareness and the way it relates to society. The issue of organising the informal sector is at the heart of the necessary transformations the trade union movement must undergo to recover its potential as a global social force.     

Complexity,strategy and the national interest

British strategy‐making has been subject to a sustained critique in recent years, from parliamentarians, retired members of the armed forces and scholars of strategic studies. This article examines the nature of this critique and the evolving character of strategic practice in Britain. It argues that the criticisms of British strategymaking are often misplaced, for two main reasons. First, many base their critique on a reductionist notion of unitary ‘national interest’ that fails to capture systemic patterns of complexity and contestation in the wider security environment and in Britain. Second, they underestimate or ignore the extent to which the UK strategic community is itself innovating in response to these themes, particularly since the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. This is not to argue that considerable challenges do not remain for strategy‐making in Britain. Most notably, these include: how to translate strategic innovation in departments and elsewhere into a coherent national strategic agenda; how to do this while maintaining institutional coordination and a shared sense of strategic purpose across government (and beyond); how to sustain and consolidate institutional expertise and experience in a rapidly changing civil service and at a time of continuing public austerity; and how to articulate and legitimate security policy decisions among a general public that is both disengaged from elite strategic discourse and sceptical of the efficacy of military force. Even so, the article concludes by arguing that it is possible to see the outline of an emergent and distinctive theory of action in contemporary British strategic practice, characterized by principles of adaptivity, anticipation, self‐organisation and nascent cross‐governmentalism.     

Mexican Public Sector Food Policy Under Agricultural Trade Liberalization

Mexico has enjoyed one of the Third World's most successful food production systems, based on a complex pattern of public sector intervention. Since 1982, the public sector has withdrawn, in a remarkably Steadfast commitment to privatization, external stabilization, and trade liberalization. This article traces the key elements of that process, and their likely impacts on traditional political goals of food security progressive social policy in the countryside, and external sector dependence. The principal argument is that privatization and trade liberalization leave poor agriculturalists vulnerable, but undoubtebly offer fiscal gains to the state and benefits to urban consumers, especially in light of reduced subsidies.     

The Geography of Union Organising in Low‐Paid Service Industries in the UK: Lessons from the T&G's Campaign to Unionise the Dorchester Hotel, London

This paper highlights the importance of organising workers in the low‐paid services sector if British trade unions are to secure themselves for the future. After outlining the scale of the challenge and the new efforts being made to promote organising by unions, the paper looks at the hotel industry in more depth. A case study of a union campaign to win union recognition at the Dorchester Hotel in London is used to highlight the limitations of workplace‐focused campaigns in this sector. Drawing on the lessons of experience in North America, the paper then argues that an extra ‐workplace, occupational and/or sectoral approach may well secure better results. In so doing, workplace issues could be recast as matters of economic and social injustice, widening the scale of any campaign.     

Auditing culture

This article explores the effects of the spread of the principles and practices of the New Public Management (NPM) on the subsidised cultural sector and on cultural policy making in Britain. In particular, changes in the style of public administration that can be ascribed to the NPM will be shown to provide a useful framework to make sense of what has been felt as an “instrumental turn” in British policies for culture between the early 1980s and the present day. The current New Labour Government, as well as the arm's length bodies that distribute public funds for the cultural sector in Britain, are showing an increasing tendency to justify public spending on the arts on the basis of instrumental notions of the arts and culture. In the context of what have been defined as “instrumental cultural policies”, the arts are subsidised in so far as they represent a means to an end rather than an end in itself. In this perspective, the emphasis placed on the potential of the arts to help tackle social exclusion and the role of the cultural sector in place‐marketing and local economic development are typical examples of current trends in British cultural policy making. The central argument purported by this article is that this instrumental emphasis in British cultural policy is closely linked to the changes in the style of public administration that have given rise to the NPM. These new developments have indeed put the publicly funded cultural sector under increasing pressure. In particular, it will be shown how the new stress on the measurement of the arts' impacts in clear and quantifiable ways – which characterises today's “audit society” – has proved a tough challenge for the sector and one that has not been successfully met. The article will conclude by critically considering how the spread of the NPM has affected processes of policy making for the cultural sector, and the damaging effects that such developments may ultimately have on the arts themselves.     

The Privatization of Health Care Cleaning Services in Southwestern British Columbia,Canada: Union Responses to Unprecedented Government Actions

This paper analyzes the political dynamics between a newly elected, right‐leaning provincial government and a left‐leaning public sector union that resulted in the privatization of 4000 health support housekeeping jobs in southwestern British Columbia in less than a year. The article documents how government set the stage for privatization, the struggle that ensued when the union resisted concessionary bargaining, and the new challenges that emerged for both union and management once housekeeping and other support services were taken over by multi‐national service corporations. This case is significant because the size and scope of this privatization and the legislation that facilitated it are unprecedented in Canadian history.     

The Political Economy of Class Compromise: Trade Unions,Capital–Labour Relations and Development in North East Brazil1

Abstract: This article investigates how capital–labour relations (encompassing processes of class formation, representation, struggle and compromise) impact on emerging regions’ developmental trajectories. It does so because much of development studies portray labour simply as an input (human capital) subordinate to more fundamental processes such as capital investment and accumulation. The paper draws on and extends insights gained from the “new working class studies” and global commodity chains literatures in order to examine evolving capital–labour relations—from relatively militant struggles to class compromise—in an emerging sector of North East Brazilian export horticulture. It identifies sources of workers’ structural and associational power and uses these to explain significant gains achieved by the region's rural trade union during the formation of the export horticulture sector. It then asks, why, despite continuing structural power, the region's trade union has entered into a class compromise with the leading employers via (a) reducing its militancy and its strategy of striking against employers to win concessions, and (b) shifting its objectives in terms of concessions sought. It speculates on the impacts of these changing class relations on the region's developmental trajectory.     

The Strategic Importance of Cyprus and the Prospect of Union with Greece, 1919–1931: The Greek Perspective

The outbreak of the First World War brought about an important change in the status of Cyprus which was officially annexed by Great Britain. In the years that followed, successive Greek governments preferred not to pose openly the prospect of the island's cession to Greece. Athens understood that, given London's strategic interest in Cyprus, a favourable solution of the issue was inevitably related with the satisfaction of British strategic interests in the wider Eastern Mediterranean region. In other words, the prospect of the creation of British military bases on Cyprus in the event that London actually consented to the island's union with Greece was not rejected on the part of Athens; on the contrary, it was seen as a necessary sacrifice in order to serve the final goal of Enosis.     

POLITICS, LABOR RELATIONS, AND PUBLIC PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT

The establishment of collective bargaining in the government service necessarily heightens the political context of public personnel administration. The personnel process becomes a more open system for decision-making and consequently subject to a greater variety of influences. Especially in the implementation of policy, the personnel specialist acting as part of the management team shares responsibility with union representatives. Generally, human resource management is characterized by more give and take bilateral relations but the areas of greatest union impact are pay and discipline policies and practices. The viability of public sector labor relations will be severely tested in the eighties as governments face the dual demand for smaller work forces and increased productivity. The outcome will have a direct bearing on the work of public personnel administrators.     

Touching from a Distance: The Younger Generation of One Nation Conservatives and Thatcherism

It is argued here that the younger generation of One Nation Conservatives made a concerted effort to conform to the requirements of the free market agenda of the Thatcher governments during the 1980s. This served to distinguish them from the older generation of wets who had preceded them in the cabinet and who had been more inclined to engage in coded criticism of that agenda. The younger One Nation Conservatives knew that they had to conform if they wanted to hold office and the problems which Britain faced gave them a structural, as well as a personal, motive for conformity. Their willingness to conform made them important members of the second and third Thatcher governments. They provided a renewed radical impetus to government policy in the mid and late 1980s, which culminated in the introduction of the community charge or poll tax, and they possessed the communication skills needed to promote those policies in public. The efforts which the younger generation of One Nation Conservatives made to conform in the sphere of domestic economic policy were undone, after Thatcher had been replaced by Major in November 1990, by the issue on which they retained their distinctiveness: Europe. Their continued expression of pro‐European views became a problem for them after Thatcher had recoiled from the prospect of economic and monetary union in the late 1980s, because it proved to those on the right of the Conservative Party that they were not really ‘one of us’ at all.     

Geographies of Trade Unionism: Translating Traditions Across Space and Time

In the context of national trade union decline, this paper explores the geography of trade union organization through case study research at the Shredded Wheat Factory in Welwyn Garden City (Herfordshire, UK). This example highlights the geographical constitution of trade union traditions, focusing upon the ways in which collective practices and ideas are forged in particular places but also how trade union traditions can be translated across space, from one place to another. This translation is argued to take place in three ways: (i) through the direct migration of workers, (ii) through the "demonstration effects" of strikes, trade union defeats and the ensuing media and trade union coverage of these events, and (iii) through solidarity initiatives taken by workers themselves. Rather than understanding workers' traditions as being historical products in place, I argue they are simultaneously geographical in their constitution. Trade unionism is shown to be processual, constantly evolving in and across time and space. Through such insights the research enhances existing geographical work in the field, advocating an approach which focuses upon the agency involved in trade union organization, the processual nature of trade union organization and the importance of the spatial translation of trade union traditions.     

Public and Private Policy Change: Pension Reform in Four Countries

This article offers a comparative, qualitative analysis of the changing nature of—and relationship between—public and private old age pensions in the United States, Canada, Britain, and Japan. Stressing the impact of institutional legacies on policy change, the article explains why these countries have taken contrasting paths toward the restructuring of public and private pension policies. The study finds that the four countries fall into two distinct clusters. On the one hand are Canada and the United States, which have essentially witnessed policy drift toward a greater reliance on private savings. On the other hand are Britain and Japan, which have reshaped their pension systems largely through legislative revision. The last section explains the differences between and within these two country clusters. The article concludes that institutional forces explain the distinctive policy patterns between the two country clusters but that it is necessary to bring in other factors (i.e., demographic aging, union density, and the role of ideas) to account for differences within each of these clusters.     

Unions,Parties, and the Politics of State Government Legacy Cost

Many American state governments have made extensive promises to pay for employees’ health care and other benefits in retirement. Currently estimated at over $1 trillion in unfunded liabilities, these other postemployment benefits (OPEB) are creating a major fiscal problem for state governments. In this article, we examine the politics of OPEB. We seek to explain the variation in the generosity of OPEB across U.S. states. We argue that party competition theories do not adequately explain the outcomes we observe. Instead, we draw on the emerging Schattschneiderian approach to the politics of public policy to show that public union strength conditions a party's incentives to represent unions’ interests. In states where public sector unions are strong, unions can find their way into either party's coalition. We find that Republicans are more responsive to public union interests than either their ideological brand or prior research would suggest. It is only in states where public employees are weak that Republicans can act unilaterally and enact their preference for less government spending. To test our theories, we carry out an empirical analysis using a newly assembled data set of per capita OPEB liabilities across 49 states.     

State,Parliament and Empire in the Mid 18th Century: Hudson's Bay and the Parliamentary Enquiry of 1749

In 1749, the house of commons appointed a committee of enquiry into the lands and trade of Hudson's Bay. This was the climax to nearly 20 years' work by the Ulsterman, Arthur Dobbs, which focused first on renewed search for a northwest passage and later widened to attempt to expand trade and settlement by challenging the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company. Dobbs's Irish patriotism, linked by support for union with Britain with his remarkably expansive vision of British empire, became concentrated on this campaign with a zeal and tenacity which overrode contrary evidence based on experience. Propaganda pamphlets, mobilisation of compatriots, merchant and political contacts, briefs for MPs, marshalling of evidence and witnesses for parliamentary committees, 30 petitions from a variety of places, organised by Liverpool and Bristol merchants who took the lead in the final campaign: all were used to attempt to influence parliament. This was an impressive mid-century effort to promote British commerce and manufactures, actively supported by the parliamentary opposition which was reviving under Leicester House leadership. Yet, while this campaign could shape the report of the committee of enquiry, the House itself was not so easily moved, especially when public expenditure was likely to be involved. A motion arising from the report was decisively defeated. The impressive campaign came to nought. While it indeed reveals powerful visions of commercial and imperial expansion in the mid 18th century, the outcome suggests that realism and scepticism prevailed at the heart of the state.     

Outsourcing the Business of Development: The Rise of For-profit Consultancies in the UK Aid Sector

While much attention has been paid to the ways in which the private sector is now embedded within the field of development, one group of actors — for-profit development consultancies and contractors, or service providers — has received relatively little attention. This article analyses the growing role of for-profit consultancies and contractors in British aid delivery, which has been driven by two key trends: first, the outsourcing of managerial, audit and knowledge-management functions as part of efforts to bring private sector approaches and skills into public spending on aid; and second, the reconfiguration of aid spending towards markets and the private sector, and away from locally embedded, state-focused aid programming. The authors argue that both trends were launched under New Labour in the early 2000s, and super-charged under successive Conservative governments. The resulting entanglement means that the policies and practices of the UK government's aid agencies, and the interests and forms of for-profit service providers, are increasingly mutually constitutive. Amongst other implications, this shift acts to displace traditional forms of contestation and accountability of aid delivery.