“Effective unions have rarely if ever been organized by ‘non-committed’ workers, i.e. casual workers who change jobs frequently, return periodically to their native village, and have no specific industrial skill, even of a very simple kind. Yet even fully committed industrial workers with little or no skill are capable of engaging in effective collective bargaining only under certain conditions which are rarely found. In most (though by no means all) newly industrializing countries, large excess supplies of common labor are available for nonagricultural work. Not only are unskilled workers rarely capable of forming unions of their own under such conditions; if they succeed in doing so, their unions have little or no bargaining power.”
Excerpted from an article by Marcel van der Linden, published on Solidarity, and from the journal: Against the Current > May/June 2015, No. 176 > The Crisis of World Labor > The Crisis of World Labor
Marcel van der Linden:
“BOTH THE SIZE and composition of the world working class have changed dramatically over the past four decades. But these massive shifts are not reflected in the strength of workers’ organizations.
In what was traditionally called the global South, capital accumulation has resulted in the fast growth of the number of wage-earners in industry, building, services, and transport. A recent International Labor Organization (ILO) study revealed that in the period 1980-2005, the labor force in the Middle East and North Africa region had grown by 149%. In Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean it had roughly doubled, in South Asia it had increased by 73%, and in East and South East Asia by 60%. (Kapsos 2007)
Simultaneously, enormous shifts are taking place within separate regions. An historic migration from the countryside to swelling megacities is under way. In 2000, the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security estimated that there were 113 million migrant workers in the country. Ten years later that number had more than doubled to 240 million, including 150 million working outside their home areas. Of those 150 million about 72% were employed in manufacturing, construction, food and beverage, wholesale and retail industries, and hospitality. (CLB 2012: 4)
In India, internal labor migration has exploded since the 1990s, the temporary and seasonal migration rate being highest in poor regions like Nagaland and Madya Pradesh. (Bhagat/Mohanty 2009)
Such shifts are often accompanied by an intensification of social struggles. In Indonesia, the Konfederasi Serikat Pekerja Indonesia (Indonesian Trade Union Confederation) organized a national strike on 3 October 2012, and a second one — demanding a 50% increase of the minimum wage — on October 31 and November 1, 2013. These were not truly general strikes, but they nevertheless were joined by many hundreds of thousands of workers, especially in the Jakarta region. (International Viewpoint, 4 November 2013)
In India, on 20 and 21 February 2013, over 100 million workers across the country struck for a list of demands including a living wage indexed to inflation, universal food security, and equal pay for equal work. (International Viewpoint, 2 March 2013) In China, the labor shortages that began to emerge from 2004, led to a rapid growth of workers’ protests, which have “not only increased in number but have shifted focus from a reactive response to labour rights violations towards more proactive demands for higher wages and improved working conditions.” (CLB 2012: 5)
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reported that there were more than 60,000 so-called ‘mass incidents’ (popular protests) in 2006 and over 80,000 in 2007. Since then, official figures have no longer been published but experts believe that in recent years the number has further increased. (CLB 2012: 9)
Following the beginning of the economic crisis more than thirty national strikes occurred in Greece, while Spain and Portugal saw several general strikes, including bi- and multi-national ones. The dramatic overthrow of the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt in 2011 could not have happened without the labor movement’s strong support.(Beinin 2011) And in South Africa massive and often violent strikes follow one another rapidly.
There is, however, a fundamental problem. The militancy of the workers has not yet been consolidated in strong organizations. In fact, “old-style” labor is in decline, and fundamental changes will be necessary before a vibrant transnational union movement can be built.
The surest sign of organized working-class formation is the development of trade unions and similar interest groups. Independent mass trade unions had their origin in the 19th century, and exist today in large parts of the world — although there are also major regions where they have almost no influence.
The most striking example of a fast-growing capitalist economy without independent trade unions is the People’s Republic of China. It hosts the world’s largest workers’ organization, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) with 230 million members. This is not an independent union, but rather a transmission belt for the Chinese Communist Party. Most of the numerous labour conflicts in the People’s Republic take place not with the support of, but despite the ACFTU. (Bai 2012)
The China Labour Bulletin calls the ACFTU “something of a lost cause at present. In general, it lacks the tools and the strategies needed for a timely and effective response to workers’ initiatives and is out of touch with the realities of labour relations in China today.” (CLB 2014: 38)
In countries with independent workers’ organizations union density (union members as percentage of the total labor force) generally has been declining. Table 1 reconstructs the trends in 13 countries for the period 1920-2010. In 11 cases the high point lies in the past (between 1950 and 1990), although the situation is relatively stable in Canada and Norway. In nine cases we can observe a clear downward trend.
The table might give the impression that the situation is more promising in India or Indonesia. But remembering that union density is calculated for the formal economy, which in the case of India for example covers about 8% of the labor force, a union density of 41% thus boils down to 3.2% of the total work force.
On a global scale union density is almost insignificant. Independent trade unions organize only a small percentage of their target group worldwide, and the majority of them live in the relatively wealthy North Atlantic region.
By far the most important global umbrella organization is the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), founded in 2006 as a merger of two older organizations, the secular reform-oriented International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the Christian World Confederation of Labor (WCL).
In 2014 the ITUC estimated that about 200 million workers worldwide belong to trade unions, and that 176 million of these are organized in the ITUC,(1) while the total number of workers is roughly 2.9 billion (1.2 billion of them in the informal economy). Therefore, global union density currently amounts to no more than 7%! (ITUC 2014: 8)
Quite a few factors contribute to this weakness. First, the composition of the working class is changing. Unions find it difficult to organize employees in the service or financial sector. The rapidly growing informal economy is complicating things further, since workers change jobs frequently, and have to earn their income under often very precarious conditions.
Another important factor is what labor economist Richard Freeman has called the “labor supply shock” that has manifested itself since the early 1990s. Through the entry of Chinese, Indian, Russian and other workers into the global economy, there has been an effective doubling of the number of workers producing for international markets over the past two decades.
A decline in the global capital/labor ratio shifts the balance of power in markets away from wages paid to workers and toward capital, as more workers compete for working with that capital. […] Even considering the high savings rate in the new entrants — the World Bank estimates that China has a savings rate of 40% of GDP — it will take 30 or so years for the world to re-attain the capital/labor ratio among the countries that had previously made up the global economy. Having twice as many workers and nearly the same amount of capital places great pressure on labor markets throughout the world. This pressure will affect workers in the developing countries who had traditionally participated in the global economy, as well as workers in advanced countries. (Freeman 2010)
Secondly, significant economic shifts have taken place. The growth of foreign direct investment in the core countries and the semi-periphery of the world economy has been impressive, and transnational corporations and multi-state trading blocs (EU, NAFTA, Mercosur, etc.) have multiplied. Brazil, India and especially China are important new players who change the rules of the game. This is accompanied by new supranational institutions, such as the World Trade Organization, established in 1995.
Thirdly, the old-style unions have to face more and more competition from alternative structures. In Brazil, South Africa, the Philippines or South Korea new, often militant, workers’ movements (social movement unions) have emerged. (Scipes 2014) New forms of rank-and-file trade unionism outside the established channels appeared since the 1970s, with international connections at the shop-floor level “bypassing altogether the secretariats, which they see as too often beholden to the bureaucracies of their various national affiliates.” (Herod 1997: 184)
A well-known example is the Transnational Information Exchange (TIE), a center in which a substantial number of research and activist labor groups exchange information on TNCs. Another example is the “counter foreign policy” existing since the early 1980s in the AFL-CIO. (Spalding 1992) I should also mention the increasing number of activities carried out by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that should in theory be the responsibility of the international trade union movement, such as the struggle to regulate and abolish child labor.
The ineffectiveness of old-style unions is underlined by the growing tendency on the part of Global Unions (formerly called international trade secretariats) to engage in the direct recruitment of members in the periphery. Think, for example, of the activities of the Union Network International (the Global Union for the service sector) relating to IT specialists in India. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 8-9 September 2001).”
The rest of the article discusses possible solutions to the weakness of the unions, including replacing them by newer organizational forms.
Here are the proposals:
“Much can probably be learned from the “occupational unionism” that preceded the industrial unionism of the 20th century. (Cobble/Vosko 2000) Jeffrey Harrod sees “the beginnings of collective organisations aimed at materially improving conditions but not based directly on work and production factors.” He mentions, for example, “extra-economic” networks of unemployed Japanese youths whose social activity is centered on internet cafes; and Indian groups of casual workers pressuring the state for greater protection. (Harrod 2014: 13-14)
Some old-style unions already try to open up to such developments, albeit hesitantly. In Italy, the trade-union confederations CGIL and CISL have created special structures for the representation of “atypical” workers; and the Austrian employees’ union GPA now also enrolls “dependent self-employed workers.” (Cella 2012: 180)
A final necessary change concerns organizational structures and cultures. First, the dual structure of the international trade union movement — collaboration of national confederations plus Global Unions — is a problematic relic of the past and likely to be discarded. Probably the best option would be a new unitary structure facilitating the inclusion of the “new” target groups in the international trade secretariats.
Second, the somewhat autocratic approach prevailing in the present-day international trade union movement will need to be replaced by a democratic approach, and greater participation of the rank-and-file workers. The possibilities offered by the internet are a positive contribution to a renewed structure of this kind. (Lee 1997)
Third and most importantly, new methods of collective action, especially across borders, have to be deployed. While lobbying governments and transnational organizations has to date been the principal activity of the international trade union movement (with the notable exception of the anti-apartheid campaign of the 1980s), and efforts are made to cultivate the good will of states (Greenfield 1989), effective action requires much greater effort in active measures such as boycotts, strikes, and so on, which in turn demands a substantial strengthening of the internal structures.
As Dimitris Stevis (1998: 66) has rightly observed, international labor organizations are “not simply sleeping giants, but fundamentally weak intersocietal federations.”
The question is whether the existing international trade union movement can meet these challenges. It is likely that a new spurt in union development will be a difficult process, interspersed with failed experiments and moments of deep crisis. Organizational structures and patterns of behavior that have existed for over a century are not easily changed.
Moreover, it is highly unlikely that new structures and patterns will be shaped through reforms from above, through the central leadership. If there is one thing that history has taught us, it is that trade union structures almost never develop smoothly by means of piecemeal engineering. They are generally the outcome of conflicts and risky experiments.
Pressure from below through competitive networks, alternative action models, etc. will be a highly important factor in deciding that outcome. What forms those pressures will take, and whether they will be sufficient to bring about major changes, no one can say yet with any certainty.”