Pillay, Devan
and Lucien van der Walt (eds) (2011) Assessing the Politics of Organized
Labour in Asia, Africa and Latin America at the Start of the 21st Century, Labour,Capital and Society/ Travail, capital et société, Special issue, Vol.44/2.
This special issue of
‘Labour, Capital and Society’ was produced in collaboration with the Global
Labour University (GLU), and draws from a highly successful GLU international
conference in Johannesburg in September 2011. The papers address some of
the key issues about organized labour’s current political role and organizing
challenges. Countries covered include Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Ecuador,
India, Indonesia and South Africa, with authors from across the world bringing
a range of perspectives to bear in a series of rich accounts.
The studies, the editors
Devan Pillay and Lucien van der Walt argue, demonstrate the on-going importance
of unions, despite their contradictions, as an irreplaceable force for
progressive social change for the popular classes, not least in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The world today is not in a “post-industrial”,
“information” phase, or in a post-neo-liberal era; it is instead essentially
classic capitalism, with an ever-growing working class majority. Post-colonial
ruling classes have been active authors of the neoliberal agenda, at the
expense of their working classes. The current context affirms the centrality of
unions, and of organized workers more generally, and it demonstrates that union
struggles – and alliances with other sectors of the popular classes –make key
reforms like the so-called Standard Employment Relationship possible in the
first place. The more that the fracturing of the popular classes is challenged
by linking unions to other popular class forces, the more successful such
struggles become. The more that unions build solidarity within and across
borders, the more space is opened for real social and economic change.
While there is a
political vacuum in the heart of current labour struggles – in that they are
often defensive, and lack a clear vision of transformation beyond minor
reforms – this same situation also opens space for a profound renewal of a left
project centred upon participatory democracy. But what form could this take? Should
unions participate in state forums and elections, seeking to wield the state
(in a more traditional labour / socialist mode)? Or instead, build autonomous
and oppositional bodies of counter-power that pressure the state for reforms
from outside (while refusing participate in the state), instead stressing forms
of mobilization that prefigure a post-capitalist, self-managed, stateless
future (in a more anarchist/syndicalist mode)? Or are there other options? This
collection opens these questions, without providing easy answers.
NOTE: Given the large
numbers of papers presented at the 2011 Global Labour University conference and
their diverse topics, it was no easy matter to make a selection. A number of
other papers have thus appeared in the book Labour in the Global South: challenges and alternatives for workers edited by Sarah Mosoetsa
and Michelle Williams and published by the International Labour Organisation
(ILO).
CONTENTS
SUZANNE DANSEREAU,
Journal editor’s introduction
DEVAN PILLAY and LUCIEN
VAN DER WALT, Contributing editor’s
Introduction to the Special Issue: “Assessing the Politics of Organized Labour
in Asia, Africa and Latin America at the Start of the 21st Century.”
DANIEL HAWKINS, “The
Influence of Organized Labour in the Rise to Power of Lula in Brazil and Correa
in Ecuador.”
DEVAN PILLAY, “The
Enduring Embrace: COSATU and the Tripartite Alliance during the Zuma era.”
ERCÜMENT ÇELIK, “‘World
Class Cities for All’: Street traders as agents of union revitalization in
contemporary South Africa.”
PRAGYA KHANNA, “Making
Labour Voices Heard During an Industrial Crisis: Workers’ struggles in the
Bangladesh garment industry.”
JOHN FOLKERTH and TONIA
WARNECKE, “Informal Labour in India and Indonesia: Surmounting organizing
barriers.”
ELAINE SIO-IENG HUI and
CHRIS KING-CHI CHAN, “The ‘Harmonious Society’ as a Hegemonic Project: Labour
conflicts and changing labour policies in China.”
