Global solidarity for workers organising critical in the face of neoliberalism
Organised workers are
antithetical to neoliberalism. In neoliberal thought, ‘the organisation of
labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market
distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and
losers’, writes
George Monbiot in the Guardian this month. International
Workers Day gives us an opportunity to think about how to fight new challenges
brought about by globalisation – the denigration of labour rights,
privatisation and austerity that neoliberalism has heralded.
In the global north,
unions are in decline both in membership and in influence, where they are
losing control over traditional levers of power. While the crushing of
organised labour in the global north remains a dominant narrative, the global
south tells a different story. As industries have relocated to capitalise on
low cost labour markets, worker organising has slowly followed. Research shows that
the number, influence and
density of labour unions in the global south have steadily risen.
Women workers in the
global south face multiple challenges to benefiting from the organised labour
movement. Firstly, women workers are underrepresented, and women’s rights to
work free from sexual harassment and rights to maternity leave are
marginalised. Where women do hold positions of power, they have often paid
a high price for sticking their heads above the parapet. Secondly,
some of the industries in which women play a strong role, such as the garment
industry, are those that have been removed to ‘export processing zones’. These
are proliferating
in industrialising countries. Some 90% of the 27 million strong workforce
in such zones are female, and some countries have outlawed worker organising in
these areas. How can we support the position of women within organised labour
in the global south, and in the context of repressive rights environments? How
can we support organising among women workers, many of whom are migrants placed
within sectors that are not recognised as ‘labour’?
The last few years
have seen many trade unions proactively engaging with migrant workers and
domestic workers. The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is an
India-based trade union of self-employed women workers. But unionising is not
the only form of organising. Women’s movements across the world provide us with
many examples of innovative, subversive and resilient organising among women.
One of the earliest and on-going struggles of women’s movements has been to
make women’s unpaid and paid work visible and to advocate for parity in
remuneration...Read more:
