Globalization, labour flexibility and trade union responses
Globalisation: Labour Flexibility and Trade Union Responses
Lecturer: Shaun Ruggunan
Semester: Two
This graduate module is divided into three themes. Each theme runs for three to four weeks. The themes explore central questions around the processes of globalisation and labour.
Theme one: Globalisation in question
This theme investigates exactly what is meant by globalisation. It therefore serves as an essential building block for the rest of the course.
The readings for this theme focus on two issues:
- A critical reading of globalisation
- Investigating if conditions of labour have changed since the advent of contemporary globalisation. If they have changed then we are concerned with how these conditions of labour have changed.
This theme will run over three weeks with each week focussing on a particular set of readings.
Your reading from your prescribed text for this theme is:
Standing, G (1999) Global Labour Flexibility: Seeking distributive Justice, London: Macmillan Press.
Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4
Week One: Towards a rigorous theory of globalisation
Bradley, H, Erikckson, M, Stephonson, C Williams, S (2000) Myths at work. Cambridge: Polity
Brecher, J (1993) Even in America US labour faces global restructuring, South African Labour Bulletin, 17, No. 4 pp. 69-73
Campbell, D (1994) Foreign investment, labour immobility and the quality of employment in International Labour Review, 133, No. 2 pp. .272-291
Cumbers, A & Atterton, J (2000) Globalisation and the contested process of international corporate restructuring: employment reorganisation and the issue of labour consent in the international oil industry ,in Environment and Planning A 32
Diwan, R ” Globalisation: Myth vs. Reality” www.indolink.com/Analysis/globaliz.html
Herod, A (1995) The practice of international labour solidarity and the geography of the global economy in Economic Geography 71, No. 4 pp. 341 ?359
Herod , A (2000) Workers and workplaces in a neo-liberal global economy in Environment and Planning A 32 pp. 1781-1790
Webber, M (2000) Globalisation: local agency, the global economy and Australia?s industrial policy in Environment and Planning A, 32 pp. 1163-1176
Youngs, G (1996) Dangers of Discourse: the case of globalisation in Kofman, E & Youngs, G (eds) in Globalisation: Theory and Practice, London: Pinter
Week Two: Have conditions of labour changed?
- Baldy, C et al ” Bright Satanic Offices”
- Beirne, M et al “Developments in computing work
- Felstead, A et al Flexible Labour and non ?standard employment
- Ozaki, M “Types of flexibility
- Warhurst, C “Hands Hearts and Minds
Week Three: The restructuring of work
- De Freitas Armstrong: Flexible work and the Virtual Workplace
- Kyotani, E : New Managerial Strategies of Japanese corporations
The IPS study of the worlds top 200 companies - The ICFTU website: Keywords Global corporations
Theme One Paper: “Strategies of labour flexibility are both necessary and desirable in the current phase of global economic activity.” Critically discuss.
Theme Two: Labour Flexibility
This theme examines some of the consequences that labour flexibility has on workers.
(You will receive a separate handout for theme two)
Week Four: Job security
- Standing, G: Chapters 5 and 6.
Fletcher, J et al “the new model worker.
Week Five: The social wage
- Standing, G Chapter 8 Bordieu, P The weight of the world pp.225-408
- Week six: Income and wages
- Standing, G: Chapter 7 Bordieu, P The weight of the world pp. 225-408
- Theme Two Paper: “Using material poverty as the sole measure of all suffering keeps us from seeing and understanding a whole side of the suffering characteristics of a social order which, although it has reduced poverty overall (though less than often claimed) has also multiplied the spaces and set up the conditions for an unprecedented development of all kinds of ordinary suffering”- Pierre Bordieu
Theme Three: Trade unions respond?
Week Seven: Unions in crisis
Bacon, N et al ‘Individualism and collectivism and the changing role of trade unions’
McKinely et al ‘Power, surveillance and control inside the factory of the future’
McLoughlin ‘Inside the non-union firm’
www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inst/papers/1999/dp98/index.htm
An emerging agenda for trade unions? By Richard Hyman
www.rcci.net/globalizacion/2000/fg137.htm
Trade Unionism in the Age of Seattle by Peter Waterman
Week eight: Unions and Politics
Standing, G: Chapter 11
Mathews, J ” The politics of associational democracy.
Weeks 9-12 New Forms of Organisation
(You will be handed a separate list of additional readings for this theme of the course)
www.sewa.org
Flexible work in Silicon Valley by Chris Benner
ICFTU Survey 2000 on the ICFTU website
www.tni.org
Tutorials
There are two tutorials for this module. Both involve you ‘producing’ in two stages a cameo of a play entitled Wonder woman Vs the World Bank.. the first stage is a draft and the second stage is the final submission.
Module project
The trade union movement in South Africa has been using Richard Hymans’s Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unions (London: Pluto Press. 1976). This slim volume is woefully out of date. Using the insights you are gleaning from the course, outline how you would draft a book for trade union education to replace Hymans. You will be presenting a 10-16 page summary draft of this as your project.
Further details will be provided during the semester.
Due date: End of semester (date to be finalised)
MODULE ASSESSMENT:
End of semester examination: 20%
Three module papers 30%
A module project 30%
Two tutorial tasks 20%