Nafta And The Politics Of Labor Transnationalism

Author : Tamara Kay
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 113949466X
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book NAFTA and the Politics of Labor Transnationalism written by Tamara Kay and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-31 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When NAFTA went into effect in 1994, many feared it would intensify animosity among North American unions, lead to the scapegoating of Mexican workers and immigrants, and eclipse any possibility for cross-border labor cooperation. But far from polarizing workers, NAFTA unexpectedly helped stimulate labor transnationalism among key North American unions and erode union policies and discourses rooted in racism. The emergence of labor transnationalism in North America presents compelling political and sociological puzzles: how did NAFTA, the concrete manifestation of globalization processes in North America, help deepen labor solidarity on the continent? In addition to making the provocative argument that global governance institutions can play a pivotal role in the development of transnational social movements, this book suggests that globalization need not undermine labor movements: collectively, unions can help shape how the rules governing the global economy are made.

Author : Norman Caulfield
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252090799
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book NAFTA and Labor in North America written by Norman Caulfield and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As companies increasingly look to the global market for capital, cheaper commodities and labor, and lower production costs, the impact on Mexican and American workers and labor unions is significant. National boundaries and the laws of governments that regulate social relations between laborers and management are less relevant in the era of globalization, rendering ineffective the traditional union strategies of pressuring the state for reform. Focusing especially on the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (the first international labor agreement linked to an international trade agreement), Norman Caulfield notes the waning political influence of trade unions and their disunity and divergence on crucial issues such as labor migration and workers' rights. Comparing the labor movement's fortunes in the 1970s with its current weakened condition, Caulfield notes the parallel decline in the United States' hegemonic influence in an increasingly globalized economy. As a result, organized labor has been transformed from organizations that once pressured management and the state for worker concessions to organizations that now request that workers concede wages, pensions, and health benefits to remain competitive in the global marketplace.

Author : Marissa Brookes
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501733214
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The New Politics of Transnational Labor written by Marissa Brookes and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the years many transnational labor alliances have succeeded in improving conditions for workers, but many more have not. In The New Politics of Transnational Labor, Marissa Brookes explains why this dichotomy has occurred. Using the coordination and context-appropriate (CCAP) theory, she assesses this divergence, arguing that the success of transnational alliances hinges not only on effective coordination across borders and within workers' local organizations but also on their ability to exploit vulnerabilities in global value chains, invoke national and international institutions, and mobilize networks of stakeholders in ways that threaten employers' core, material interests. Brookes uses six comparative case studies spanning four industries, five countries, and fifteen years. From dockside labor disputes in Britain and Australia to service sector campaigns in the supermarket and private security industries to campaigns aimed at luxury hotels in Southeast Asia, Brookes creates her new theoretical framework and speaks to debates in international and comparative political economy on the politics of economic globalization, the viability of private governance, and the impact of organized labor on economic inequality. From this assessment, Brookes provides a vital update to the international relations literature on non-state actors and transnational activism and shows how we can understand the unique capacities labor has as a transnational actor.

Author : John D. French
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Labor and NAFTA written by John D. French and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the popular protest in Canada, Mexico and USA opposing the trend towards free trade. Looks at the role of trade unions in protecting workers' rights and maintaining adequate standards of working conditions.

Author : Jonathan Graubart
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271035943
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Legalizing Transnational Activism written by Jonathan Graubart and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2008-04-23 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The integration of national economies through the ongoing process that has come to be known as globalization has stirred much controversy, including outright resistance by activists who are concerned about globalization’s negative impact on a variety of human values, such as protection of the environment and decent working conditions for labor. The political activism and social movements that have given rise to protests—like the violent demonstrations in Seattle at the WTO meeting in 1999—have been the subject of study by scholars, but less well known is the role that some institutional mechanisms associated with international trade agreements have played in providing “political opportunity structures” for activists to use in promoting their causes and gaining more support for them. In this book, Jonathan Graubart draws our attention to the citizen-petition mechanisms that form part of the neoliberal package of reforms known as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) implemented by Canada, Mexico, and the United States. He provides a comparative case study of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) and North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) and shows how they have functioned as avenues for activists to publicize their domestic grievances and bring more pressure on their governments to institute needed change.

Author : Leon Fink
Publisher : OUP USA
ISBN 13 : 0199731632
Total Pages : 486 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Workers Across the Americas written by Leon Fink and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-04-13 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major volume to place U.S.-centered labor history in a transnational focus, Workers Across the Americas collects the newest scholarship of Canadianist, Caribbeanist, and Latin American specialists as well as U.S. historians. These essays highlight both the supra- and sub-national aspect of selected topics without neglecting nation-states themselves as historical forces. Indeed, the transnational focus opens new avenues for understanding changes in the concepts, policies, and practice of states, their interactions with each other and their populations, and the ways in which the popular classes resist, react, and advance their interests.What does this transnational turn encompass? And what are its likely perils as well as promise as a framework for research and analysis? To address these questions John French, Julie Greene, Neville Kirk, Aviva Chomsky, Dirk Hoerder, and Vic Satzewich lead off the volume with critical commentaries on the project of transnational labor history. Their responses offer a tour of explanations, tensions, and cautions in the evolution of a new arena of research and writing. Thereafter, Workers Across the Americas groups fifteen research essays around themes of labor and empire, indigenous peoples and labor systems, international feminism and reproductive labor, labor recruitment and immigration control, transnational labor politics, and labor internationalism. Topics range from military labor in the British Empire to coffee workers on the Guatemalan/Mexican border to the role of the International Labor Organization in attempting to set common labor standards. Leading scholars introduce each section and recommend further reading.

Author : Jamie K. McCallum
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801469473
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Global Unions, Local Power written by Jamie K. McCallum and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-17 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: News about labor unions is usually pessimistic, focusing on declining membership and failed campaigns. But there are encouraging signs that the labor movement is evolving its strategies to benefit workers in rapidly changing global economic conditions. Global Unions, Local Power tells the story of the most successful and aggressive campaign ever waged by workers across national borders. It begins in the United States in 2007 as SEIU struggled to organize private security guards at G4S, a global security services company that is the second largest employer in the world. Failing in its bid, SEIU changed course and sought allies in other countries in which G4S operated. Its efforts resulted in wage gains, benefits increases, new union formations, and an end to management reprisals in many countries throughout the Global South, though close attention is focused on developments in South Africa and India. In this book, Jamie K. McCallum looks beyond these achievements to probe the meaning of some of the less visible aspects of the campaign. Based on more than two years of fieldwork in nine countries and historical research into labor movement trends since the late 1960s, McCallum’s findings reveal several paradoxes. Although global unionism is typically concerned with creating parity and universal standards across borders, local context can both undermine and empower the intentions of global actors, creating varied and uneven results. At the same time, despite being generally regarded as weaker than their European counterparts, U.S. unions are in the process of remaking the global labor movement in their own image. McCallum suggests that changes in political economy have encouraged unions to develop new ways to organize workers. He calls these "governance struggles," strategies that seek not to win worker rights but to make new rules of engagement with capital in order to establish a different terrain on which to organize.

Author : Tamara Kay
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190847468
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Trade Battles written by Tamara Kay and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trade was once an esoteric economic issue with little domestic policy resonance. Activists did not prioritize it, and grassroots political mobilization seemed unlikely to free trade advocates. The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the early 1990s was therefore expected to be a fait accompli. Yet, as Trade Battles shows, activists pushed back: they increased the public consciousness on trade, mobilized new constituencies against it, and demanded that the rules of the global economy protect the collective rights and common good of citizens. Activists also forged a sustained challenge to U.S. trade policies after NAFTA, setting the stage for future trade battles. Using data from extensive archival materials and over 215 interviews with Mexican, Canadian, and U.S. trade negotiators; labor and environmental activists; and government officials, Tamara Kay and R.L. Evans assess how activists politicized trade policy by leveraging broad divisions across state and non-state arenas. Further, they demonstrate how activists were not only able to politicize trade policy, but also to pressure negotiators to include labor and environmental protections in NAFTA's side agreements. A timely contribution, Trade Battles seeks to understand the role of civil society in shaping state policy.

Author : Marisa von Bülow
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139490044
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Building Transnational Networks written by Marisa von Bülow and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building Transnational Networks tells the story of how a broad group of civil society organizations came together to contest free trade negotiations in the Americas. Based on research in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, the United States, and Canada, it offers a full hemispheric analysis of the creation of civil society networks as they engaged in the politics of trade. The author demonstrates that most effective transnational actors are the ones with strong domestic roots and that 'southern' organizations occupy key nodes in trade networks. The fragility of activist networks stems from changes in the domestic political context as well as from characteristics of the organizations, the networks, or the actions they undertake. These findings advance and suggest new understandings of transnational collective action.

Author : Tamara Lynn Kay
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 566 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book NAFTA and the Politics of Labor Transnationalism written by Tamara Lynn Kay and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: