Unions Renewed

Trade unions are in crisis. Decades of decline and retrenchment are being compounded by a global elite who are increasingly extracting profit through exploitative financial engineering, in ways that side-step labour and undermine the power of organised workers. Do these trends spell the end for unions, or signal the need for a rapid renewal? Alice Martin and Annie Quick argue that the role of unions is more essential than ever in the 21st century - but only if they change. Automation and a rapid green industrial revolution present a once in a generation opportunity for unions to take a leading role in building a new, more equitable economy. However, renewal will require radical thinking. Unions must reset their ambitions beyond the traditional aims of wage bargaining to include resisting profit extraction through interest on personal debts and soaring property rents. From worker ownership to organising strikes outside of the workplace, they must stake out a different path - or accept a diminishing role. No-one committed to building a new economy can afford to miss this urgent, highly original book and its radical vision for a new trade unionism.

Trade unions are in crisis. Decades of decline and retrenchment are being compounded by a global elite who are increasingly extracting profit through exploitative financial engineering, in ways that side-step labour and undermine the power of organised workers. Do these trends spell the end for unions, or signal the need for a rapid renewal? Alice Martin and Annie Quick argue that the role of unions is more essential than ever in the 21st century - but only if they change. Automation and a rapid green industrial revolution present a once in a generation opportunity for unions to take a leading role in building a new, more equitable economy. However, renewal will require radical thinking. Unions must reset their ambitions beyond the traditional aims of wage bargaining to include resisting profit extraction through interest on personal debts and soaring property rents. From worker ownership to organising strikes outside of the workplace, they must stake out a different path - or accept a diminishing role. No-one committed to building a new economy can afford to miss this urgent, highly original book and its radical vision for a new trade unionism.

Unions face a once in a generation opportunity for renewal. Decades of decline have been compounded by a global elite who increasingly generate profit from financial engineering in ways that side-step labour and undermine the power of organised workers. However, as this economic system begins to falter, there are signs of a renewed union movement emerging. Debt-laden firms – from supermarkets and nursery chains to outsourcing giants – are collapsing, and workers are organising to determine what comes next. Unionised bank cashiers are refusing to push predatory loans, teachers are striking against the exploitative housing market, and manufacturing workers are pooling redundancy pay to buy-out plants and become worker owners. Alice Martin and Annie Quick argue that these are seeds of union renewal. To be effective in an age of finance, the union movement must set its ambitions beyond narrow wage-bargaining, and towards the financial systems that have infiltrated workplaces and impoverished communities. By doing so, they can play a critical role in ushering in a new, democratic economy. No-one committed to economic justice can afford to miss this urgent, highly original book and its radical vision for unions.

Trade unions in Canada are losing their traditional support base, and membership numbers could sink to US levels unless unions recapture their power. Unions, Equity, and the Path to Renewal brings together a distinguished group of union activists and equity scholars who trace how traditional union cultures, practices, and structures have eroded solidarity and activism and created an equity deficit in Canadian unions. Informed by a feminist vision of unions as instruments of social justice, the contributors argue that equity within unions is not simply one possible path to union renewal � it is the only way to reposition organized labour as a central institution in workers' lives.

This comprehensive survey of continuity and change in trade unions looks at five primarily English-speaking countries: the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. The authors consider the recent re-examination by trade union movements of the basis of union organization and activity in the face of a harsher economic and political climate. One of the impetuses for this re-examination has been the recent history of unions in the USA. American models of renewal have inspired Australia, New Zealand and the UK, while Canada has undergone a cautious examination of the US model with an attempt to develop a distinctive approach. This book aims to provide a thorough grounding for informed discussion and debate about the position and place of trade unions in modern economies.

"The diverse cases and experiences examined in this book hold valuable lessons for labour everywhere." - Elaine Bernard, Harvard Law School

This comprehensive survey of continuity and change in trade unions looks at five primarily English-speaking countries: the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. The authors consider the recent re-examination by trade union movements of the basis of union organization and activity in the face of a harsher economic and political climate. One of the impetuses for this re-examination has been the recent history of unions in the USA. American models of renewal have inspired Australia, New Zealand and the UK, while Canada has undergone a cautious examination of the US model with an attempt to develop a distinctive approach. This book aims to provide a thorough grounding for informed discussion and debate about the position and place of trade unions in modern economies.

Drawing on ethnographic research in the breakaway trade union movement Fédération des Syndicats Solidaires, Unitaires et Démocratiques (SUD), this book explores broad questions of trade union renewal in France. The SUD movement emerged in 1988 with the avowed intention to revitalise French trade unionism. Since its emergence the movement has increasingly been cited as a prime instigator of social unrest in France. In a wider context of union decline in Europe, this research considers to what extent and in what ways SUD has been able to develop and sustain collective organisation, identity and mobilisation. Research was conducted in a local-level union of SUD-Rail, a union which emerged in the French public railway sector in 1996 from an ideological split within one of France's largest trade union confederations, the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT). From an ethnographic perspective, the book contributes a thick description of trade unionism at the local level and, drawing on social movement theory, analyses activists' attempts to confront and renew practices and structures in trade unionism. The book evaluates the success of the SUD movement and the prospects for a more sustained renewal of French trade unionism.