Workers' Inquiry and Global Class Struggle

Strategies, Tactics, Objectives

Buch | Softcover

288 Seiten

2020
Pluto Press (Verlag)
978-0-7453-4086-9 (ISBN)

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A major new study looking at the catalysing role of workers' inquiries in the rebirth of a global labour movement from below

Rumours of the death of the global labour movement have been greatly exaggerated. Rising from the ashes of the old trade union movement, workers' struggle is being reborn from below.

By engaging in what Karl Marx called a workers' inquiry, workers and militant co-researchers are studying their working conditions, the technical composition of capital, and how to recompose their own power in order to devise new tactics, strategies, organisational forms and objectives. These workers' inquiries, from call centre workers to teachers, and adjunct professors, are re-energising unions, bypassing unions altogether or innovating new forms of workers' organisations.

In one of the first major studies to critically assess this new cycle of global working class struggle, Robert Ovetz collects together case studies from over a dozen contributors, looking at workers' movements in China, Mexico, the US, South Africa, Turkey, Argentina, Italy, India and the UK. The book reveals how these new forms of struggle are no longer limited to single sectors of the economy or contained by state borders, but are circulating internationally and disrupting the global capitalist system as they do.

Robert Ovetz is a Lecturer in Political Science at San José State University (US). He is the author of When Workers Shot Back: Class Conflict from 1877 to 1921 (Brill, 2018 and Haymarket 2019) and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Labor and Society.

List of Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction - Robert Ovetz

PART I: TRANSPORT AND LOGISTICS

1. Camioneros: The Argentine Truckers’ Union that Can Paralyze the Country - Dario Bursztyn

2. When Class Unionism Leads to Working-Class Recomposition: The Case of TÜMTİS in Turkey - Alpkan Birelma

3. Resisting Sexism and Racism in Italian Logistics Worker Organizing - Anna Curcio

PART II: EDUCATION, CALL CENTERS, CLEANERS, PLATFORM WORK, AND GAMERS

4. Making Threats: Credible Strike Threats in the US, 2012–2016 - Robert Ovetz

5. The Self-Organization of the Mexican Multitude Against Neoliberal State Terror: The CNTE Dissident Teachers’ Movement Against the 2013 Education Reform - Patrick Cuninghame

6. Notes from Below: A Brief Survey of Class Composition in the UK - Callum Cant, Sai Englert, Lydia Hughes, Wendy Liu, Achille Marotta, Seth Wheeler, and Jamie Woodcock

PART III: MANUFACTURING AND MINING

7. Worker Organizing in China: Challenges and Opportunities - Jenny Chan

8. Self-Organizing is Breathing Life into Workers’ Struggles in South Africa - Shawn Hattingh and Dr. Dale T. McKinley

9. Towards a Global Workers’ Inquiry: A Study of Indian Precarious Auto Workers - Lorenza Monaco

About the Authors

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	16.10.2020
Reihe/Serie	Wildcat
Zusatzinfo	6 Tables, black and white; 3 Figures
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	135 x 215 mm
Gewicht	308 g
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Systeme
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Mikrosoziologie
	Wirtschaft
ISBN-10	0-7453-4086-5 / 0745340865
ISBN-13	978-0-7453-4086-9 / 9780745340869
Zustand	Neuware