Mobilizing Against Inequality

By: Lee Adler, Mate Tapia and Lowell Turner

2014
229 pp
978 0 8014 7024 0


Description

Among the many challenges that global liberalization has posed for trade unions, the growth of precarious immigrant workforces lacking any collective representation stands out as both a major threat to solidarity and an organizing opportunity. Believing that collective action is critical in the struggle to lift the low wages and working conditions of immigrant workers, the contributors to Mobilizing against Inequality set out to study union strategies toward immigrant workers in four countries: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and United States. Their research revealed both formidable challenges and inspiring examples of immigrant mobilization that often took shape as innovative social counter movements.

Using case studies from a carwash organizing campaign in the United States, a sans papiers movement in France, Justice for Cleaners in the United Kingdom, and integration approaches by the Metalworkers Union in Germany, among others, the authors look at the strategies of unions toward immigrants from a comparative perspective. Although organizers face a different set of obstacles in each country, this book points to common strategies that offer promise for a more dynamic model of unionism is the global North. The editors have also created a companion website for the book, which features literature reviews, full case studies, updates, and links to related publications. Visit it at www.mobilizing-against-inequality.info.

To Purchase: Hard cover HERE.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Ana Avendaño 
Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations 

Part I UNIONS AND THE MOBILIZATION OF IMMIGRANT WORKERS

  1. Organizing Immigrant Workers  Lowell Turner 
  2. Union Campaigns as Countermovements: "Best Practice" Cases from the United Kingdom, France, and the United States Maite Tapia, Lowell Turner, and Denisse Roca-Servat
Part II CASES AND NATIONAL CONTEXTS
  1. The United States: Tackling Inequality in Precarious Times Lee H. Adler and Daniel B. Cornfield 
  2. The United Kingdom: Dialectic Approaches to Organizing Immigrant Workers, Postwar to 2012 Maite Tapia 
  3. France: Battles for Inclusion, 1968–2010 Lowell Turner 
  4. Germany: Success at the Core, Unresolved Challenges at the Periphery Lee H. Adler and Michael Fichter
Part III COMPARISONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS
  1. Opportunity and Choice for Unions Organizing Immigrant Workers: A Comparison across Countries and Industries Gabriella Alberti, Jane Holgate, and Lowell Turner 
  2. The Countermovement Needs a Movement (and a Counterstrategy) Janice Fine and Jane Holgate 
  3. Integrative Organizing in Polarized Times: Toward Dynamic Trade Unionism in the Global North Daniel B. Cornfield