Abstract
Jamie McCallum has written a philosophically inspiring and empirically well-researched book on transnational unionism. The book, Global Unions, Local Power, traces McCallum’s spiritual and personal journey from his initial skepticism of labor transnationalism to his burgeoning optimism about workers’ organized power to battle global capitalism. The major research question McCallum tackles in his book is: ‘How can global unions build local power?’
The conventional wisdom for global labor studies says that economic globalization and the free movement of capital would necessarily have unidirectional and devastating impacts on workers’ rights and the labor movement. More recent literature, admitting the interacting dynamics between global unions and local activism, generally believes that transnational labor advocacy tends to undermine the autonomy and power of local movements. However, this book takes a contrary stance, arguing that local campaigns coupled with labor transnationalism and its global governance struggles, have actually empowered local unions’ movement. McCallum’s argument in support of his stance is underpinned by two major aspects that are reflected in the structure of the book.
The first part of the book lays out the historical evolution and theoretical tradition of labor transnationalism. Chapter 1 begins with a brief history of labor unionism as the starting point for McCallum’s search for a new perspective. The author argues that today’s response by global unions to capitalist global business models is actually a revival of a century-old tradition of international cooperation by labor unions. He rightly points out that labor unionism necessarily requires an internationalist ethos to avoid wage competition between countries, irrespective of whether we are talking about the 19th-century Industrial Revolution or 21st-century globalization. In Chapter 2 is an overview of how the diffusion of US-style unionism became the global norm for union governance and struggles. This became particularly true after the financial crisis in 2007/2008 when workers and unions around the world faced the challenge of neoliberalism, which American unions have suffered under over the past four decades. This recent process of labor transnationalism intersects with the local unions, and becomes a catalyst for local unions to evolve and renew themselves in terms of organization structure, strategies, and tactics. The historical discussion of labor transnationalism is well written, whereas the theoretical debate is only briefly touched on. It would have been great if the author had provided an introduction to the theoretical literature on labor transnationalism, including the major contending theories. This would have been an important theoretical justification for his subsequent optimistic perspective on labor transnationalism.
The second part of the book is about the author’s empirical research, based on his field study in South Africa and India. Chapter 3 outlines the tactics used by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Union Network International (UNI) against Group 4 Securicor (G4S), the world’s largest private security employer. Union tactics include effectively managing their funding and resourcing, having an efficient bureaucratic structure, and putting pressure on G4S’s financial backers through a corporate-focused campaign utilizing actual workers’ stories of suffering. Chapters 4 and 5 examine the reciprocal nature of the global relationship between unions, and how that relationship has mutually transformed each partner. The book demonstrates how the Global Framework Agreement (GFA) in South Africa, facilitated by the UNI, has played a decisive role for the successful local campaign run by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) against G4S. In India, the local campaign by the Indian Security Workers Organizing Initiative (ISWOI) against G4S encountered more difficulties, such as a complex and divided labor market and strong repression from the employers. UNI–ISWOI cooperation achieved differing outcomes in Bangalore and Kolkata because of the diverse ways of local adaptation and implementation. The case studies from the two countries are the highlight of the book, and are filled with rich insights and details about the local campaigns gathered from the author’s personal experiences. The case analysis of India, however, seems to be slightly less satisfactory. It is a fascinating contrast of UNI’s campaigns in two Indian cities. The reason for the failure in Kolkata, according to the author, is because UNI was marginalized. It would have been better if the author did not stop there, and had explained why UNI had been marginalized in some regions of India, and what UNI could do better in the future to overcome local political obstacles and deep social divides in countries of the Global South.
Overall, the book has done brilliantly in a few aspects. First, the book’s philosophical inspiration draws on historical materialism and a kind of Hegelian dialectic. Thus, it comes up with an elegant approach that shows that global capitalism brews its own vulnerability to disruption by united global governance struggles on the part of the organized labor movement. And the key to overcoming the old contradictions is to bridge the middle ground between the top–down global governance strategies and the local unions’ bottom–up adaptation and implementation which enable them to eventually transform themselves. Second, this philosophical solution is backed up by the author’s field research in Johannesburg, South Africa, and two Indian cities, Bangalore and Kolkata, where the author studied how local labor dynamics intersect with the strategies and opportunities provided by SEIU and UNI. The author has made a convincing case that global agreement is vital for effective local unionism, because the supranational consensus provides a powerful normative anchor that no local political or institutional sources can replace.
There are a few aspects in the book that could be improved. First, although it is fine that the author chooses to examine cases of labor transnationalism in the security industry in two countries, it would have been more helpful for readers if the author could have briefly explained the reasons for his choice of case studies. Second, although the focus of the study is on the private security industry, McCallum’s argument would be even more convincing if he could have, from time to time or when necessary, compared the private security industry to other industries, such as the garment and electronic manufacturing industries, retail, and service workers. Finally, the author believes the major source of global unionism has been the United States, but recent developments show that this paradigm may be changing. Labor activism has become increasingly dramatic in countries in the Global South, such as in China, Vietnam, and Mexico, even in the cases of South Africa and India, and may well indicate that the Global South could become a source of inspiration and encouragement for the labor movement in the West. Whether these new developments in the Global South bring new dynamics to global labor studies remains to be seen.