Abstract
The growing interest in the role of labour in the processes of globalisation marks a departure from the 1990’s literature which seemed to assume a workerless world. In fact, globalisation has led to a doubling in size of the global working class which is at least as significant as the so-called information revolution in setting the parameters of the capital/wage-labour relation in the decades that follow.
Burgmann’s book enters this well-trodden field with a particular take, namely, Italian autonomism/workerism, though heavily reliant on the secondary work of Nick Dyer-Witheford. This prompts a constant attention to workers’ agency and a refusal to ‘naturalize’ globalisation. The view of globalisation is somewhat Manichean, with reference to its ‘cunning plans’ and a belief that it has somehow been directed by giant transnational firms and capitalist states. This framework sets the basis for the story that follows on labour’s engagement with neoliberal globalisation.
The scene is set by Picketty’s well-known analysis of how the share of output going to wages and profits has shifted dramatically in favour of the latter. The labour movement has responded to that shift and, in doing so, is changing itself, becoming revitalised to some extent. Rejecting a capital-logic perspective, Burgmann shows how capital is always driven by the need to forestall, co-opt and, ultimately, defeat labour. But new methods can turn against capital as in the strikes in the United States in the 1990s where ‘just-in-time’ techniques were used by workers to establish choke points during labour actions. Post-Fordism was no panacea for capital. Nor was the dramatic increase in outsourcing to low wage countries, where the resistance of labour steadily increased. Thus, China is now becoming the epicentre of global labour unrest after earlier attracting western capital with its low wages and pliant migrant labour. Somewhat incongruously the author argues that ‘Europe has been the pacesetter in terms of regional labour transnationalism’ (p. 115) under the unlikely leadership of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).
Two strong points of this book from my perspective are the emphasis on ‘mobilizing the marginalized’ and the original treatment of labour online. The labour movement has, arguably, become a more inclusive social agent over the last 20 years or so. The ‘male, white and straight’ image of labour has, for Burgmann, been largely superseded. On the other side of the equation, the ‘new’ social movements are seen to be an aspect of the struggle against capital and not the harbingers of the death of class. Less attention is paid to the so-called ‘precariat’, at least in the South. However, undoubtedly, the chapter on ‘reversing decline by going online?’ is most useful in a field dominated by breathless enthusiasts of ‘Cyberia’. We are taken from the early period of labour online newsletters, through to the regular use of e-mail and the Internet by nearly all unions. The challenge of Web 2.10 and the meaning of ‘virtual strikes’ is then ably demonstrated. Moves towards a labourist equivalent to Facebook are countered by the fairly obvious question of what then happens to on-the-ground organising.
This is undoubtedly a first class introduction of labour’s fraught relationship with globalisation. It is on top of the literature around these topics, the case studies are well chosen and it is well written. I would, however, want to bring out what seems to me like a Northern focus. It is not that there is no coverage of Southern issues: the maquiladoras are there, the rise of migrant labour in China features, the Zapatistas are mentioned and a by now mythical piquetero (Argentina) movement comes on the stage. The problem is that the overall conceptual problematic is a North Atlantic one and, again and again, the United States and the United Kingdom are taken to be the norm. There is little sense that the world of labour looks and feels different when viewed from the South. To add in a few cases that Northern radicals have taken up does not change that overall frame of reference. Hardt and Negri on the ‘multitude’ and Paul Mason on ‘postcapitalism’ are familiar tropes for the Northern reader, less so and less relevant to the struggling workers and peasants of the majority world.
Inevitably with the net cast wide as it is in this book, the grasp of issues is sometimes less than sure-footed. For example, can we readily say that the European Works Councils (EWCs) ‘were seen as a successful prototype by the Global Union Federations’ (p. 116)? I would have thought the consensus view of the EWCs was considerably more negative. Then, later we are told that the Global Framework Agreements (GFAs) ‘force major corporations to play by union rules in entire industries’ (p. 141). While I am a supporter of the GFAs, I do not know anyone who would make such a positive claim. Another odd note was struck in relation to labour’s absolutely critical engagements with climate change where we are told in a footnote that ‘This book has not discussed union campaigns to insist upon environmental justice and more sustainable forms of employment. It warrants a separate book’ (p. 242). This is an odd statement but, being generous, we might wait for this new book to appear, as it is sorely needed.