Labor Studies Journal

Every year in Canada and the U.S., the share of higher education faculty who teach off the tenure track grows. One might expect that faculty unionization would limit this process, but the data examined here indicate that this is not so. While Canadian universities are significantly more unionized than their U.S. counterparts, they rely at least as heavily on contingent faculty. Similarly, U.S. states with high levels of unionization do not exhibit lower levels of casualization. Union strategies that institutionalize divisions between tenure-track and non-tenure-track, and/or between part-time and full-time faculty, probably play a role in this outcome. They can and should also play a pivotal role in reversing these trends if they develop the political will to do so.

The information and communication technology (ICT) industry has been growing phenomenally in financial and geographical terms. However, ICT production has not yet drawn the same kind of public concern about labor standards as the garment or footwear industries despite many parallels. Furthermore, union density in electronics manufacturing remains startlingly low around the world. Based on primary research in Bangalore, hailed as the “Silicon Valley of India” and Silicon Valley, California, the article has three objectives: (1) to outline some of the challenges to unionization that arise from the current forms of corporate structure in this profitable, global industry; (2) to highlight recent efforts by unions and community-based organizations to increase corporate social responsibility in various industries; and (3) to apply lessons from these examples to the high-technology industry.

Worker ownership is an old idea that is newly relevant. A crucial reason for ownership that is seldom noted nowadays is its potential to contribute to industrial democracy. Worker ownership is widespread in both the United States and Western Europe. For ownership to translate into influence on corporate governance, workers' capital power must be organized collectively. Trade unions can serve this function. In France, Italy, and Germany, unique organizations called worker shareholder associations have come into being with the exercise of workers' capital power as their goal.

Notably absent from the discourse on labor union revitalization is a reevaluation of the strategic role of labor education. Using ethnographic methods, the authors elucidate four dimensions of a Freireian-based labor education program, characterized as (1) where rank-and-file unionists teach, (2) where shared experience is the basis for knowledge, (3) where programming involves a dialectical process of action and reflection, and (4) where participants convene in a collectively determined cultural context. Moreover, the authors address reservations to Freireian pedagogy and describe how the adoption of Freireian programming alters the role of labor educators. Finally, the authors hypothesize that Freireian pedagogy complements several contemporary recommendations for arresting the decline in union representation.