Labor Studies Journal

In 2001 and 2002, Reebok facilitated democratic trade union elections at two of its supplier factories in China. After initial successes in one factory in bargaining with management to improve conditions, in the end the experiment failed. This article describes in detail the election process, the elections’ aftermath, and the power dynamics of the actors involved (Reebok, the supplier companies’ management, the workers, their newly elected trade union committees, the district-level trade unions, and the Chinese trade union federation). The article analyzes the reasons behind this failed experiment and concludes by arguing that in a new changed climate today, both within China and within the international trade union movement, the Reebok experiment is worth reexamining.

From 1996 to 2001, a network of U.S. organizations and activists intensively pressed corporations and government agencies to stop thwarting workers’ efforts to unionize Nicaragua’s assembly-for-export garment factories. Preexisting transnational mobilization— goal-seeking remnants of the 1980s U.S. Central America peace movement, networked with elements of Nicaragua’s Sandinista movement—propelled this cross-border campaign into existence. Some campaign organizations had U.S. union ties, but others, including some of the most pivotal organizations, did not; this and other forms of diversity strengthened the campaign by facilitating an effective interorganizational division of labor. The campaign adopted strategies that took into account its power relations with opponents and the other opportunity structures it was dealt, and it developed effective frames to recruit old and new activists to carry out this new mission.

One of the outstanding features of contemporary Australian industrial relations has been the dramatic growth in employer de-collectivization strategies. Four dimensions of employer strategies, sometimes interlinked and overlapping, are identified and analyzed in this article—employer lockouts, individualization of bargaining, counters to organizing campaigns, and the use of human resource initiatives in areas such as recruitment and selection. While some tactics have emerged organically through new management practices, the reconfiguration of employer strategies has been primarily state-led; legislative and non-legislative interventions have created opportunities, incentives and pressures for firms to adopt anti-union strategies.

This article examines an unusual experiment in Brazil with an employee “social dialogue” process established at the BASF chemical company, following the broad outlines of European works councils (EWCs) created in the 1990s under European Union requirements for large companies operating in that region. The new representation-cum-consultation scheme was created under a global push by BASF’s German headquarters to emulate EWCs in its various regional operations overseas, though also in response to union pressures. Once the structure was in place, management attempted, with at least partial success, to carry out a pre-emptive strategy of “venue-shifting.” Nonetheless, unions avoided institutionalized co-optation or management “divide and rule” and expanded the agenda of consultation and negotiation beyond their traditional scope. Third-party union-linked monitoring—quite distinct from typical “independent monitoring”—helped raise the salience and legitimacy of various union and worker grievances.

Labor leaders contend newspaper coverage of unions is unjustifiably negative and is usually fixated on conflict and corruption. While this attitude is broadly shared across the union spectrum, there has been little actual objective analysis of labor news reporting to substantiate or discredit the common belief. In an attempt to assess the accuracy of labor’s claim, a ten-year content analysis of industrial relations coverage in the Chicago Tribune was conducted. Unlike conventional media studies of organized labor, the Tribune analysis is an attempt to define and quantify the “tone” of news coverage on the basis of multiple content variables.