Building Global Labor Solidarity: Lessons from the Philippines, South Africa, Northwestern Europe, and the United States

Efforts to build bottom-up global labor solidarity began in the late 1970s and continue today, having greater social impact than ever before. In Building Global Labor Solidarity: Lessons from the Philippines, South Africa, Northwestern Europe, and the United States Kim Scipes—who worked as a union printer in 1984 and has remained an active participant in, researcher about, and writer chronicling the efforts to build global labor solidarity ever since—compiles several articles about these efforts. Grounded in his research on the KMU Labor Center of the Philippines, Scipes joins first-hand accounts from the field with analyses and theoretical propositions to suggest that much can be learned from past efforts which, though previously ignored, have increasing relevance today. Joined with earlier works on the KMU, AFL-CIO foreign policy, and efforts to develop global labor solidarity in a time of accelerating globalization, the essays in this volume further develop contemporary understandings of this emerging global phenomenon.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: San Francisco Longshoremen: “When that Ship Came in, We Were Ready” Chapter 2: Building the New Shop Floor Internationalism Chapter 3: International Labour Reports: A Personal Report and Appreciation Chapter 4: Using Comparative Methods to Understand Contemporaneous Labor Movements: Rejecting a Structural-based Understanding Chapter 5: Understanding Worker Mobilization Theoretically: What Can Labor and Social Movement Theories Tell Us? Chapter 6: Social Movement Unionism: A New Type of Trade Unionism Chapter 7: Philippine Economic Development Chapter 8: The Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement) Chapter 9: A Look at KMU, 1986-1987 Chapter 10: Learning from the KMU: Alliance Building Chapter 11: Social Movement Unionism: Can We Apply the Theoretical Conceptualization to the New Unions of South Africa? Chapter 12: Building International Labor Solidarity in the Face of Political-Economic Globalization Processes: The Case of the KMU Labor Center of the Philippines Chapter 13: Theoretical Co

About the Author :
Kim Scipes is professor of sociology at Purdue University Northwest.

Review :
Building Global Labor Solidarity charts a new course in theorizing the significance of global labor solidarity today. In this comprehensive book, Kim Scipes brings together crucial chapters exploring and interpreting the meaning and uses of global labor solidarity. Scipes overturns the potted notion that the putative international agenda pursued by the dominant global trade unions in Europe and the United States is the main force for democracy and working class power. Rather, Scipes argues that Western unions must learn from the historical development of labor solidarity in the global South. This extensive and comprehensive historical account of labor solidarity across the South and beyond is a crucial intervention in scholarly labor debates through breaking with the prevailing understanding of trade union solidarity. Building Labor Solidarity is pivotal reading for scholars, students, and activists striving to comprehend the state of global trade unions and working class movements. Understanding social movement unionism and global worker solidarity is essential to creating solutions to the global economic and health crises that touch every worker on earth. Building Global Labor Solidarity digs deep into an analysis of some of the most exciting and sophisticated examples of this form of movement building. Few western analysts have put the time in on the ground in places like the Philippines to see what lessons can be learned from the workers themselves. Kim Scipes has done that with great passion. Kim Scipes has devoted decades to thinking and theorizing deeply about global labor solidarity. His latest collection is so useful because he seriously integrates struggles from across the Global South—from the Philippines and South Africa—with efforts in Northwestern Europe and the United States. In the twenty-first century, as our world becomes more interconnected, we need his sort of writing.