Jamie K. McCallum
Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
In Dubious Battle:
A Case Study of the New Labor Transnationalism
Abstract:
This dissertation revisits the widely-held assertion that neoliberal globalization
necessarily undermines the power of workers. While increasing economic integration
clearly presents challenges for organized labor, it also offers new opportunities that are
generally overlooked. The present study examines a case study of transnational union
organizing in the property services sector, coordinated jointly by the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) and Union Network International (UNI). Throughout this
complex campaign, workers engage in collective bargaining, transnational informationsharing, corporate campaigning, strikes, and international framework agreements. In this
case, workers employ different strategic repertoires to organize, and take advantage of
different opportunity structures. I draw on existing research and original fieldwork to
explain the variation in labor strategy based on industrial setting, the available political
and economic opportunity structures, and the institutional prowess of the various unions.
The case considers both the obstacles and possibilities that workers and unions face in the
global economy today. This research develops a model for labor transnationalism that
contributes to a growing sociologic literature on labor movement strategy in the global
era.
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Jamie K. McCallum
Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
Introduction:
This dissertation is about the ways in which workers cooperate across borders to
exercise power against multinational employers. While it is often asserted that the power
of labor necessarily declines as economic globalization advances and corporate power
expands, this study provides evidence to the contrary. Through a case study of the
property services sector (security guards), this dissertation examines the emergence of a
new labor transnationalism. I consider a campaign that spans multiple countries,
coordinated jointly by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Union
Network International (UNI). I evaluate the factors that condition strategic worker
choices in different contexts in order to develop a general theory about how labor is able
to challenge global capital.
Labor transnationalism is by now a well-documented phenomenon. The activities
of the “international labor movement” have fascinated social scientists for decades. Early
studies examined the institutions of international unionism in Europe, and the foreign
policy of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organization
(AFL-CIO) (Lorwin, 1957; Armstrong, et al. 1988; Gordon 2000). Much attention has
also focused on the cooperation of unions and non governmental organizations (NGOs),
and the industrial relations dimension of post-Maastricht Europe (Armbruster-Sandoval
1995; Anner and Evans 2004). Following the explosion of anti-sweatshop activism on
college campuses and the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in the late
nineties, scholars began assessing a new global justice movement in earnest, much of
which involved struggles for international unionism and solidarity with new social
movements (Waterman 2001; 1999). The focus on global institutions and movements
also produced academic work on the social clauses of trade agreements. Most recently, a
few scholars and labor researchers have described the beginnings of an inchoate worldwide union movement, a perspective that has gained support with the recent merger of
the American, Canadian, and British steelworkers (Bronfrenbrenner 2007). In this
formulation, transnational cooperation and institutional interdependence among unions
has yielded a “new frontier” of industrial relations--global unions for the global age.
The present study represents a logical step forward because, despite a recent surge
of interest in transnational union cooperation, few studies have undertaken a close
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Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
analysis of service sector workers. By placing recent examples of labor transnationalism
in the context of a changing global economy and an emerging international union
movement, this research will explain not only the sources of worker power today but also
the variation in the ways they exercise it.
In particular, this dissertation addresses four related questions:
1. How do service sector workers exercise power against transnational employers?
2. Why do some groups of service sector workers choose different strategies over others?
3. Why do some strategies work better than others in different political and economic
contexts?
4. How do national organizing outcomes and agendas influence the viability of
transnational campaigns?
Background and Literature Review:
A wide body of research suggests that labor’s power to organize diminishes as
capital becomes ever more global.
Indeed, there is much to recommend this view. Late twentieth century capitalism
presided over the precipitous decline of labor movement densities across the globe
(Galenson 1994; Western 1995). Statistics also show a decline in union militancy
(Moody 2007) and power at the bargaining table, leading to a global “crisis of unionism”
(Freeman 1989).
The present study suggests, nevertheless, that neoliberal globalization1 has opened
up new opportunities for workers to exercise power across borders, which are rarely
considered. By examining new modes of transnational labor relations, this study will
provide empirical research to support a fledging theory of labor power.
The popular idea that globalization decreases workers’ power is tied to three
interrelated claims: (1) a global “race to the bottom” inevitably pits national working
classes against one another; (2) the historic transformation of the labor process has
undermined the traditional basis for strong worker organization; (3) and the decline of the
national state increasingly leaves workers unguarded against the global market.
1
Globalization means different things to many people. Here it is expressed as the increased
transnationalization of production, the deregulation of labor markets, and consolidation of global financial
markets.
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Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
The first claim holds that the hypermobility of capital allows corporations to
move around the globe with the perfunctory credentials of foreign diplomats, in search of
cheaper labor and lower operating costs. This continual search drives down wages and
deters unionization worldwide. In this line of argument, union densities, wage controls,
and corporate taxation levels disappear under a worldwide labor arbitrage as workers are
forced to compete with one another in the global marketplace (Roach 2006). The entry of
China into the global economy, and the subsequent “downward pressure on the world's
wages,” is the most recent and obvious example of this phenomenon (Costello, Smith,
and Brecher 2006).
The second explanation for the decline of workers’ power deals with changes in
the labor process under neoliberal restructuring, and the concomitant transformation of
class dynamics. In his classic study of Taylorism, Braverman explains that his
investigation into scientific management will help illuminate "the structure of the
working class and how it has changed" (Braverman 1974). The transition to post-Fordism
is important today for the same reasons. In this new environment, subcontracting,
temporary work, and the massive tendency toward informalization have undermined the
bases by which workers have traditionally built power, resulting in a “structurally
disaggregated and disorganized working class” (Silver 2001). As Aglietta puts it:
Since the coherence of the Fordist mode of regulation lay in the relationship
between productivity and distribution in a national context, there is a feeling
that the institutions which monitored these adjustments are in disarray.
Indeed, real wages and productivity increases have been disconnected,
weakening unions and emptying the content of collective bargaining.
(Aglietta, “Capitalism at the Turn of the Century: Regulation Theory and the Challenge
of Social Change” 1998)
The third, and closely related, argument also has widespread traction today: that
capital mobility has undermined not only workers’ bargaining power but also state
sovereignty. From this perspective, states that guarantee their citizens certain welfare
provisions will be overlooked by corporations looking for the highest return on their
investments. Social provisions, welfare policies, and environmental standards fall victim
to a kind of regulatory arbitrage, as states in need of investment roll back social
provisions to attract and accommodate capital. The growing power of the supranational
governance structures in the nineties—the International Monetary Fund, World Trade
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Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
Organization, and World Bank—lent credence to this view. As wage controls and
protective policies were consistently ruled unfair barriers to trade, states became subject
to the rule of multinationals. By the time of the new millennium, many scholars had
declared the Westphalian system all but dead (Linklater 1998; Hardt and Negri 2001).
The three theses listed above represent the orthodoxy in the literature on
economic globalization and would seem to answer the question of labor’s chances quite
definitively. However, there are alternative interpretations to the prevailing wisdom.
The most obvious challenge to the race-to-the-bottom thesis is that the map of
foreign direct investment (FDI) continues to show much more intra-North flows (where
wages and costs are relatively high) than flows to cheaper labor areas (UNCTAD 2007).
This would contradict the hypothesis that transnational corporations necessarily seek out
low wage locations over others. The race-to-the-bottom thesis also inevitably includes the
promise of global class convergence. This view holds that the North-South divide, among
others, is increasingly irrelevant (Held 2003; Hardt and Negri 2000). William Robinson
(2000), following Marx, has tried to demonstrate that economic globalization has given
life to a “transnational working class,” a class-in-itself, though not yet a class-for-itself.
Empirical evidence, however, does not support such a homogenous community of fate. A
recent ILO report confirms other research that says while income inequality is rising
within countries, it is also still rising among them (ILO 2008).
This is not to suggest that capital’s spatial fix has not transferred production and
displaced unions on a large scale.2 Even the threat of plant relocation, has been the ne
plus ultra of bargaining chips to force concessions and deter unionization, especially in
the fiercely competitive garment industry. But there is reason to question the supposed
unidirectional impact of that phenomenon. In her analysis of workers movements since
1870, Beverly Silver (2001) describes a historic dialectic between recurring instances of
labor militancy and capital flight, “…a kind of déjà vu pattern in which strong labor
movements emerged in each new favored site to which the industry relocated.” While
labor was weakened where capital fled (North America), new strong “strategically
located” working classes appear wherever it lands (the Global South).
2
Brecher (2002) has convincingly argued this phenomenon describes the fiercely competitive garment
industry.
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Jamie K. McCallum
Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels write of the industrial worker
“modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in
Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character.” This was perhaps true of
mid nineteenth century Europe, but does not square with the overwhelming nationalism
of working class organizations today. In this case, Zolberg’s question is more apt for
modern times: “If capitalism is of a piece, why is the working class it has called into life
so disparate?” (Zolberg 1986)
Though often overlooked, issues surrounding control of the workplace and its
process innovations have been at the core of some of the most dramatic confrontations
between capital and labor (Metzgar 2000). But the effects are not as one-dimensional as
they may seem. Historically, Fordism was originally viewed skeptically by pro-labor
commentators. The de-skilling tendencies of continuous flow production were originally
predicted to weaken workplace bargaining power by allowing droves of transposable
laborers to replace skilled craftsmen. Only after high rates of unionization were won in
the mass production industries of the West was it seen as conducive to labor organizing.
We should expect the same skepticism toward post-Fordist changes, and indeed, the vast
majority of the literature concludes that the “technologic fix” of capital and the whitecollarization of the economy is inherently labor-weakening.
However, many researchers (Herod 2000, 2001; Silver 2001; Gallin 2002; Piven
forthcoming) have demonstrated that certain elements of lean, post-Fordist production
schemes actually enhance the ability of workers to exert control. For example, Herod
documents the 1998 strike at two Flint, Michigan General Motors (GM) plants. Because
GM relied on just-in-time production systems, and the two Flint shops supplied crucial
parts for their most profitable lines, the strike crippled the ability of all North American
GM workers to build more cars. In this way, a local dispute became a hemispheric
problem very quickly, suggesting that the Toyotist production model to be even more
vulnerable to worker action than the Fordist one preceding it.
Finally, in the social science literature, debates about the relative decline of state
sovereignty have been waging for decades. In the nineties, several commentators forecast
the state’s redundancy under the excesses of hypermobile capital and global governance
regimes (Naisbitt 1994; Ohmae 1995). This position sees neoliberal globalization as a
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Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
“politics by other means,” supplanting the role of governance and deterritorializing
national decision-making power. These critiques provoked a series of rebuttals and
refutations insisting on the continued primacy of the state in the realm of political affairs
(Hirst and Thompson 1996; Zysman 1996; Panitch 2000; Wood 2005). Saskia Sassen
(2008) has elaborated a theory by which the state is fractured by globalization, and some
branches of the state expand (in sovereign terms) at the expense of others. Theories of
declining sovereignty tend also to imply a convergence of national economic systems. On
the contrary, the varieties of capitalism literature has found that economic globalization
affects states unevenly, noting the persistent divergence among liberal market economies
and coordinated market economies (Hall and Soskice 2001).
The point most relevant to this discussion is strangely overlooked in much of the
literature. While strong states have been historically linked with strong national working
classes, they are negatively correlated with instances of labor transnationalism. The
emergence of international labor solidarity in the late nineteenth century has not been
continuous. Rather, it was suddenly shattered with the outbreak of World War I and the
Bolshevik Revolution, when workers abandoned a common international cause to defend
a national flag, and killed one another by the million on the battlefields of Europe
(Lorwin 1957).
Since 1945, scholars have pointed to an inverse relationship between the capacity
of workers to win strong gains from nation-states and their subsequent interest in
transnational activity (Waterman 1998). As unions found their respective states more
accommodating to wage and benefits concessions, their will to internationalism was
muted. As Wills (2002) writes, “As long as nation-states offered a route to trade union
influence and achievement, internationalism tended to be a paper exercise with little
grassroots support.” If the national priorities of the state are giving way to global
corporate ones today, does this possibly encourage transnational labor cooperation? It is
to the question of new possibilities for transnational labor organizing that we now turn.
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Jamie K. McCallum
Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
Is Another Labor Transnationalism Possible?
The themes discussed above are integral to the debates about prospects for the
formation of a global labor movement. In fact, many scholars have argued that some of
the same forces that were the undoing of national labor movements are actually the
material preconditions for the birth of a truly transnational one. Might the increased threat
of whipsawing workers in one part of the world against those in another part stir them
both to coordinated solidaristic action? If the nation state primarily serves an international
corporate agenda, might workers not also reach across borders and shed their historic
nationalism? Will the vulnerabilities of new globalized production processes yield
workers more opportunities to disrupt business-as-usual capitalism?
Labor internationalism is an old cornerstone of revolutionary praxis. Is there
anything new to say about its modern variant? For as long as workers have been
organizing, there has been a strong normative presumption that since capital is global, so
should be the working class. However, history has shown that nationalism and
internationalism are both viable yet contradictory responses to the globalization of
production (Wills 1998). It is safe to say that national-protectionist responses are in fact
most common. Indeed, this response is often considered the only option. The structural
changes in global capitalism have been accompanied by a discursive shift as well,
represented by Margaret Thatcher’s famous TINA proclamation (“There Is No
Alternative).” The erosion of Marxism as a mobilizing ideology, and the failure of a
sustainable Keynesianism, gave way to the acceptance of the demobilizing neoliberal
counterthesis. The only viable answer, then, to Lenin’s what is to be done? question, for
firms, nations, and workers, is to attract multinational capital and be as competitive as
possible. When an alternative strategic opposition has been thereby “reduced to a
whisper, the globalization thesis can be argued to reflect the ideological triumph of free
market capitalism” (Wills 1998).
However, the present case study contributes to an emerging literature
documenting instances where workers have acted against the fatalism of the neoliberal
consensus, with coordinated transnational action, through institutions that promote rank
and file participation.
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Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
Yet even as workers do choose to engage in transnational activity, myriad
practical obstacles either stymie them along the way or force a complete retreat. Most of
these have been extensively studied: renewed working class nationalism (Harvey 1989);
divergences between local and national institutions (Streeck 1992); the time to coordinate
international solidarity is too long to be effective (Ramsay 1997); lingering Cold War
ideologies (Moody 2007); difficulty overcoming cultural barriers (Eichengreen, Ulman,
and Dickens 2003); defense of particularist union goals that trump global ones (Lillie
2004); and the power of multinational corporations (Gordon and Turner 2000). Some
commentators are even pessimistic about prospects for building a transnational union
movement at all (Mahnkopf and Altvater 1995; Eder 2002).
But what about factors that may enhance the power of labor or even promote
transnational cooperation? For Marx, the revolutionary potential of the industrial
proletariat (relative other classes) has to do with the leverage it could potentially apply to
transform the capitalist mode of production. A theory of power is useful in this
dissertation because it can help to explain how workers exert pressure employers or how
they are vanquished by large corporations. In other words, who has power and how do
they exercise it?
Wright (2002) uses the term structural power to describe the power derived by
workers’ strategic location in the process of production. Much research on labor
transnationalism has focused on the relative strength or weakness of the structural power
of manufacturing unions. While most argue that unions have been weakened, some, like
Silver and Piven, see other possibilities. That particular groups of workers have
objectively more power than others by dint of their location in the production process has
been advanced by a variety of economists and labor scholars for decades (Dunlop 1944;
Herod 1998; Wright 2002; Silver 2003; Womack 2004). In Silver’s estimation, for
example, the power of autoworkers is substantial not only because continuous flow
production lends itself to disruption, but because of the auto industry’s trophied position
as the leading industry of twentieth century capitalism. I argue here that the importance
of structural power, while theoretically sound, is overstated in the literature and often not
reflective of reality. First, the idea tends to ascribe power to workers who may not be
organized in a position to exercise it. Secondly, as mentioned above, globalization has
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Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
eroded some of the power of workers, including industrial leverage. Lastly, occupying a
particular structural position within a complex division of labor does not necessarily
encourage workers to action. Power is not, as Piven (2006) cautions, “there for the
taking,” and grievances in themselves do not lead to action. For example,
transnationalism in the auto industry most often takes the form of information-sharing
and codes of conduct (see Greer and Hauptmeier 2008), not the militant exploiting of a
strategic position that Silver documents. This suggests that even in sectors where workers
supposedly hold a beneficial structural position, their primary source of power lies in
their ability to build a strong campaign across borders via political opportunity structures
or institutions. Unlike mass production workplaces, the ability for capital to exit in the
service sector is often limited or impossible. Therefore, this case study can bracket a few
questions related to globalization processes (capital mobility, outsourcing, offshoring,
etc) and worker power because of the geographic fixity of the labor process in the service
sector.
Nevertheless, because it is not immediately clear why unskilled security guards
would have any strategic/structural advantage whatsoever, it is logical to ask what kind of
power they actually do have. What explains UNI’s ability to negotiate more contracts
than any other global union, and to win gains against G4S, the largest employer in the
world? I argue here that transnational campaigns can be successful when workers utilize
comprehensive strategies that exploit an interdependent relationship, even when their
objective structural position would not be considered powerful. For example, few
expected such monumental success stories to come from SEIU’s Justice for Janitors
campaign in Los Angeles (which involved international pressure), yet it represents a
recent watershed victory in US labor struggles. How does this happen? Piven’s
conception best identifies the way service workers orchestrate transnational campaigns:
they exercise interdependent power.
Since the 1960s Piven and Cloward developed their concept of interdependent
power to explain the way those with limited access to typical power resources (money,
political clout, the credible threat of force, etc) nevertheless have the capacity to exert
pressure on elites. This concept argues that power is a dialogic relationship of
cooperation and social contribution, and that the source of power “from below” is the
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Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
ability to disrupt interdependent social relationships. For Piven, the logic of
interdependent power requires that workers recognize their potential as embedded in a
variety of social relationships, and they seek to maintain those relationships in order to
maintain that source of power.
The strategic choice to build toward an IFA makes sense, then, given that it
strengthens the ties between workers and management and helps to maintain the
relationship. The campaign to win the IFA in the UNI case was the work of many smaller
campaigns, each with its own contingencies and interdependent relationships. One goal
of this dissertation is to investigate these various interdependencies as they play out in the
case study. I now turn to a discussion of the pragmatic strategies that workers use to
exercise interdependent power that are highlighted in this dissertation.
Variation of Labor Transnationalism in the Service Sector
As stated above, there has been a recent explosion of writing on labor
transnationalism. According to most scholars, the growing intensity of economic
globalization and the increasing power of large multinationals have been the primary
catalysts for building global unionism (Gordon and Turner 2000; Harrod and Obrien
2002; Munck 2002; Bronfenbrenner 2008; Lerner 2007). These accounts describe the
push and pull of a society in the throes of transformation, the double movement that
Polanyi (1944) saw in the struggles to discipline the emerging self-regulating market.
This case presents different union strategies, often used in unison, that workers employ to
challenge transnational companies in what the organizers call a “comprehensive
campaign”—collective bargaining, strikes, international framework agreements,
transnational information sharing, and corporate campaigning. This dissertation is an
anatomy of the campaign, in order to advance a model of labor transnationalism that
contributes to a growing literature on labor power in the global era. Specifically, I will
study four related questions about transnational organizing: (a) to understand how service
sector workers exercise power against transnational employers; (b) to understand the
basis for the varied strategic choices made by workers and unions (c) to determine why
some strategies work better than others; and (d) to explain the interplay of national and
transnational modes of collective action.
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Jamie K. McCallum
Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
Property Services
This case study examines transnational union organizing of security guards, a
multi-faceted campaign that spans the globe--from India, Poland, Malawi, and Indonesia,
to the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States--jointly organized by the Service
Employees International Union (SEIU) and Union Network International (UNI). UNI is
one of ten Global Union Federations (GUFs), formerly known as International Trade
Secretariats (ITSs). These are transnational membership organizations, each linked to
specific industries. UNI’s focus, like SEIU’s in North America, is on service sector
workers. Five years ago UNI began a campaign to organize the largest security services
employer, Group 4 Securicor (G4S). Largely, these workers are security guards, cashtransfer personnel, and sometimes heavily-armed, quasi-military guards. In December
2008 they finally negotiated an International Framework Agreements with G4S,
including a side agreement that lays out organizing rights in North America with the
Wackenhut corporation, a subsidiary of G4S. SEIU originally approached UNI in order to
join forces, as its isolated domestic campaign against Wackenhut was going nowhere.
Since then, the two unions have operated in concert to pressure G4S to sign an
agreement. SEIU is largely credited with globalizing the campaign, and by introducing
US-style tactics and strategies that UNI had not previously considered.
The primary objective of unions seeking IFAs is to secure an agreement that
forces global corporations to respect core ILO labor standards.3 They are essentially the
evolutionary successors of the codes of conduct that NGOs began negotiating in the early
nineties. Hammer (2005) distinguishes between different logics of agreements (rights vs
bargaining): the former expand the terrain for workers to organize; the latter tend to shore
up a variety of ILO conventions and are continually renegotiated. IFAs have been studied
closely by scholars wishing to understand the real-life impact that voluntary agreements
have on labor/capital relationships. A variety of case studies have reached predictably
mixed results, and the literature reveals a great deal of confusion over the theory and
3
For an complete list of ILO labor standards, see their website:
http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/english/subjectE.htm
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Dissertation Proposal V.2
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utility of such a strategy (Gordon and Turner 2000; Riisgaard 2005; Descologne 2006;
Stevis and Boswell 2007). Steven Lerner (2007), for example, has expressed deep disdain
for IFAs in writing, though the union (SEIU), for which he is a chief strategist, has
actively pursued them in practice. UNI has made the negotiation of IFAs its main
strategic goal.
In Strategy for Labor: A Radical Proposal, Gorz (1964) lays out the concept of
non-reformist reforms. These are not once-and-done alterations to the conditions of
capitalism but rather reformist policies which leave open the potential for deeper social
transformation. At their best, IFAs may represent a good example of what Gorz had in
mind. To date, GUFs have negotiated sixty two such agreements with different
transnational companies.4 The stronger ones include neutrality clauses that allow workers
the right to organize for representation without a boss fight. According to the Federal
Trade Commission, corporate mergers and acquisitions increased dramatically in the
1990s, a practice nurtured chiefly by the globalization of production and deregulation of
financial markets (FTC Statement 1998). As corporate power has become increasingly
consolidated, IFAs have become more popular as a foot-in-the-door mechanism to win
modest gains, where a more militant tactic might be impossible.
There are a host of reasons to be critical: many IFAs have little regulatory power,
they may act as a “public relations triumph,” and may sabotage deeper union
collaboration (Stevis and Boswell 2008).5 In its campaign against G4S, however, UNI
negotiated a stronger agreement that included organizing rights. In contrast to Moody
(2007), who sees the recent upsurge in security personnel and guard organizing as
happening in a non-strategic sector, this case study emphasizes the enormous role of the
FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) infrastructure of the global economy (see
Krippner 2005). Due to massive deregulation over the past twenty years, private security
firms play a larger role in property services. In Malawi, for example, private security
4
These agreements account for almost $35 billion in sales and 5.3 million employees (Papadakis 2008)
Ten years ago The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and
Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) announced a moratorium on IFAs due to their perceived weakness.
Debates around the effectiveness of such agreements are not trivial. Some claim it is better to have no
agreement at all, than to have one which locks workers into a weak position vis a vis giant corporations. In
the US, disagreements over worker-management pacts like the Alliance Plan in SEIU’s nursing home
division are currently threatening to splinter one of the country’s most dynamic unions.
5
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guards have largely replaced police at government buildings, and in India G4S workers
help guard the National Palace.
The campaign to successfully negotiate a strong IFA with such powerful
companies involved a variety of transnational union strategies. This dissertation will
examine these different strategies in order to understand why they were chosen over
others, and to assess their relative successes and/or failures.
For example, European G4S employees are part of a European Works Council
(EWC). Largely a response to corporate restructuring during the development of a
European common market, the EWC directive allows workers in European multinational
companies with more than one thousand employees the right to organize associations for
purposes of information sharing and enforcing codes of conduct. Since 1994, almost
fifteen million workers in eight hundred multi-national companies have participated in
EWC dialogues (EIRO 2008). Here I build on other research on the Europeanization of
industrial relations (DØlvik 1997; Rehfeldt 1999; Martin and Ross 2000; Golbach and
Schulten 2001; Marginson and Sisson 2006). EWCs are regarded here as transnational
opportunity structures (della Porta and Tarrow 2004). Preliminary research has shown
these structures function poorly in this particular case, though many other workers and
their unions have used EWCs to successfully leverage demands from employers. UNI has
even had prior success with EWCs in other security firms. I plan to explore the factors
that condition the success or failure of these structures in this campaign
According to lead researchers and organizers at UNI and SEIU, the most decisive
weapon against G4S was strategic research that targeted its investors. Juravich (2007)
notes that so-called “corporate campaigns”, or “air wars” are increasingly used against
large companies as leverage in transnational campaigns. This strategy involves teams of
union researchers that pressure investors in the target company to divest if certain labor
and human rights are not respected. Claire Parfitt, assistant director of the Property
Services Division at UNI, says that the strategy was much more effective in Europe and
in the developing world than in North America, even though it was a tactic imported from
SEIU, who relies on it extensively in most large campaigns (interview by author, 2008).
Why is this the case? Many factors contribute to these differences, but legal differences
may shine above the rest. Laws governing the obligations of corporations vary widely
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place to place. Unlike in Europe, US legal statutes protect the fiduciary responsibility of
corporations and their shareholders or beneficiaries. This makes it almost illegal for a
corporation to limit its profit-making capacity, which weakens the ability of unions to
leverage demands based on social issues (Hinckley 2002).
The campaign also required the coordination of different labor movements and
the mobilization of contending working classes. As might be expected, this was not
always smooth either. Research has shown that in-firm competition sometimes leads to
destructive forces in transnational campaigns. Koch-Baumgarten (1998), for example,
sees the successful campaign for a global minimum wage in the maritime sector as the
imposition of high wage norms on the Global South, an area where unions may be
otherwise inclined to capitalize on their comparative advantage in order to attract more
contracts for their members. Others have pointed to the breakdown of solidarity in motor
manufacturing (Anner, Greer, Lillie, Hauptmeier, and Winchester 2006 ). UNI’s
experience is similar: In Great Britain, the GMB openly promoted the reputation of G4S
while Indonesian workers were striking against them, and while UNI was in the process
of settling an OECD complaint (Parfitt, interview by author). I will explore the multiple
successes and failures of the different mobilizations that contributed to the signing of the
IFA.
Much of the literature considers labor a factor of production, but rarely does it
appear as an agent in the regulation of the global economy (notable exceptions being
Block et al 2001; Sobczak 2004). This case study shows that IFAs expand the terrain for
transnational industrial relations and worker organization, and significantly alter the
behavior of some of the world’s largest corporations. As Papadakis (2008) correctly
surmises, the importance of IFAs is not only determined by the strength or weakness of
the agreement language: “their actual significance is not on paper, but in the strategic use
of the paper.” This campaign is complex and diverse, in terms of geographic location, the
outcomes in different national contexts, and the repertoires of strategic action that it calls
into play. G4S employs security guards in over 100 countries. The IFA technically covers
all of them, but for practical reasons of scale will be implemented in “batches” of
countries over time. The implementation process will not be universal, but rather will
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vary according to the needs of the local contexts. This dissertation will uncover the
explanations for these variations and differences.
Research Design and Methodology:
This dissertation follows a case study methodology, and draws on insights from
sociology, political science, and industrial relations. Case studies are an appropriate
qualitative method for developing sociological theory (George and Bennet 2005).
Moreover, it is particularly fitting in this context, as I seek to gather “multiple sources of
evidence—converging on the same set of issues” in order to analyze “both a particular
phenomenon [labor transnationalism] and the context [the service sector] within which
the phenomenon is occurring” (Yin 1993).
I have identified a case that incorporates multiple union strategies in a variety of
geographic locations, in order to understand the varied approaches that different groups
of workers take to achieve similar goals. Case studies, which focus narrow attention on a
broad subject, have been viewed skeptically by some social scientists (Njolstad 1990;
King, Keohane, and Verba 1994). This case, however, endeavors to illuminate a general
model of labor transnationalism for service sector workers. As a model of a single case
study approach, I have examined Ravenswood (Bronfenbrenner and Juravich 1999),
which details the international campaign of locked-out steel workers to win a long battle
against their employer. My case study fills a critical void in the literature on labor
transnationalism, as the vast majority of research in this field has focused on industrial
workplaces, transportation, and other manufacturing industries. This is despite the fact
that the service economy is showing explosive growth, and that service sector unions
have made headway whereas many industrial unions are in considerable disarray.
Based on preliminary research into the field, and consultation with my committee,
I am confident I have selected a case which is representative of larger trends. This is due
to a number of factors: (1) SEIU’s recent influence on other transnational service sector
campaigns involving other unions has been great; (2) this campaign is similar in content
and form to previous transnational campaigns against security firms, and (3) the
comprehensive nature of the campaign and its wide geographic scope means that it lends
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Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
itself to comparisons with many other transnational campaigns who face some of, though
not necessarily all, the same challenges.
Data Collection and Analysis:
Background research into the case study has already begun. Data from semistructured interviews will create the bulk of the original research content in the study. I
plan to conduct approximately seventy five interviews with union staff, rank and file
workers, labor movement experts, corporate representatives, and managers. Some of the
field research will take place in India, Malawi, and Germany, where the recent IFA will
be implemented first. Other research will happen in Washington DC, where SEIU’s
Global Strength department and the head of UNI’s property services campaign is located.
If I am able to secure face-to face interviews with G4S corporate staff, those interviews
may happen in London, but I also plan on interviewing local managers and employers
where the active campaigns are. I will spend one year in New York City to write and edit
my final draft. The union staff interviews will largely stem from the Global Strength
division at SEIU, UNI, and local Indian and German unions, who are members of UNI,
and are organizing the ground campaigns there. The Indian context has consistently had
the most mobilized workforce in the countries that are active in the campaign. I have
been assured generous access to Indian and German workers and union officers who
speak English. Others will include staff at the General Workers Union (GMB) in the UK
and the International Transport Federation (ITF), which helped negotiate of the IFA. I
will also draw heavily on published material related to debates on labor power and
globalization generally, with attention to work that focuses on transnational campaigns
and service sector workers.
Semi-structured interviews will familiarize me with the aspects of the campaign
that cannot be ascertained by the literatures and other source materials (documentary
evidence, archives, files meeting minutes, etc), and establish a baseline understanding for
how my research subjects view their sources of power. Based on the contacts I have
developed over the years as a labor organizer, informal discussions with the lead staff
members of this campaign, and the significant familiarity of my committee members with
labor organizations, I am confident that I will have sufficient access to rank and file
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Dissertation Proposal V.2
January 5, 2009
workers and professional staffers. In each case I plan to interview union staff first, in
order to get an outline of the theory and strategy behind the campaign as they see it. Then
I will interview rank-and-file workers to understand the campaigns from their
perspective. Interview questions with workers will have two primary objectives: (1) an
analysis and understanding of their specific roles in the campaign and (2) their ideas
associated with labor transnationalism (cooperation across borders, cross-cultural
linkages, movement strategy, etc).
Additionally, snowball sampling – whereby respondents recommend additional
potential interviewees – will be used to identify policymakers and other staff members of
GUFs to interview. Therefore, specific sampling decisions regarding policymakers and
GUF staff will evolve during the research process itself. All interviews will last
approximately sixty minutes, with most interview questions reflecting both the particular
area of the subject’s expertise, and general knowledge or interest in broader concerns. For
interview questions that are broader and more open-ended, sequencing will flow logically
from one set of ideas to another (Kvale 1996). Though I do not undertake a study guided
completely by grounded theory, some of my research questions have no obvious
hypothesis and are more open-ended than others. These include questions related to the
effectiveness of different strategies and the interplay of national and transnational
activism and structures. Methods associated with a grounded theory approach will also
help organize my material and aid the writing process. Each interview will be coded for
overlapping themes related to both general viewpoints on labor transnationalism and
particular ideas about the case under study. In this way, interviews will contribute to both
the conceptual/theoretical and the local/ethnographic dimensions of the dissertation.
Where possible, I will observe meetings that relate to the implementation of the
IFA agreement. Often these meetings include representatives from multiple trade unions,
rank and file workers, and corporate representatives. Observation in day-to-day settings,
at different times and in different locations, will provide a rich picture in situ (Becker
1996; Blumer 1969). My hope is that ideas about power and labor movement strategy
will emerge from my subjects during interviews and participant observation. This
information will be an invaluable addition to the refined theoretical and journalistic
accounts of the contemporary relationship between labor and capital.
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Dissertation Proposal V.2
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Material from interviews and observations will be triangulated with an analysis of
additional sources of data. These documents include, but are not limited to: meeting
minutes, annual reports and regular white papers by the ILO, the World Labor Group
Database on global labor unrest, reports from regional Solidarity Centers affiliated with
the AFL-CIO, World Bank development indicators, and regular reports from think tanks
and research centers such as the Global Union Research Network.
All subjects will be asked to sign a consent form prior to the interview, and for
those under the age of 18, parent/guardian consent forms will be obtained as well, abiding
by Institutional Review Board standards.
Timeline:
The full timeframe for this study will be two years. January 2009 through May 2009 will
be spent collaborating with my committee in New York City, applying for funding,
conducting background/historical research, and refining theoretical concepts. May 2009
through November 2009 I will spend collecting data on the case study. I will take an
additional year to write the full dissertation, with an estimated defense date of December
2010.
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