The trade union movement at the dawn of the 21st Century

The individualisation and compartmentalisation of work, and the growth in subcontracting by the larger public and private employers has increased the gap between a core of unionised workers and a mass of unprotected and un-unionised working people. It will take much more than calls to unionise the un-unionised to overcome this division, and re-establish the universal vocation of the unions as defenders of the interests of working people.

Trade unionism is often caught in the contradiction between managing day-to-day activities, and needing to intervene in a constantly evolving balance of forces. To advance, we need to find convergence with the various social movements (ecological, immigrant rights, housing, unemployment, anti-globalisation, feminist) that testify to society’s irrepressible capacity to resist and revolt.

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Union And WorkPlace Learning

Union and the Workplace Learning

The paid workplace is one of the most important spheres of learning in society today. However, the learning that goes on this sphere can be understood from at least two different perspectives: that of management and owners on the one hand, and that of workers and their organizations on the other. In fact, workplace learning represents a contested terrain of social, political and economic struggle. The purpose of trade unions is to represent the interests and worldview of the diversity of workers, and its goals in terms of workplace learning can be seen as overlapping as well as in opposition to those of management. Unions represent these interests by providing organizational, and, in most liberal democracies, legal frameworks for workers to mobilize around issues they themselves deem important. The labour movement, more generally, is comprised of the trade union movement, the co-operative movement and workers’ political parties. Within this stream of movements, trade unions in particular have incredible capacity to shape the character and experience of learning at work through course provision, collective bargaining and other forms of intervention. Unions also play an important role in shaping training and vocational education policy at various sectoral, national and, more recently, international levels (in many cases with the help of established workers’ political parties). Perhaps most pervasively of all, however, unions can and frequently do play an important role in shaping the everyday experiences of workers within the labour process, through specific information and action campaigns, as well as through their effects on learning through mass media, literature, drama and art.

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How a Proactive Interventionist Can Make Strikes More Effective

How a Proactive Interventionist Can Make Strikes More Effective: Evidence from the Korean Banking Sector

This paper presents, through an investigation of two industry-wide strikes in the Korean banking sector, evidence explaining why and how a proactive interventionist strike is more effective than a reactive one when a union responds to restructuring. Through this case study we develop an argument that for a union responding to restructuring the proactive interventionist mode through the employment of appropriate industrial actions is more likely to be the best choice because successes are most likely to be achieved when organizations make concerted efforts to achieve their objectives by identifying opportunities, devising effective strategies and engaging in the issues at an early stage, thus generating favourable circumstances which can change the views or positions of other parties. Such a strategic capacity can be gained from active organizational learning (OL).

In the neo-liberal environment which requires endless restructuring for survival, unions have faced continual changes and challenges. In response, unions’ main options have been to take industrial action or engage in partnerships with employers. In all cases, the focus of union leaders’ efforts has been to devise strategies most likely to lead to success for their members.

Reference : ChungIL Choi. 2013. How a Proactive Interventionist Can Make Strikes More Effective: Evidence from the Korean Banking Sector. American Journal of Industrial and Business Management, 2013, 3, 444-452. 

This paper argues, through a case study of two industry-wide strikes in the Korean banking sector, that a proactive in-

terventionist strike is more effective than a reactive pragmatist one in a union’s response to restructuring. Evidence

from the two strikes shows that unions were able to achieve more successful outcomes from the strike in which they

engaged proactively by an interventionist mode. In this case the unions identified opportunities, took the initiative and

devised effective strategies that pre-empted the other parties before they had fully prepared their restructuring planning.

Such a strategic capacity was gained from active organizational learning in unions derived from their previous strike

failure

This paper argues, through a case study of two industry-wide strikes in the Korean banking sector, that a proactive in-

terventionist strike is more effective than a reactive pragmatist one in a union’s response to restructuring. Evidence

from the two strikes shows that unions were able to achieve more successful outcomes from the strike in which they

engaged proactively by an interventionist mode. In this case the unions identified opportunities, took the initiative and

devised effective strategies that pre-empted the other parties before they had fully prepared their restructuring planning.

Such a strategic capacity was gained from active organizational learning in unions derived from their previous strike

failure