Buch, Englisch, 140 Seiten, Format (B × H): 138 mm x 213 mm, Gewicht: 260 g
Building Power in an Age of Finance
Buch, Englisch, 140 Seiten, Format (B × H): 138 mm x 213 mm, Gewicht: 260 g
ISBN: 978-1-5095-3912-3
Verlag: Polity Press
Unions face a once in a generation opportunity for renewal. Decades of decline have been compounded by a global elite who increasingly generate profit from financial engineering in ways that side-step labour and undermine the power of organised workers.
However, as this economic system begins to falter, there are signs of a renewed union movement emerging. Debt-laden firms – from supermarkets and nursery chains to outsourcing giants – are collapsing, and workers are organising to determine what comes next. Unionised bank cashiers are refusing to push predatory loans, teachers are striking against the exploitative housing market, and manufacturing workers are pooling redundancy pay to buy-out plants and become worker owners.
Alice Martin and Annie Quick argue that these are seeds of union renewal. To be effective in an age of finance, the union movement must set its ambitions beyond narrow wage-bargaining, and towards the financial systems that have infiltrated workplaces and impoverished communities. By doing so, they can play a critical role in ushering in a new, democratic economy.
No-one committed to economic justice can afford to miss this urgent, highly original book and its radical vision for unions.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
Weitere Infos & Material
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Building economic democracy under financial capitalism
The scope of this book
The way ahead
Notes
1 How financialization undermines the power of workers
Finance today: speculative, extractive and rent-seeking
A changed economic landscape for labour
Change is coming
Notes
2 Understanding and rebuilding union power
The challenge: empowering unions to be a force against finance
What is union power?
Looking back: the rise and decline of union power
The ‘golden age’ of union power
The attack on unions
The demise of collective bargaining
The state of play today: organizing without institutional power
Lessons from Europe
We can’t turn back the clock
Rebuilding an institutional role for unions in today’s economy
Democratizing the economy requires rank-and-file union strength
Notes
3 Bargaining with finance
Unions in and for the community
Mobilizing the whole bargaining unit
Using workplace power where it still exists
Targeting the real boss
Leverage shareholder power
Collective bargaining outside work
Building militant, democratic, intersectional unions
Notes
4 Owning the future
A renewed role
Democratizing ownership
Becoming worker-owners
Unions as investors in the areas side-lined by capital
Unions leading the move away from damaging work
Unions leading the fight for free time
Unions as architects of a democratic future
Notes
Conclusion: a way forward
The process of renewal
Notes
