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. Dedication 6 Contents 8 Preface 10 Acknowledgments 16 Abbreviations 20 Introduction 22 PART I: EFFORTS TO BUILD INTERNATIONAL LABOR SOLIDARITY IN THE 1980s 44 1 San Francisco Longshoremen: “When that Ship Came in, We Were Ready” 46 2 Building the New Shop Floor Internationalism 50 3 International Labour Reports: A Personal Report and Appreciation 64 PART II: LEARNING FROM KMU 80 4 Using Comparative Methods to Understand Contemporaneous Labor Movements: Rejecting a Structural-based Understanding 84 5 Understanding Worker Mobilization Theoretically: What Can Labor and Social Movement Theories Tell Us? 98 6 Social Movement Unionism: A New Type of Trade Unionism 122 7 Philippine Economic Development 140 8 The Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU-May First Movement) 152 9 A Look at KMU, 1986–1987 166 10 Learning from the KMU: Alliance Building 182 PART III: BUILDING GLOBAL LABOR SOLIDARITY 192 11 Social Movement Unionism in South Africa? 194 12 Building International Labor Solidarity in the Face of Political-Economic Globalization Processes: The Case of the KMU Labor Center of the Philippines 226 13 Disentangling Confusion in Global Labor Drive 252 Epilogue 284 References 286 Index 310 About the Author 312 This collection of essays by Kim Scipes explores efforts to build global labor solidarity from the bottom up through analyses of the KMU Labor Center of the Philippines, AFL-CIO foreign policy, and contemporary initiatives.