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

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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 Scipeswho 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 sincecompiles 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.

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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. -- Immanuel Ness, Professor, Brooklyn College, City University of New York; editor of Journal of Labor and Society
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. -- Gene Bruskin, Co-founder, US Labor Against the War

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 Southfrom the Philippines and South Africawith 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.

Author Bio

Kim Scipes is professor of sociology at Purdue University Northwest.