Labour Dilemmas and Labour Futures

Bibliographic Data

ID20072956
AuthorsRonaldo Munck (0000-0002-7117-1099, University of Liverpool, corresponding author)
Year1999
Pages3-23
Publication date1999-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueLabour Worldwide in the Era of Globalization (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan UK (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/978-1-349-27063-7_1
OpenAlexW2501710609
ISBN9781349270637
LanguageFR
Citations received14
References cited5

In common with other social groups, workers and their organizations are facing an uncertain future as we approach the end of the twentieth century. In an era when, as Marx used to say: ‘all that is solid melts into air’, what were once articles of faith for the labour movement are now painful dilemmas. My purpose here is to carry out a broad survey of these ‘new times’ insofar as they affect the way people work or cannot work across the planet. It is necessary to examine also the various new theories, including post-modernism, which are seen to account for these changes and plot their possible direction(s). Labour itself has not been silent in this regard, and has thrown up certain alternatives to the old ways of economic and political unionism, namely a social movement type of unionism. A final section examines to what extent the ‘old bottles’ of the trade unions and other traditional labour organizations can accept the ‘new wine’ of alternative strategies. It is interesting to note, in this regard, the recent call by that once secure bastion of orthodoxy, the British TUC (Trade Union Congress) to learn from the ‘new unionism’ of the 1880s. In mid-1996, TUC leader John Monks declared that if the British unions were to break out of a seventeen-year cycle of declining membership and influence they would have to rekindle the spirit of the 1880s, the US civil rights movements, and the mythical union organizer Joe Hill (Guardian, 19 June 1996)

Economics · Faith · Futures contract · Guardian · Labour economics · Orthodoxy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Trade union · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Globalization and Cultural Identity · History · Law · Zygmunt Bauman's Sociology