Question

Explain the rise of social movement unionism ? (250 word counts)

Answer 1

The social movement unionism is a form of trade unionism which has adopted broad goals to achieve social justice in contrast to traditional narrow economic agenda of collective bargaining. It stresses on forming labor-community alliances. It gives new dimensions to unions as social movements who will mobilize its members against workplace & social injustices. It concerns itself with more than organizing workers around workplace issues, pay and terms and conditions & want to engage in wider political struggle for social justice & democracy. It believes that workplace democracy will not likely be achieved outside of a broad popular movement that can alter the structures of law and political power. It uses social & political means to improve rights of labors.

The social movement unionism emerged due to ineffectiveness of usual union rhetoric of uniting workers for social justice. In the real life this only represents a small part of a much bigger shift in union strategies in last few decades. This traditional way of unionism led to drastic decline in union memberships across industries & unions were also not able to do anything about it. From 1990s the world has witnessed massive economic changes at all scales & simultaneously a rapid decline in union power, membership and efficiency. This was basically due to decentralized & increased service oriented capital & labor markets. The economies across regions witnessed rapid globalization, capital turned from stable to mobile & economies turned from production oriented to consumption oriented. This drastic change in political & economic factors negatively affected labour’s ability to organise in many ways.

There were large scale privatizations of public sector businesses which were previously considered unionized public sector workplaces. This privatization & decentralization broke up union branches & further complicated employer & employee relationships. This created issues between labor & employer related to work place. Therefor social movement unionism emerged in response to traditional business unionism. It stresses on democratic & political means to resolve problems in order to apply maximum economic leverage. It uses political & social power by reaching out to other stakeholder of society to fight for social justice & democracy.