Un ‘Giro espacial’ en los estudios de estrategia sindical: posiciones, movilizaciones y comunidades.

Domingo Perez

Authors

Domingo Perez Universidad de O'Higgins

Keywords:

Estrategia sindical, Geografía del trabajo, Huelgas, Territorio, Ciudad neoliberal

Abstract

This article argues that the socio-spatial perspective in trade union studies has grown in recent decades to the point of causing a “spatial shift” in much of its literature, which has (re)driven the debate on strategic issues in the struggle of workers now in neoliberal urbanity. To account for the above, the text proposes a review of three classical literature focuses on trade unionism, which have recently been expanded and restated based on the analysis of social geography: (1) strategic sectors and strategic positions; (2) strike mobilizations and action tactics; and (3) the urban relationship between unions and communities, which is present at the center of four specific study sources: community unionism, worker centers, recovered companies, and union action in workers' neighborhoods. This review makes it possible to identify new conditions and resources of power in union action. At the same time, it argues that the socio-spatial turn is expanding due to the growing need to understand the effect of the reproduction/production relationship in the formation and transformation of the working class.

References

AZZELLINI, D. Labour as a commons: The example of worker-recuperated companies. Critical Sociology, 2018, Vol. 44, N° 4-5, pp. 763-776.

AZZELINI, D. (ed.). If not us, who? Workers against authoritarianism, fascism and dictatorship. Hamburg: VSA, 2021.

ARRIAGA, A. Potencialidad de las discusiones sobre revitalización sindical para pensar la historia reciente del movimiento obrero argentino. Prohistoria: historia, políticas de la historia, 2018, Vol. 29, pp. 115-133.

BRACKE, M. Between the transnational and the local: mapping the trajectories and contexts of the Wages for Housework campaign in 1970s Italian feminism. Women's History Review, 2013, Vol. 22, N° 4, pp. 625-642.

ELBERT, R. Union organizing after the collapse of neoliberalism in Argentina: The place of community in the revitalization of the labor movement (2005-2011). Critical Sociology, 2017, Vol. 43, N°1, pp. 129-144.

FEDERICI, S. The reproduction of labour power in the global economy and the unfinished feminist revolution. En: ATZENI, M. (ed.). Workers and labour in a globalised capitalism. UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 85-107.

FOX-HODESS, C. y SANTIBÁÑEZ, C. The social foundations of structural power: strategic position, worker unity and external alliances in the making of the Chilean dockworker movement. Global Labour Journal, 2020, Vo. 11, N° 3, pp. 222-238.

FREEMAN, J. Workers, suburbs, and labor geography: Introduction. International Labor and Working-Class History, 2003, Vol. 64, pp. 3-7.

GUELMAN, A. Formación para el trabajo en una empresa recuperada: Trabajo territorial y formación política. Revista del IICE, 2012, Vol. 31, pp. 69-82.

HARVEY, D. Consciousness and the urban experience. Studies in the history and theory of capitalist urbanization (Vol. 1). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.

HILL, J. Can unions use worker center strategies?: In an age of doing more with less, unions should consider thinking locally but acting globally. FIU Law Review, 2010, Vol. 5, N° 2, pp. 551-592.

HOBSBAWM, E. Labour in the great city. New Left Review, 1987, Vol. I, N° 166, pp. 39–51.

HYMAN, R. Relaciones industriales: una introducción marxista. Madrid: Blume, 1981.

JENKINS, J. Organizing “spaces of hope”: union formation by indian garment workers. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2012, Vol. 51, N° 3, pp. 623–643.

JESSOP, B., BRENNER, N. y JONES, M. Theorizing sociospatial relations. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2008, Vol. 26, N° 3, pp. 389-401.

JORDHUS-LIER, D. The geographies of community‐oriented unionism: scales, targets, sites and domains of union renewal in South Africa and beyond. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2013, Vol. 38, N° 1, pp. 36-49.

KNUTSEN, H., ENDRESEN, S., BERGENE, A. y JORDHUS-LIER, D. Labor, Geography of. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2015, Vol. 2, N° 13, pp. 163-168.

LEFEBVRE, H. El derecho a la ciudad. Barcelona: Península, 1969.

MACDONALD, I. (ed.). Unions and the City: Negotiating urban change. Ithaca: ILR Press, 2017.

MAHAJAN, N. The invisible care givers: Domestic workers in Mumbai and their struggle for unionizations. Women's Policy Journal of Harvard, 2013, Vol. 10, pp. 81-93.

MARTICORENA, C. y D’URSO, L. El poder de los/as trabajadores/as: una revisión crítica de los abordajes conceptuales para su estudio. Revista de Estudios Marítimos y Sociales, 2021, Vol. 18, pp. 171-198.

MARTÍNEZ, O. y VOCOS, F. Las empresas recuperadas por los trabajadores y el movimiento obrero. En: HERNÁNDEZ, M. (comp.). Produciendo realidad, las empresas comunitarias. Editorial Topía, Buenos Aires, 2002.

MASSEY, D. The geography of trade unions: some issues. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 1994, Vol. 19, N° 1, pp. 95-98.

MASSEY, D. y MILES, N. Mapping out the unions, Marxism Today, 1984, Vol. 28, N° 5, pp. 19-22.

MCFARLAND, S. Spatialities of class formation: Urban sprawl and union density in US metropolitan areas. Geoforum, 2019, Vol. 102, pp. 86-96.

MOODY, K. The new terrain of class conflict in the United States. Catalyst, 2017, Vol. 1, N° 2, pp. 41-74.

O’CONNOR, J. Towards a theory of community unions, part I. Studies on the Left, 1964, Vol. 2, pp. 140-164.

PAINTER, J. Trade union geography. Alternative frameworks for analysis, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 1994, Vol. 19, N° 1, pp. 99-101.

PALOMINO, H. Los sindicatos y los movimientos sociales emergentes del colapso neoliberal en Argentina. En: DE LA GARZA, E. (comp.). Sindicatos y nuevos movimientos sociales en América Latina. Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2005.

PÉREZ VALENZUELA, D. Territorio laboral capitalista. Despliegue de poder sindical en minería y supermercados. Santiago: RIL Editores, 2019.

PÉREZ VALENZUELA, D. La territorialización del sindicalismo en barrios pobres. Evidencia en el poniente de Santiago, final de la dictadura en Chile (1985-89). Izquierdas, 2020, Vol. 49, pp. 3044-3066.

PÉREZ VALENZUELA, D. y LINK CHAPARRO, S. Control territorial, del proceso de trabajo y de la propiedad privada: sindicalismo chileno en empresas de minería versus de supermercados. Política y Sociedad, 2018, Vol. 55, N° 2, pp. 575-596.

PERRONE, L., WRIGHT, E. y GRIFFIN, L. Positional Power, Strikes and Wages. American Sociological Review, 1984, Vol. 49, N° 3, pp. 412–26.

ROCA, B. Socio‐spatial strategies of worker centres: an ethnography of alt‐labour in NYC. Antipode, 2021, Vol. 52, N° 4, pp. 1196-1215.

SCHLÖGEL, K. En el espacio leemos el tiempo. Sobre historia de la civilización y geopolítica. Madrid: Ediciones Siruela, 2007.

SMITH, N. Geografía, diferencia y las políticas de escala. Terra Livre, 2002, Vol. 18, N° 19, pp. 127-146.

SOJA, E. Postmetrópolis. Estudios críticos sobre las ciudades y las regiones. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños, 2008.

STILLERMAN, J. Explaining strike outcomes in Chile: Associational power, structural power, and spatial strategies. Latin American Politics and Society, 2017, Vol. 59, N° 1, pp. 96-118.

TUFTS, S. Community unionism in Canada and labor's (re) organization of space. Antipode, 1998, Vol. 30, N° 3, pp. 227-250.

VISSER, J. Trade unions in the balance. Genova: International Labour Organization’s Bureau for Workers' Activities (ACTRAV), 2019.

VOSS, K. y SHERMAN, R. Breaking the iron law of oligarchy: union revitalization in the American labor movement. American Journal of Sociology, 2000, Vol. 106, N° 2, pp. 303-349.

WAHREN, J. Movimientos sociales y territorios en disputa. Experiencias de trabajo y autonomía de la Unión de Trabajadores Desocupados de Gral. Mosconi, Salta. Trabajo y Sociedad, 2012, Vol. 19, pp. 133-147.

WILLS, J. Community unionism and trade union renewal in the UK: moving beyond the fragments at last?. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2001, Vol. 26, N° 4, pp. 465-483.

WOMACK, J. Posición estratégica y fuerza obrera. Ciudad de México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007.