Organising in Hard Times: Urban Informality and the Promise of Transnational Labor Activism

Organising in Hard Times: Urban Informality and the Promise of Transnational Labor Activism

Speaker
Nik Theodore, University of Illinois at Chicago

Discussant(s)
Jane Wills (QMUL) and Debby Potts (KCL).

Chair
Jenny Robinson (UCL)

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Abstract

One of the perplexing aspects of the current period ofeconomic restructuring in U.S.cities has been the re-emergence and extension of forms of labor relations werethought to have been sharply curtailed, if not completely eliminated. Day labor organized through informal hiringsites located in public spaces is one example of these developments.  Elsewhere, I argue that the re-emergence of day labor is a predictable outcome of the offensive that has been launchedagainst policies and institutions that place a floor under competition in thelabor market (Theodore 2007). In the name of greater labor market flexibility, the neoliberal project has sought todismantle labor market insurance programs and job protection legislation, andto undermine trade unionism and other forms of worker collective action. Unregulated work and labor market informalityhave flourished in the economic spaces of deregulation that have been clearedby this neoliberal offensive.

But this is not the end of the story. Day laborers and workers rights organizations are actively contesting conditions in contingent labor markets through a combination of organizing, policy advocacy and the establishment of alternative labor market  institutions. This paper examines an important aspect of this politicization of contingent work: the evolution of grassroots organizing strategies by day laborers, an allegedly ‘unorganizable’ class of contingent workers.  More specifically, I focus on the ways in which repertoires of contestation – based in a philosophy of social transformation through radical democracy and popular education – have defused from mass-movement social struggles in Latin America in the 1980s to street corner organizing in U.S.cities today. Through a series of in-depth interviews with day labor organizers, the paper explores how organizing approaches from the global South have been adapted and recombined to meet the challenges presented by day labor markets in the U.S. which are characterized by substandard employment conditions and violations of core labor laws