The Rise of Community Unions
The 1970’s and 1980’s witnessed profound restructuring of labour markets. Neoliberal policies that emerged in the 1970’s were adopted by many governments around the world, and included measures such as deregulation and privatization. These policies created insecurity in employment by breaking down institutional regulatory and political support for unions. Traditional unions experienced a loss of power, influence, and members. During this period of economic restructuring, communities were forced to form coalitions with the labor movement to fight factory closures and relocations that were the basis of many local economies. Community unionism can be understood as a response to neoliberalism and globalization: it was a turn back to the local level-or community- in organizing. It seeks to organize some of the most vulnerable people- immigrants,women,and people of colour- who have been disproportionately affected by the growth of exploitative working conditions in the neoliberal economy.
Read more about this topic: Community Unionism
Famous quotes containing the words rise, community and/or unions:
“And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
“The poorest children in a community now find the beneficent kindergarten open to them from the age of two-and-a-half to six years. Too young heretofore to be eligible to any public school, they have acquired in their babyhood the vicious tendencies of their own depraved neighborhoods; and to their environment at that tender age had been due the loss of decency and self-respect that no after example of education has been able to restore to them.”
—Virginia Thrall Smith (1836–1903)
“The newly-formed clothing unions are ready to welcome her; but woman shrinks back from organization, Heaven knows why! It is perhaps because in organization one find the truest freedom, and woman has been a slave too long to know what freedom means.”
—Katharine Pearson Woods (1853–1923)