The central argument of this book is that ‘Only a theory of strikes that goes beyond a focus on trade unions and the workplace will be able to grasp the forms of labour conflict that affect the majority of the world population, and the global working class, which lives in non-core countries’ (p.3). Jörg Nowak states that this claim emerges from his investigation of two strikes in the Indian automobile sector and three in the Brazilian construction sector, in the course of which workers created new forms of organisation and allied with other actors who were not all waged workers.
In Chapter 2, Nowak says the strikes in Brazil and India belong to a global cycle of struggles that began in 2010. Trade unions played only a minor role in many of them, especially in countries where full proletarianisation of the labour force has not taken place, thus requiring a ‘new theory of strikes’, which he aims to provide. His main target of criticism is the model of ‘corporatist trade unionism,’ which sees trade unions focused on the workplace as the main actors in strikes. He contrasts this model with mass strikes, unofficial strikes and social movement unionism. Following Rosa Luxemburg, he sees mass strikes as extending over a large territory without any central coordination, drawing new groups of workers into trade unions and political organisations, and affecting the political life of a whole country. His analysis of unofficial strikes shows that categorisations as ‘spontaneous’ or ‘wildcat’ strikes belie the fact that a high degree of informal organising is required to carry them out. Social movement unionism is defined variously as engaging with community and state power issues in addition to workplace issues in countries like Brazil, South Africa, South Korea and the Philippines, and as a form of unionism that seeks alliances with social movements like feminism and anti-racism on an equal basis in ‘core’ countries.
This chapter would have benefited from being split into two sections, one dealing with strikes and the other with unions. While the discussion of strikes is comprehensive, the discussion of unions receives short shrift. For example, the ‘corporatist’ model of unions includes occupational unions, general unions, and in some cases (as in France, Italy, India, and to a lesser extent Brazil) party-linked unions, and they often negotiate with the state on non-workplace issues like social security and welfare, which affect the working class as a whole including non-unionised workers, the unemployed, and workers’ families. In many cases they actually down-play workplace issues like work intensity and working conditions, which are central issues in the case studies. One reason for workers’ dissatisfaction with them is their lack of democratic involvement of workers in negotiating and decision-making. Then there are employer-controlled (‘yellow’) unions, and state-controlled unions as in China and Egypt, where attempts to form independent unions during the Tiananmen Square movement and Arab Spring were brutally crushed. A closer examination of the variety of workers’ unions would have highlighted the aspiration for union democracy, a central issue in the case studies.
Chapter 4 deals with two struggles in the Indian automobile industry, the first in the Maruti Suzuki automobile plant at Manesar in the National Capital Region, and the other at the Bajaj Auto factory in Chakan, not far from the Maharashtrian city of Pune. The background of the automobile industry in India and the two companies is comprehensive, with Maruti Suzuki emerging from a gradual takeover of the Indian public sector company Maruti by the Japanese multinational Suzuki, while Bajaj Auto is an Indian private sector company. The stories of the strikes are told vividly and well, with the voices of workers and activists relayed by means of quotations from interviews with them. The way in which local and more distant communities were drawn into the struggle is also conveyed well. However two elements of the labour history background are missing. The deliberate exclusion of informal workers from most labour legislation is mentioned, but the ways in which this has been employed by both employers and the state to push the vast majority of workers into informal labour from Independence or even before is not described: a very effective anti-union strategy because these workers can be dismissed without any redress if they try to organise.
Secondly, from the late 1940s onwards there is a history of blue-collar and white-collar workers resisting pressure to join either employer-sponsored unions or party-affiliated union federations and instead setting up independent plant-based or company-based unions. Where successful, these attempts resulted in much more democratic unions, but whenever they came under attack from employers, their isolation from other workers became a liability. It was in order to address this problem that the Trade Union Solidarity Committee, bringing together a large number of independent unions in the Bombay-Pune belt, was set up in 1989. Subsequently, following a long series of regional and national discussions, the New Trade Union Inititative (NTUI) was set up as a country-wide federation of independent unions in 2006.
This background is directly relevant to the case studies, because in both Maruti Suzuki and Bajaj there were ‘voluntary’ retirement schemes which were used to get rid of thousands of permanent workers so as to shift to a larger preponderance of informal workers, including so-called ‘contract workers,’ i.e. workers hired through labour contractors. Brutal working conditions and work intensity were issues in both Maruti Suzuki and Bajaj, and union demands for equal working conditions, wages and facilities for contract workers figured in both cases. Most importantly, the workers at both plants wanted management to recognise and bargain with their own independent union – the Maruti Suzuki Workers’ Union in Maruti Suzuki and Vishwa Kalyan Kamgar Sanghatana in Bajaj Auto – and both struggles received significant assistance from NTUI in mobilising national and international support.
Chapter 5 is about the wave of mass strikes in the Brazilian construction sector in 2011–2014, and includes comprehensive background information on the Brazilian construction industry; working conditions and workers’ struggles in the 1970s and 1980s; and the political and economic ramifications of the ‘neodevelopmentalist’ PT (Partido dos Trabahaldores) regime led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016), which combined neoliberal elements with state-led investment and development, cash transfers to the poorest, a considerable increase of the minimum wage, and a surge in formal employment. A notable feature of the regime was the fact that a large number of trade unionists, especially from the PT-linked CUT (Central Ùnica dos Trabahaldores) and the conservative Força Sindical, were integrated into state institutions, for example as managers of social security and pension funds and board members of medium and large state-owned companies.
Nowak explains that the specific nature of infrastrucure construction labour in Brazil accounts for the nature of their strikes. Most construction workers are migrant workers who move from one project to another, and thus have contacts throughout the country; moreover, communication between them has been facilitated by the use of mobile phones and social media. Given that many work in remote regions where food, accommodation and transport to and from work are provided by the employer, these too become bargaining issues for them along with wages and working conditions, as does the issue of leave to visit their families. This is especially the case in the less-industrialised Northeast and North, where the case studies were located.
The first case study is of strikes at the UTE (Usina Termeléctrica Energia) thermoelectric plant in Pecém in the northeast of Brazil, which was being constructed by a consortium of companies. After two smaller strikes, a major strike was organised by rank-and-file workers in March 2011. Following an incident in which fifty striking workers burned the housing facilities of more than 500 workers, a worker was charged with initiating the destruction and imprisoned for 18 days. A solidarity committee consisting of leaders of left-wing political parties and social movement activists campaigned for his release and produced a report documenting the unsatisfactory food supply and housing conditions. Several hundred workers were dismissed for their role in the strike, but a subsequent collective agreement conceded some of the demands made by workers.
The second case study, also in Pecém, is of strikes at the steel plant CSP (Companhia Siderurgica de Pecém) which was being constructed by South Korean company Posco. The presence of a large number of Korean engineers and supervisors led to complaints from workers that they introduced an alien ‘work culture’ which was more authoritarian and aggressive. The construction of the Belo Monte dam in the Northern state of Pará by a consortium of major construction companies was a case where repeated strikes and protests by workers were not supported by the official union, resulting in riots and violent repression by private and state security personnel. An unusual aspect of this case is that the strikers interacted with and received support from the indigenous people’s movement protesting against displacement resulting from the dam construction; indeed 20,000–30,000 of the workers were people who had lost their livelihoods when they were displaced by the dam.
Chapter 3 on the global context is marred by theoretical confusion. If multinationals based in Korea, a former colony, can be called ‘imperialist capital,’ presumably the same term applies to Indian and Brazilian multinationals, as suggested by Vijay Prasad when he says these countries lack an ‘ideological alternative to imperialism’ (quoted on p.112). This seems to rely on a vulgar Marxist-Leninist analysis that conflates capital (which is inherently global) with imperialism, which entails domination by the state of one country over the people of another. There is no evidence that the Japanese state intervened to support Maruti Suzuki, or that the Korean state intervened to support Posco at CSP; in fact it was the state security forces of the host country, eager to attract foreign investment, that provided support to both companies.
This book contains illuminating insights, such as the observation that attempts by the previous United Progressive Alliance in India and PT regime in Brazil to combine social welfare measures with attacks on workers’ rights resulted in elite and middle-class support for the far-right regimes of Narendra Modi and Jair Bolsonaro without any countervailing mobilisation on the left. Its greatest strength lies in the fascinating case studies, which make a very useful contribution to the broader analysis of mass strikes.
(This review was first published in Labor History in November 2021. The book was published in Switzerland by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019, xi+319 pages.)