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Trade Union Organizing in the Informal

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Trade Union Organizing in the Informal THE TRANSFORMATION OF WORK: CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES Trade Unions Organizing Workers “Informalized From Above:” Case Studies from Cambodia, Colombia, South Africa, and Tunisia The Transformation of Work research series is produced by the Solidarity Center to expand scholarship on and understanding of issues facing workers in an increasingly globalized world. The series is a product of the Solidarity Center’s USAID-funded Global Labor Program, which supports the efforts of the Solidarity Center and its consortium partners—the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations and Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)—to document challenges to decent work and the strategies workers and their organizations engage to overcome those challenges. This report was made possible through support provided by the Office of Democracy and Governance, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, U.S. Agency for International Development, under the terms of Award No. AID-OAA-L-11-00001. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Any errors found in the research are the author’s own. © 2013 Solidarity Center Trade Unions Organizing Workers “Informalized “From Above:” Case Studies from Cambodia, Colombia, South Africa, and Tunisia Report to the Solidarity Center Principal Investigators: Susan J. Schurman and Adrienne E. Eaton Contributing Authors: F. Scott Bentley, Mary Evans. Daniel Hawkins, Stephen Juan King, and Sahra Ryklief Rutgers University January 2013 Acknowledgements: The authors would like to acknowledge the editing assistance of Kay Lynch and Fidelia Pokuah. We are also grateful to Tom Egan, Kate Doherty, Nalishha Mehta, Lisa McGowan, Shawna Bader-Blau, Michael Schawaabe, David Welsh, Rhett Doumitt, Tom Bacote and Molly McCoy from the Solidarity Center for providing our research team with access to the trade unions, workers and other organizations working on behalf of informal workers in the four countries that are the focus of this research and for their helpful feedback on our report. Any errors in the report, however, are entirely our own This report was made possible through support provided by the Office of Democracy and Governance, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, US Agency for International Development, under the terms of Award No. AID-OAA-L-00001. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Agency for International Development. Contributors F. Scott Bentley is a PhD student in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management at Rutgers University’s School of Management and Labor Relations. Adrienne E. Eaton is chair of the Labor Studies and Employment Relations department at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on labor-management partnerships, union organizing under neutrality and card check and the impact of unionization on particular occupational groups including managerial workers and graduate student employees. She’s the co-author along with Tom Kochan, Paul Adler and Robert McKersie of the book, Healing Together: The Kaiser Permanente Labor-Management Partnership, editor with Jeff Keefe of Employment Dispute Resolution in the Changing Workplace, and author of numerous articles published in journals like Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, Labor Studies Journal, and Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations. Mary Evans was born in Cambodia and raised in a refugee camp. She is a lecturer at Rutgers University and holds a Master of Labor and Employment Relations. Her interests include international labor relations and economic policy. Daniel Hawkins is a Post-Doctoral scholar in the Center for Global Workers' Rights at Pennsylvania State University. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Kassel, Germany. He is the author of "The Struggles over City-Space: Informal Street Vending & Public Space Governance in Medellin, Colombia", published in 2011 by NOMOS Verlagsgesellschaft. Daniel's research focuses on informal workers in the global economy, trade unions in Latin America, and state reconfigurations in the era of globalisation. Prior to arriving at Penn State University, Daniel worked as a researcher at the National Trade Union School of Colombia (ENS). Sahra Ryklief is the Secretary General of the International Federation of Workers’ Education Associations. She holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Liverpool, and has been active in South Africa’s political and labour arena for more than 30 years. She was previously the director of the Labour Research Service and contributed to and edited multiple publications produced by this institution during the past two decades. Stephen J. King an associate professor of government at Georgetown University. His research focuses on the politics of economic reform, the forms and dynamics of authoritarian rule, and regime transition processes in the Middle East and North Africa. He is the author of Liberalization Against Democracy: The Local Politics of Economic Reform in Tunisia, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003) and The New Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). Susan J. Schurman is Professor and Dean of the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers – The State University of New Jersey. She is the current President of the International Federation of Workers Education Associations and President Emeritus of the National Labor College. Her research focuses on trade union effectiveness, workplace safety and health and worker’ education and training. Recent publications include: Labor Deserves Credit: "The Popular Education Foundations of the National Labor College." In P. Finn and M. Finn (Eds.). Teacher Education with an Attitude: Preparing Teachers to Educate Working Class Students in Their Collective Self Interest. SUNY Press. 2007. 1 CONTENTS General Introduction and Literature Review 3 Unions Confronting the “Triple Threat” to Labor Rights - Flexibilization, Globalization and Privatization: a Review of Selected Cases ................................................................................. 7 Conclusions from the Literature Review ................................................................................... 25 Gaining Formality to Create Change: A Case Study of the Organizing Campaign by the Cambodian Food Service Workers Federation and the Beer Promoter Women of Cambrew Ltd. in Cambodia 26 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 26 Research Methods ..................................................................................................................... 40 Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................................. 54 The Formalization and Unionization Campaign in the Buenaventura Port, Colombia 57 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 57 Research Methods ..................................................................................................................... 70 Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................................. 96 “A Confusion of Categories!”: A Case Study of the Organization of Casual and Contract Workers by the South African Commercial, Catering, and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU) 101 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 101 Research Method ..................................................................................................................... 101 Concluding Remarks ............................................................................................................... 122 A Return to Standard Employment in Tunisia’s Public Sector 130 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 130 Concluding Remarks ............................................................................................................... 143 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 1455 2 GENERAL INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW This report is the second working paper from a five year study aimed at documenting the effects of globalization on the nature of work and on labor and employment relations around the world. In particular the research seeks to describe efforts by trade unions to organize workers in the informal economy in order to provide these workers the benefits attached to formal employment.1 The process of globalization has dramatically increased the mobility of capital across national borders thereby increasing the interdependence of developed and developing countries and creating intensified competition across a broad range of markets – especially labor markets. Globalization has been a major factor behind significant changes in the employment and labor relations systems of both developed and developing nations on such basic characteristics as wage levels, labor deployment and labor standards. One major consequence of these changes has been a decline in trade union density in many countries.2
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