Supply Chain Organizing as a Worker-led Strategy for Trade: A Case Study of Unite the Union
-
Andrew Waterman
and
Ben Norman
Abstract
Global trade is often understood by trade union officials to be an abstract policy-level issue without a direct role for workers or shop floor influence. As the UK establishes an independent trade policy in the wake of Brexit, this article explores the concept of strategic supply chain organizing as the basis for a shop steward-led strategy to counter the industrial impact of trade. Based on interviews with Unite shop stewards and work with the union’s Research Department, this article explores efforts within Unite the Union, the largest private and public sector trade union in the UK and Ireland, to advance such a strategy through the union’s activist shop stewards and democratic structures. While considering the limitations of existing union approaches to trade issues as well as the challenges of developing such a strategy within the context of a large multisector trade union, the article puts forward a methodology of applied industrial research rooted in the principles of workers’ inquiry and supply chain solidarity. Taken together, the article considers the potential for new collaboration between the union’s shop stewards within supply chains to more fully realize their latent collective industrial power.
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editors’ Forums
- Workers’ Movements and the Global Supply Chain: Introduction
- Supply Chain Organizing as a Worker-led Strategy for Trade: A Case Study of Unite the Union
- Automation Processes in the Port Industry and Union Strategies: The Case of Antwerp
- Toward Degrowth: Worker Power, Surveillance Abolition, and Climate Justice at Amazon
- Fragmented But Widespread Microconflicts: Current Limits and Future Possibilities for Organizing Precarious Workers in the French Logistics Sector
- Global Justice Advocacy, Trade Unions, and the Supply Chain Law Initiative in Germany
- Reportage
- Supply Chain Workers’ Inquiries: Class Struggle along Value Chains
- Book Reviews
- John M. Hobson: Multicultural Origins of the Global Economy: Beyond the Western-Centric Frontier
- Benjamin D. Hopkins: Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State
- Daniel Palm: Seizing the Square. 1989 Protests in China and Germany from a Global Perspective
- Peter Svik: Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editors’ Forums
- Workers’ Movements and the Global Supply Chain: Introduction
- Supply Chain Organizing as a Worker-led Strategy for Trade: A Case Study of Unite the Union
- Automation Processes in the Port Industry and Union Strategies: The Case of Antwerp
- Toward Degrowth: Worker Power, Surveillance Abolition, and Climate Justice at Amazon
- Fragmented But Widespread Microconflicts: Current Limits and Future Possibilities for Organizing Precarious Workers in the French Logistics Sector
- Global Justice Advocacy, Trade Unions, and the Supply Chain Law Initiative in Germany
- Reportage
- Supply Chain Workers’ Inquiries: Class Struggle along Value Chains
- Book Reviews
- John M. Hobson: Multicultural Origins of the Global Economy: Beyond the Western-Centric Frontier
- Benjamin D. Hopkins: Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State
- Daniel Palm: Seizing the Square. 1989 Protests in China and Germany from a Global Perspective
- Peter Svik: Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War
