Abstract:
Employer crackdowns on trade unionisation, neoliberal governments’ gutting of trade
union protections, and increasing bureaucratisation and risk-averseness of unions
themselves, have led to declines in traditional trade union membership. This coupled with
informalisation, feminisation, increased migrant labour, newer workforces, and alternate
modes of worker organising, has forced trade unions to alter their methods of organising in
order to retain their base and their relevance. One way that this has manifested is through
social movement unionism, where trade unions explicitly partner with social movements
and NGOs on campaigns and social movement work. In this paper, I assess the viability of
these social movement unionism coalitions by examining several case studies in the Global
North and South through secondary and primary research and identifying conditions for
success and failure. I argue that due to increased migration of workers from the Global
South to the Global North, the relocation of labour and capital to the Global South itself, and
increasingly radical feminist lenses in worker organising and social movements, unions
who have prioritised strategies led by people of colour and praxis that is explicitly
decolonial, feminist, and transnational have greater success. This is true both when unions
work independently and when collaborating with social movements. When such
collaborations between unions and non-union social movement forces fail, it is often due
to the opaque and top-down organising methods that plague traditional trade unions, and
using outdated organising models that preference white, heterosexual men. But when
collaborations occur successfully, these coalitions exhibit explicitly feminist and decolonial modes of organising through horizontal and diversified leadership that centre
the most directly impacted organisers and activists, transparent and democratic decisionmaking
and communications channels, and expansive and radical worldviews that reach
beyond campaign wins to orient towards transformative change.
