Month: November 2012

#Walmartstrike and the union resurgence

The #Walmartstrike on Black Friday was an historic moment for the global labour movement. It represents the public coming out of the synthesis of occupy direct action tactics and sustainable union structures to produce a direct unionism that has the capacity to overturn corporate hegemony.

Corporate USA, especially in the retail sector, had an extremely effective strategy for ensuring their underpaid staff don’t come together in a representative union structure. This anti-union induction video for Walmart competitor, Target, is a striking example of the strategy:

Continue reading “#Walmartstrike and the union resurgence” →

For the global emancipation of labour: new movements and struggles around work, workers and precarity

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The latest edition of Interface, a journal for and about social movements, is out. This edition concentrates on global labour movements, and the rise of the struggle against precarity. You can check out my article on direct unionism and a whole host of other goodness, including but not limited to Elise Thorburn and Peter Waterman.

Check it all out here.

Capitalism, Repression and Resistance (Part 1)

Now the ongoing travelling circus of US Presidential politics is taking a 5-minute coffee break, we can all go back to pondering the big questions again (that is until we get the latest news on whether 2016 will be a Clinton-Bush contest). For me that means thinking about the links between (a) the capitalist economy as we know it, (b) the operating of an increasingly authoritarian state/corporate security apparatus, and as such (c) strategies for resistance and renewal. Continue reading “Capitalism, Repression and Resistance (Part 1)” →