Union Campaigns as Countermovements: “Best Practice” Cases from the United Kingdom, France and the United States

Setting the stage of the book:

We compare recent innovative union campaigns in three countries: the CGT-led “sans papiers” campaign from 2008 to 2010 in France, the “Justice for Cleaners” campaign led by TGWU/Unite from 2005 to 2010 in the United Kingdom, and the CLEAN Carwash campaign led by the Community-Labor-Environmental Action Network and the United Steelworkers in the United States, 2008-2012.  Surprisingly, in spite of deep differences in union traditions and structures as well as political-economic context, campaign strategies are more substantially similar than different.  From an analytical perspective, we consider    the campaigns as examples of “countermovements ” against the expansion of unregulated labor markets (Polanyi 1944). In contrast to the British, French and American stories related here, we have found less emphasis on the mobilization of immigrant workers in Germany. To what extent is the German case fundamentally different? The other panelists will further explore this question.