The Global Restructuring of Labor Movements 

Beverly Silver, The Johns Hopkins University 

The widespread view that labor movements are facing a general and terminal crisis and 
have become irrelevant actors in the contemporary world is based on analyses which are 
short-term and core-centric. From a world-systems perspectiv e -- that is, if we length en 
the temporal and geographical boundaries of analysis -- patterns can be identified that 
raise doubt.., concerning the wisdom of either generalizing from the recent experience of 
core countries to the entire world or projecting the current crisis of labor mov em ents in 
the core into the indefinite future . 

The sharp decline in overt expressions of labor unrest over the past two decad es has be en 
a strictly core phenomenon. Outside the core labor unrest ha.., been rising during the same 
period (see the World Labor Group's special issue of Review, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1995) . This 
labor unrest has taken two main forms. First, as Fordist-type mass production has 
expanded in the semipcriphcry, dynamic union movements emerged in countries as 
diverse as Brazil and Poland, South Africa and South Korea . These labor mov ements 
have not only been effective in demanding "more and better" for th eir members; th ey 
have also played a key role in pushing the democratization processes in these countries 
beyond the limit.., intended by business and political elite. Second, a wave of labor and 
mass popular protests has swept the Third World in response to llvlF-typ c structural 
adjustment policies and austerity politics. Seen from this point of view, th e 1995 general 
strike in France is not "the first revolt against globalization" - as Le Monde would hav e it 
- but the tail end of a major world-wide wave of resistance . 

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These two types of labor unrest are rooted in two different (lar gely sequential) respons es 
to h eightene d world-economic competition by corporate decision-mak ers in the post-
1968 period. First , a handful of semip eripheral and peripheral sit es with cheap labor and 
authoritarian governments were chosen as "safe bets" for industrial investment by U.S. 
and West-European mass production multinationals . However, as productive capital 
flow ed into these countries, it also brought into being powerful n ew working classes and 
labor movements . Corpora te decision-makers have responded to these n ew labor 
movements with a further round of "dcindustriali zation ." For example, industrial 
emp loyment in the ABC region outside Sao Paolo (and membership in Brazil's 
metalworkers union - the core of "new trade unionism") has b een cut in half since the 
height of the mass strike movement in the mid-1 980s. The new favored sites of 
investment are large ly in Eas t Asia (especially China); and if past experience is a guid e to 
future dynamics, we should expect powerful new working classes and labor movements 
to emerge in those regions which arc now industrializing rapidl y. 



By the 1980s it had become clear to corporate decision-makers that there is no such thing 
as an inherently docile working class. It was as if they had been chasing the mirage of 
cheap and disciplined labor around the world, only to find themselves continuously 
recreating militant labor movements in the new locations. As the limits of the industrial 
relocation "solution" became clear, a second response to heightened world-economic 
competition gathered force in the 1980s and 1990s: disinvestment from production, 
investment in finance and speculative activities, and pressuring states to redistribute 
resources from labor to capital. The growing financialization of capital, thus, has gone 
hand-in-hand with a rapid and unseemly polarization of wealth, both intra-nationally and 
internationally. 

The limits of this "solution" arc also beginning to dawn on the world's business and 
intellectual elite. Fear of a major popular backlash against "globalization" is growing. 
They draw their lessons from the protests against structural adjustment in much of the 
Third World, the growing social disorder in countries subjected to the "cure" (Yugoslavia 
being an extreme exemplar), and perhaps, from a reading of The Great Transformation 
(in which Polanyi links the "utopian" attempt to fully commodify labor and create a self-
rcgulating world market economy to the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary 
upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century). 

Workers and workers' movements thus have been key actors shaping the historical 
development of the modern world-system. Moreover, there is every reason to think that 
this will continue to be the case. However, reliance on a simple repeat of past patterns 
would also be misguided. Most importantly, the responses of capitalists and states to 
worker resistance have continuously undermined old working classes and created new 
working classes. In core countries, the predominant transformations brought about during 
the past several decades have been (1) the feminization and internationalization (through 
immigration) of the labor force; and (2) the decreasing size and growing "flexibility" of 
workplaces. Just as the rise of a semiskilled immigrant factory proletariat and the shift 
from craft to mass production debilitated old forms of working-class organization and 
mobilization and required a major new rethinking of working class strategics, so recent 
transformations provide an analogous challenge for contemporary labor movements. 
There arc embryonic signs that core labor movements have taken up this challenge after a 
long-period of denial (and hence, decline). 

Finally, the promise of mass consumption - the extension of the "American Dream" to the 
workers of the world - had been a central prop legitimizing U.S. hegemony, as well as 
defining what is an acceptable goal for labor movements world-wide. (Even in 
communist states "catching-up" with the consumption standards of the West was a clearly 
stated goal.) However, it is clear that the world-scale generalization of mass consumption 
standards is limited, not just by the recent U.S. abandonment of its own hegemonic 
promise in favor of regressive redistribution, but also by increasingly tight ecological 
constraints. Given these constraints, and the enormous inequalities in world-income 
distribution now existing, a major reorientation away from consumerist dispositions is 
required. In sum, serious strategic rethinking on multiple fronts is crucial if labor ( and 



other social) movements arc to contribute effectively to the construction of a more 
egalitarian and sustainable world. 

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