New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class-Struggle Unionism ed. by Immanuel Ness (review)

This edited collection features detailed studies of recent labour movements characterized by direct action and workers’ control. Thirteen country-based case studies highlight examples of workers rejecting existing bureaucratic and official unionism in favour of autonomous organization and direct action reminiscent of early 20th-century syndicalism. In his Introduction and concluding chapter, editor Immanuel Ness pushes back against a labour strategy that seeks to revitalize conventional unions, arguing that the system of collective bargaining has failed. Ness and other contributors frame recent worker-initiated unions as models that can replace a bureaucratic unionism that has been neutered by state and capital. Ness, for example, argues that, while the 1935 Wagner Act in the United States brought benefits for workers, the labour movement has since been defeated by capital’s relentless onslaught, which was aided by the collaboration of many paid union officials. Concessions required by collective bargaining, such as trading away workers’ right to strike, enervated the labour movement and allowed gains to be reversed, particularly with the introduction of neoliberal policies in the 1970s. To counter the neoliberal assault, the labour movement should embrace a more radical solidarity unionism based on class struggle and direct negotiations with management by the workers themselves.

The volume is divided into three sections with case studies of autonomous workers’ movements grouped together into three categories: Europe and Asia, the global South, and the global North. Yet all chapters are connected by a theme focused on independent labour organizing, producing a largely coherent thesis as workers across disparate regions face similar challenges and in many cases are responding to those challenges in the same spirit of direct action unionism.

A standout contribution is Erik Forman’s personal account of an Industrial Workers of the World (iww) effort to organize fast food workers at Jimmy John’s in Minnesota. Forman’s irreverent narrative ties together some of the main themes of the volume and, as Staughton Lynd notes in his Foreword, since solidarity unionism relies on workers’ self-organization, worker perspectives are essential. Forman documents the struggle he and dozens of comrades from several shops or “poverty-wage sandwich plantations” (214) launched against management. Forman argues the massive growth of an exploitative fast food industry, along with the broader service industries, together with the decline of bureaucratic labour can allow direct action unionism to flourish. (The recent union drive “Fight for $15” led by striking fast food workers across North America appears to support this argument.) He seeks to recover the praxis of early 20th-century syndicalism, before union leaders adopted collective bargaining concessions. While the iww local at Jimmy John’s has experimented with conventional methods – such as seeking official recognition through an election, which they lost by only two votes – Forman reports that direct action tactics have proven much more effective at advancing worker interests at Jimmy John’s.

Forman’s chapter is followed by Jack Kirkpatrick’s account of the iww cleaners’ branch union in the United Kingdom. Developing one of the volume’s themes, Kirkpatrick considers that neoliberalism has returned labour to a position similar to that of a century ago, in which a global order marked by transnational corporate dominance and extreme inequality, combined with low union density, demands more radical forms of organization to counter capitalist hegemony. He argues that traditional collective bargaining is simply incapable of defending worker interests, especially the largely migrant workers who perform service jobs such as London’s cleaners.

One of the volume’s strengths lies in the substantial attention given to similar currents surfacing across the world, in perhaps unexpected places; recent worker movements described in China and Russia are also characterized by autonomous organization, radical direct action, and opposition to existing bureaucratic unions closely tied to the state. Au Loong Yu and Bai Ruixue begin their chapter on China with a class analysis of the 1989 Democracy Movement, highlighting the significant role played by workers...