Women from BOMSA, a GAATW member organisation in Bangladesh, at a 2014 May Day Rally in Dhaka. Photo provided by author, all rights reserved.
Organised workers are antithetical to neoliberalism. In neoliberal thought, ‘the organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers’, writes George Monbiot in the Guardian this month. International Workers Day gives us an opportunity to think about how to fight new challenges brought about by globalisation – the denigration of labour rights, privatisation and austerity that neoliberalism has heralded.
In the global north, unions are in decline both in membership and in influence, where they are losing control over traditional levers of power. While the crushing of organised labour in the global north remains a dominant narrative, the global south tells a different story. As industries have relocated to capitalise on low cost labour markets, worker organising has slowly followed. Research shows that the number, influence and density of labour unions in the global south have steadily risen.
