Continental Crucible

Roman Richard

Description

Continental Crucible examines the clash between the corporate offensive and the forces of resistance from both a pan-continental and a class struggle perspective. This book also illustrates the ways in which the capitalist classes in Canada, Mexico and the United States used free trade agreements to consolidate their agendas and organise themselves continentally. The failure of traditional labour responses to stop the continental offensive being waged by big business has led workers and unions to explore new strategies of struggle and organisation.

Sujets

• Industrial relations
• Labour economics

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 18 juin 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629631363
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Praise for Continental Crucible
"This insightful, revealing, and passionate book is a must-read for workers and union activists all over the world in their efforts to develop strategies to overcome neoliberalism. The creation of a single North American and global labor market by NAFTA and neoliberal globalization has created both the bases and the necessity for workers and unions to move beyond nationalism and chauvinism."
Alejandro Álvarez, professor at the Faculty of Economics-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México ( UMAM ), member of the Trinational Coalition for the Defense of Public Education and of the ’68 Pro-Democratic Liberties Committee
"The analysis presented by the authors and the conclusions they come to are fundamentally sound. The call for going beyond basic cooperation between unions to a profound transformation of unions into organizations fighting for the needs and aspirations of working people in all three countries is powerful and exciting. This very readable text may well prove crucial for those wanting to move beyond a national framework and encompass one that is continental and global."
Chris Schenk , Global Labour Journal
"All of those interested in understanding the nature of the problems we face in taking on the capitalist class and building a new continental labor movement will find this book essential."
Dan La Botz , New Politics
"The product of decades of close collaboration between two participant/observers of the Mexican labor movement, Continental Crucible is a significant contribution to the literature on NAFTA and labor that merits the study and consideration of labor educators."
Labor Studies Journal
"Roman and Velasco have made a valuable contribution to understanding the convergence of North American political economy under free trade and neoliberalism, and a timely intervention in their call for a transnational labor movement with transformative ambitions."
Working USA
"This tremendously insightful book not only offers a rare analysis of the intertwining political economies of all three countries that make up North America, but does so in a manner that tellingly reveals the specific nature of the American empire, and how it is affected by class struggles within each state. No other study has shown so clearly that, far from the neoliberal integration of the continent being imposed from the outside by the United States, it was the Canadian and Mexican states which took the crucial initiatives, above all as a means of shifting the domestic balance of class forces in favour of their own capitalist classes and against their working classes. A must-read for critical thinkers and activists in all three countries."
Leo Panitch, Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science, York University, and co-author (with Sam Gindin) of The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire

To our parents, immigrants to the Americas, who believed that another world was possible .
Copyright © 2015 Richard Roman and Edur Velasco Arregui
This edition copyright © 2015 PM Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted
by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
Editing: Curran Faris
Interior design: Brenda Conroy
Cover design: John van der Woude
Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Published in Canada by Fernwood Publishing
32 Oceanvista Lane, Black Point, Nova Scotia, B0J 1B0
and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3G 0X3
www.fernwoodpublishing.ca
Published in the rest of the world by PM Press
PO Box 23912, Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Fernwood Publishing Company Limited gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage, the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism under the Manitoba Publishers Marketing Assistance Program and the Province of Manitoba, through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, for our publishing program.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015930881
PM Press ISBN: 9781629630953
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Roman, Richard, author
Continental crucible : big business, workers and unions in the transformation of North America / Richard Roman and Edur Velasco Arregui. -- Second edition.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-55266-736-1 (pbk.)
1. Labor unions--North America. 2. Corporate power--North America. 3. Labor movement--North America. 4. Working class--North America--Social conditions--21st century. 5. Free trade--Economic aspects--North America. 6. North America--Commerce. I. Velasco Arregui, Edur, author II. Title.
HF1746.R64 2015 331.88097 C2015-900666-X
Contents
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Preface by Mel Watkins
Foreword by Steve Early
Introduction: The Crucible of North American Transformation
Part I: The Big Business Offensive: Continental Integration and the Class Offensive from Above
1 The North American Corporate Offensive: The United States
Construction Woes: Capitalist Neo-Liberalism Takes Shape
The BRT Emerges
2 The North American Corporate Offensive: Canada
A Double Threat: Labour Militancy and Interventionist Nationalism
Labour Militancy
Interventionist Nationalism
Big Business Fights Back
3 The North American Corporate Offensive: Mexico
The Post-Revolutionary Regime and Big Business
The Transition: The Struggle for Hegemony
The Neo-Liberal Regime: Bourgeois Domination Without the Consolidation of a Hegemonic Historic Bloc
4 The North American Corporate Offensive: NAFTA
The Binational Evolution of NAFTA
Mexico’s Shift and NAFTA
Selling NAFTA in the United States
Business Gets Directly Involved: Trade Advisory Groups
Bills of Rights for Capital
Part II: The Two Binationalisms: Immigrants, Workers and Unions
5 Mexican Immigration and the U.S. Labour Market
The Continental Corporate Offensive and Immigration
The Continental Corporate Offensive, the Race to the Bottom and Immigration
From Third World to First World: Poverty, Crisis, More Poverty
Mass Immigration: Safety Valve for Mexican Capitalism, Subsidy for U.S. Capitalism
6 Continental Integration from Below: The History of Transnational Labour Markets and Labour Movements in North America
Pre-NAFTA Labour Markets
Pre-NAFTA Labour Movements
Part III: Workers and Unions: Responses and Continental Integration from Below
7 Fighting Back: Workers, Unions and Continental Solidarity
Solidarity or Competition in the Context of Uneven Development
The Limits of Presently Existing Unionism
The Limits of Presently Existing Solidarity
Transforming Unionism, Transforming Solidarity, Transforming Society
8 Fighting Back: The Mexican Spark?
9 Fighting Back: The Seeds of Worker Continentalism
Epilogue: Rising from the Ashes of NAFTA
The Big Business Offensive Continues
From Passivity to Resistance: Two Periods of the Big Business Offensive
Playing with Fire: The Neoliberal Assault Intensifies in Mexico
From Resistance to Transformation
References
Index
Acronyms and Abbreviations ACCM American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico ACTPN Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations AFL American Federation of Labor AFL-CIO American Federation of Labor Congress of Industrial Organizations ASARCO American Smelting and Refining Company BCNI Business Council on National Issues BCTD Building and Construction Trades Department BCTF British Columbia Teachers Federation BFA Bilateral Framework Agreement on Trade and Investment BIP Border Industrialization Program BLS Bureau of Labor Statistics BRT Business Roundtable CATJO Canadian Alliance for Trade and Job Opportunities CAUT Canadian Association of University Teachers CAW Canadian Auto Workers CCC Canadian Chamber of Commerce CCCE Canadian Council of Chief Executives CCE Consejo Coordinador Empresarial (Business Coordinating Council) CDC Canada Development Corporation CEMAI Consejo Empresarial Mexicano para Asuntos Internacionales (Mexican Business Council for International Affairs) CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations CLC Canadian Labour Congress CMA Canadian Manufacturers’ Association CMHN Camara Mexicana de Hombres de Negocios (Mexican Businessmen’s Council) COECE Coordinadora de Organismos Empresariales de Comercio Exterior (Coordinator for Foreign Trade Business Organizations) COM Casa del Obrero Mundial (House of the World Workers) CONEVAL Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social (National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy) CPP Canada Pension Plan CPQ Conseil du Patronat du Québec (Quebec Council of Employers) CSQ Centrale des Syndicats du Québec (Confederation of Trade Unions of Quebec) CT Congreso del Trabajo (Labour Congress) CTF Canadian Teachers’ Federation CTM Confederación de Trabajadores de México (Confederation of Mexican Workers) CUAIR Construction Users Anti-Inflation Roundtable CUFTA Canada U.S. Free Trade Agreement ERISA Employee Retirement Income Security Act FAT Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (Authentic Workers’ Front) FDN Frente Democrático Nacional (National Democratic Front) FIRA Foreign Investment Review Agency FLQ Front de libération du Québec (Quebec Liberation Front) FNEEQ-CSN Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec GDP gross domestic product ICA Ingenieros Civiles Asociados (Civil Engineers Associates) IMF International Monetary Fund IMSS Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (Mexican Social Security Institute) INEGI Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (National Institute of Statistics and Geography) ISI import substitution industrialization ISSSTE Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Est