The Crisis of Neoliberalism and the Impasse of the Union Movement

In: Development dialogue, Heft 51, S. 119-131

Abstract

Explores the link between the emergence of neoliberalism & the defeat of working class politics/unions to argue that the current economic crisis has discredited neoliberalism's free-market ideology & revealed neoliberal policies as a social disaster. Nonetheless, neoliberalism remains embedded in state structures & policy instruments. Its objective of disorganizing unions & other working class organizations continues to be the greatest obstacle to the establishment of a postneoliberal political order. Challenges to unions like pressure on wages/workplace controls & flexible labor market policies placed the union movement in a defensive position. However, the decline in employment resulting from the economic recession, the deterioration in public service working conditions, & the closing of the gap between social justice movements & the union movement have produced openings for new union activism. It is contended that strengthening the labor movement requires it to become part of a reconstruction of the left. The potential for breaking through the structures of neoliberalism & creating a new union politics as part of a true postneoliberal social order is discussed. J. Lindroth