FOLLOW THE WOMEN: NEW FORMS OF ORGANISING?

Abstract

In the face of globalised neoliberal capitalism and the allied rise in precarious working, there comes an increased focus on the position of women at work, including migrant women. Women have long been familiar with the conditions of precarity, and their vulnerability calls for increased protection through collective solidarity and trade union organising. Yet they are just the workers that traditional ‘pale, male, stale’ unions designate as difficult to reach and uneconomic to organise. In reality it is the rigidity of bureaucratic masculinised labour unions which are insufficiently flexible and cannot or will not respond to the needs and work patterns of 50% of the workforce. So, it falls to women themselves to find other ways of organising while at the same time pressing traditional unions to respond to their demands. Social movement unionism, especially in the global South shows how this can be done. And at local level, there are increasing examples of women organising in their communities, in ethnic and religious enclaves. In this paper key issues are examined and examples shown of women’s organising, such as the International Domestic Workers Federation; the first global union organisation in the world run by women. A women’s vanguard can be seen to lead the way in new ways of organising.