Abstract
Economic globalization has undermined worker’s rights and traditional forms of worker’s power, but workers and trade unions have responded with new and innovative ways of “labor transnationalism”. This study aimed at formulating a more comprehensive picture of the largely unmapped terrain of institutional interactions and transnational activism in the field of labor. Overall, I conclude that multilevel labor-rights activism contributes to a process of selective convergence between Chinese labor politics and practices and international standards. Selective convergence means that, over time, Chinese labor law and factory practices increased its congruence with international core labor standards, while considerable discrepancies, in particular, in the understanding of freedom-of-association rights, continue to remain. This enabled labor activists to exert some influence on better working conditions, while in many cases their demands for better working conditions via worker empowernment got channeled into managerial dominated problem solution.
Therewith, the book advances literature in social movement, labor and governance studies which have started to recognize “complex internationalism” and the impact of transnational activism across borders, by further conceptualizing the complexity of international regimes as social movement environments, including the relevance of institutional interactions, multipolar power relationships, and the continuous change inherent in the governance architecture for activism. These insights have also broader political and practical implications by pointing to the potential threat from authoritarian regimes to undermine, directly and indirectly, the opportunities that organized civil societies have to participate in the current global governance architecture. The book shows that the strong interest alignments of political and economic elites favors labor rights improvements based on individual rights, taming, de-politicizing and marketizing the demands and outcomes of collective action and activism.
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Zajak, S. (2017). Conclusion: Labor Transnationalism in Global Capitalism and Plural Institutional Settings. In: Transnational Activism, Global Labor Governance, and China. Non-Governmental Public Action. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95022-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95022-5_7
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