ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the anthropology of labour politics, focussing on trade unions and other collective associations based on how people make a living. Traditional industrial unions have lost power globally. Workers have become more precarious and less able to organise collectively. Yet unions have not completely disappeared, and some sectors of the economy have seen maintained or growing mobilisation. In many cities, even informal sector workers organise collectively. The story of labour agency is one neither of clear and inexorable decline nor of straightforward progress towards equity. It is deeply uneven, as workers collaborate to pressure employers and the state, sometimes successfully, often not. The chapter focusses on a few of the kinds of collective labour mobilisations studied by anthropologists, focussing first on industrial spaces, then on less ‘traditional’ spaces for trade unionism in the public and service sectors, and moving thence to informal sector mobilisation. Non-industrial workers’ organisations reveal the importance of embedding collective labour politics within community politics and the labour of social reproduction. The chapter draws on examples from Latin America, Southern Africa, the UK, the US and Southeast Asia.
