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A story that involves as its main players "workers" and "Walmart" does not usually have a happy ending for labor, so the counternarrative offered by Building Power from Below is must reading for activists and union personnel as well as scholars. In 2008 Walmart acquired a controlling share in a large supermarket chain in Santiago, Chile. As part of the deal Walmart had to accept the unions that were already in place. Since then, Chilean retail and warehouse workers have done something that has seemed impossible for labor in the United States: they have organized even more successful unions and negotiated unprecedented contracts with Walmart. In Building Power from Below, Carolina Bank Munoz attributes Chilean workers' success in challenging the world's largest corporation to their organizations' commitment to union democracy and building strategic capacity. Chilean workers have spent years building grassroots organizations committed to principles of union democracy. Retail workers' unions have less structural power, but have significant associational and symbolic power. Their most notable successes have been in fighting for respect and dignity on the job.
Warehouse workers by contrast have substantial structural power and have achieved significant economic gains. While the model in Chile cannot necessarily be reproduced in different countries, we can gain insights from the Chilean workers' approaches, tactics, and strategies.
A story that involves as its main players "workers" and "Walmart" does not usually have a happy ending for labor, so the counternarrative offered by Building Power from Below is must reading for activists and union personnel as well as scholars. In 2008 Walmart acquired a controlling share in a large supermarket chain in Santiago, Chile. As part of the deal Walmart had to accept the unions that were already in place. Since then, Chilean retail and warehouse workers have done something that has seemed impossible for labor in the United States: they have organized even more successful unions and negotiated unprecedented contracts with Walmart. In Building Power from Below, Carolina Bank Munoz attributes Chilean workers' success in challenging the world's largest corporation to their organizations' commitment to union democracy and building strategic capacity. Chilean workers have spent years building grassroots organizations committed to principles of union democracy. Retail workers' unions have less structural power, but have significant associational and symbolic power. Their most notable successes have been in fighting for respect and dignity on the job.
Warehouse workers by contrast have substantial structural power and have achieved significant economic gains. While the model in Chile cannot necessarily be reproduced in different countries, we can gain insights from the Chilean workers' approaches, tactics, and strategies.
Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms
1. Beating the Bully
2. Walmart in Chile
3. Leveraging Power
4. Strategic Democracy
5. The Flexible Militancy of Walmart Retail Workers
6. Looking Back and Going Forward
References
Index
Carolina Bank Munoz is Associate Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College. She is the author of Transnational Tortillas, also from Cornell.
An accessible, insightful, and refreshing contribution.
*Mobilization*
Building Power from Below is an enjoyable read. Muñoz introduces
the union leaders and activists by name. The reader feels an
intimacy with those activists. This book should be read by all
those interested in strengthening democracy, militancy and
strategic capacity in trade unions. It is a demonstration of how
workers even under a neoliberal state and employed by the world's
most anti-union corporation can beat the bully and win.
*Counterfire*
I would highly recommend this book to both labor
activists/organizers and students of labor studies alike. This book
provides a detailed account of successful union organizing against
the powerful, antiunion, transnational employer that is Walmart.
Both union organizers and labor studies students will benefit from
Muñoz's analysis of successful union organization outside of the
Western context.
*Labor Studies Journal*
This book gives us insights of how Walmart employees have been able
to actually reach significant concessions from this giant
corporation. Importantly, this book should not just be read by
scholars interested in employment relations in the Global South.
Academics and activists interested in the different types of power
organizations can have, how to build it, and how to use it, should
all have this on their shelves.
*Work and Occupations*
What Bank Muñoz successfully demonstrates in this book is that
lessons for successful organization can often come from unexpected
places. I recommend this book to scholars of labor politics and
social change; moreover, its short length makes it well suited for
classroom use.
*Contemporary Sociology*
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