How do solidaristic worker's movements emerge and what makes them sustainable?

 

Maya Aderath will examine this question through a comparison of trade union politics in the US and UK at the turn of the twentieth century. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, both movements rejected government aid in favour of an exclusive set of trade union benefits. By the early twentieth century, the movements had diverged: whereas the British Trades Union Congress came to embrace universal state benefits, the American Federation of Labor clung to its exclusive benefits system and campaigned against state aid. I show that this divergence was a reflection not of trade union members, but of government regulation. In both contexts, state legitimated and promoted the sort of trade union associations that aligned with their developmental priorities. For our contemporary context, this history suggests that states play a critical role in promoting solidaristic political mobilisation. Policy makers should ensure that the legal environment fosters the sort of movements they want to see.

 

Maya Aderath teaches Political Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Maya researches the politics of trade union federations and in particular their support for universal public benefits. Her dissertation examined diverging trade union support for public pensions and health insurance at the turn of the twentieth century in the US and the UK. Methodologically, she draws on large scale comparisons that consider processes of state formation and their influence on organisational forms in civil society and industrial relations. Integrating perspectives from organisational sociology, she studies why some forms of working class association perpetuate and thrive within particular social, economic, and institutional contexts—and why others fail.