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Pros And Cons Of The Post-1945: The Modern Labor Movement

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Two “pressures” have reshaped the modern labor movement, locally and globally. First, in a changing global economic structure, and the changing nature of labor, such as the rise of “irregular” employment, the labor movement was forced to adjust its traditional approach to organization and mobilization. This recognition of a crisis in the labor movement came after the second pressure, which came in the form of a crackdown on unions by the state and corporation in the United States during the Vietnam War. Rising inflation and an expanding trade deficit, as well as the increasing in competitiveness of German and Japanese firms in the automobile industry, hampered growth rates and corporate profits and caused the economic and power elite to …show more content…

And while it seemed for a long time that unions have became obsolete in a globalized world, the labor movement has adjusted its objective to reflect the changes in the economic, social, and political world. As Chun had argued, the new labor movement has adopted several new strategies. For example, the new leaders of the labor movement worked on changing the role of labor towards becoming a dynamic social movement, with political and collective mobilization. They also worked on developing new organizational strategies against anti-union employers, transnational corporations, and economic and political disadvantages, especially by focusing on irregular workers, and workers of color, women, and immigrants. In order for them to achieve recognition of these historically marginalized groups, they mobilized around increasing the significance of the symbolic and around mobilizing the broader masses against economic injustices, thus leading to a shift from recognition to redistribution. This led to the increasing significance of the public or the counter-public as a driving force of change, and the focus on the symbolic and the public created potential political leverage that is based on meanings and values, as well as on struggle of redistribution of power and

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