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workers, unions attempt to regulate the the labor process, a despotic system of labor
wage-labor relationship and thus cannot control, a lack of social infrastructure in the
ignore the market. As organizations repre- community and restricted access to political
senting the interests of workers confronting power. This is the pattern of industrialization
employers’ interests, they are class agencies. that creates the conditions for the rise and
Unions are also part of society, coexisting rapid growth of social movement unionism
with other institutions and other constella- (Seidman, 1990). We argue that the successful
tions of interests. construction of a welfare state never occurred
Hyman presents market, class and society in the South in countries such as Brazil and
as a ‘geometry of trade unionism’, connected South Africa. Instead, what is emerging in
in an unstable balance in the three points of a the South is a counter-movement for the
triangle. Thus business unionism (market construction of an integrated society and of
focus), integrative unionism (social focus) a public domain against the market for the
and radical unionism (class focus) never exist first time.
in a pure form. He concludes that in practice, In part 2, through a reflection on earlier
‘actually existing unions have tended to experiences of social movement unionism in
incline toward a contradictory admixture of Brazil and South Africa, we examine the pos-
two of the three ideal types’ (2001: 4). sibilities of trade unions emerging as key
The aim of this chapter, through drawing actors in a broad Polanyian type of counter-
on the work of Karl Polanyi, is three-fold: movement consisting of a coalition between
first, to deepen our understanding of labor and the global social justice movement
globalization from a Southern perspective; (Munck, 2002; Waterman, 2001). The sustain-
second, to identify the predicament facing ability of such a social movement approach
trade unions where they are drawn into the under the impact of political transition is a
efficiency discourse of economic liberalism, crucial question which has been discussed
leading them into becoming agents of elsewhere (Sitas, 2005).
restructuring rather than instruments of
social justice; third, to examine the emer-
gence of an alternative response, what we call
social movement unionism, to this predica- PART ONE: A SOCIOLOGY OF THE
ment. This alternative tendency attempts to SECOND GREAT TRANSFORMATION
link the workplace to social and political
issues. It is a form of union organization that For Polanyi the First Great Transformation of
facilitates an active engagement in workplace the nineteenth century led to counter-move-
issues and the community. It engages in ments which, over a number of decades, led
alliances in order to establish relationships to a class compromise between capital and
on a systematic basis (Lambert and Webster, labor resting on full employment, strong
1988: 21). trade unions and democratic societies. The
The chapter is divided into two parts; trade union discourse during this period was
in part 1, we locate the Second Great that of class mobilization, a discourse that
Transformation in the context of the South. emphasized the importance of working
We define ‘South’ politically rather than geo- people having an institutionalized voice in
graphically as those zones of the global econ- the market and society. This ‘Northern class
omy that have historically been subject to compromise’, it has been argued, is being
colonialism and struggle to break from their undermined by the current phase of liberal-
subordinate past. We have chosen to focus on ization, the Second Great Transformation
Brazil and South Africa as they have experi- (Webster and Adler, 1999). At the center of
enced similar patterns of industrialization. Both this transformation are market-driven politics
countries underwent a rapid transformation of that have led to ‘a remarkably rapid erosion