Social movement unionism in Spain's feminized precarious service sector: Criticism, cooperation and competition

Verna Alcalde‐González, Ana Gálvez‐Mozo and Alan Valenzuela‐Bustos

British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2024, vol. 62, issue 1, 154-173

Abstract: ‘Social movement unionism’ (SMU) has been suggested as a suitable strategy for union renewal in Spain, yet the literature on union renewal and SMU has two major shortcomings: (1) a lack of bottom‐up studies, and (2) a lack of dialogue between industrial relations and social movement research. To redress these shortcomings, we make three contributions in this article: first, we provide evidence on the current opportunities for SMU in Spain's feminized precarious service sector; second, we apply a bottom‐up intersectional approach to the study of SMU; and third, we bridge the research on industrial relations and on social movements by adopting a relational framework that looks at both union and non‐union actors as key actors for union renewal. Our results show a landscape of co‐existence, conflict, cooperation and competition between union and non‐union actors, including established unions, radical grassroots unions and emerging forms of collective representation; however, if we are to develop SMU as a strategy for union renewal in post‐Great Recession Spain, then there is still room for promoting deep coalition building between unions and novel forms of worker collectivism, as well as developing intersectional politics to reach non‐traditional membership groups.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12742

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:brjirl:v:62:y:2024:i:1:p:154-173

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0007-1080

Access Statistics for this article

British Journal of Industrial Relations is currently edited by Edmund Heery

More articles in British Journal of Industrial Relations from London School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().