The Geographies of the Justice for Janitors

Geoforum 40 (2009) 949–958

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The Geographies of the Justice for Janitors Luis L.M. Aguiar a,*, Shaun Ryan b a b

Sociology, University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Canada V1V 1V7 Faculty of Business and Law, University of Newcastle, Australia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 7 October 2008 Received in revised form 28 September 2009

Keywords: Justice for Janitors Organizing Scale SEIU Canada Australia

a b s t r a c t On the heels of the successes of its Justice for Janitors (J4J) model to organize cleaners in the United States, the Service Employees International Union is exporting this model to Canada and Australia. In this article we examine the geographies of the implementation of the J4J model in these two contexts. And while the ‘‘ramping up” of the J4J to the globe makes sense to organize an increasingly globalizing cleaning industry, the model must nonetheless pay attention to the local scale and histories of existing organizations. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The view that mega-unions are the source of the International Labor Movement’s revival (Lerner, 2007; Morgan, 2006) is fraught with excitement and trepidation. On the one hand, it potentially re-places national Labor Movements at the center of global politics for workers’ rights and representation and instills hope that unions will check capital’s attempt to out-flank it through increased international co-operation. On the other, this raises key questions about the likelihood of success and the feasibility of ‘‘going global” in neoliberal globalization. Can global unions ease the decline of organized labor, while at the same time securing labor rights for workers worldwide in an economy of deepening inequalities and receding borders (Wade, 2004)? What global institutions and organizations will assure global unions’ gains? How will these institutions establish greater co-ordination of union activities across national borders while respecting individual union histories and dealing with power inequities between unions internationally? Has the nation-state been overtaken in the pursuit of organizing workers across global spaces? This paper addresses some of these questions through a discussion of the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) global strategy partnerships, especially in organizing cleaners.

* Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (L.L.M. Aguiar). 0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.09.012

The SEIU has mobilized the Justice for Janitors (J4J) model to organize global cleaners in this round of labor internationalism. Today, the J4J is in several countries coordinating and organizing cleaners by disciplining campaigns ‘‘in place” to bring cleaners into the union fold. As unions like the SEIU identify global cleaners (or is it global cleaning companies?) as the next global target for organizing, we ask: Is the J4J the model for global unionism in the 21st century? We answer this question by examining how the J4J is negotiated across scale and implemented in specific spaces. In doing so, we recognize the importance of scale and multiscalar politics ‘‘operating simultaneously at multiple scales [and] at multiple sites to expand the geographical and political reach” (Leitner and Miller, 2007, p.122). We examine the SEIU’s strategy in pursuing the organization of cleaners through the J4J as it takes the lead in establishing global partnerships in the global cleaning landscape. We use Canada and Australia as examples since it is in these countries that the model is most prominent. We conclude that the top-down approach of the SEIU is much more responsive to place specific campaigns than union officials admit. This study raises issues about organizing a global industry and politicizing the scale(s) with the best prospects for gaining results for workers. 2. Theoretical framework Capital has rolled back, rolled out and rolled through opposition in implementing a neoliberal program of contracting-out, privatization, deregulation and a new individualism (Herod and Aguiar,

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2006; Tickell and Peck, 2003). This presents unique challenges to the Labor Movement, including how to re-embed capital in place by developing strategic alliances across space and scale with unions elsewhere to take labor out of competition or restrict the spatial options of flexible capital (Fairbrother et al., 2007; Turner and Cornfield, 2007). These are challenging issues for labor as capital claims flexibility aided by a comprador bourgeoisie and compliant state (Bond, 2006; Klein, 2007). Business often invokes this claim to gain concessions from governments and communities at various scales, and to re-position them in the global market. In reality capital is not as flexible and footloose as it claims (Castree, 2000). Still, unions are going global to enforce strategies of containment upon corporations in local spaces and in an ‘‘open” global economy (Fairbrother and Hammer, 2005). There is a long history of the North American Labor Movement’s attempt at organizing and strategizing across borders to dis-able aggressive employer strategies to deny or suppress workers’ rights and demands. International solidarity has been practiced through other means than the international departments of labor federations (e.g. Armbruster-Sandoval, 2005; Marshall and GarciaOrgales, 2006; Wells, 1998), and Castree et al. (2004) summarize the different forms and scales at which cross-border organizing and alliances have been practiced over the last few years (see also Fairbrother and Hammer, 2005). This literature on labor transnationalism discusses and evaluates the challenges in organizing across borders at various scales (Gordon and Turner, 2000; Harrod and O’Brien, 2002). The challenges often turn to disappointments when researching cross-border solidarity union work (see Johns, 1998; Seidman, 2007; Brooks, 2007). It is perhaps a result of these disappointments that Ghigliani (2005, p. 350) states: ‘‘today, the whole idea of internationalism faces a period of uncertainty and restructuring.” And yet, Lambert and Webster (2006, p. 291, Table 10.1) argue that the limitations to cross-border organizing lie in the ‘‘old internationalism” model emphasizing hierarchy, centralization, diplomacy, workplace unionism, all of which are frequently practiced in the Global North. But new opportunities exist through the enfolding of a ‘‘new internationalism” of networks, decentralization, mobilizations, coalitions with new social movements and NGOs, and evident in Global South initiatives like the Southern Initiative on Globalization and Trade Union Rights (SIGTUR). Another optimistic sign is the creation of a handful of unions representing workers in specific economic sectors of the global economy (Meyerson, 2007; Morgan, 2006). Amicus, IG-Metal, the United Steelworkers of America and the International Association of Machinists have recently established the Workers Uniting Union as the first global mega-union representing close to three million workers worldwide in industries from oil to health care (BBC News, 2008). Understandably, the form and content of this mega global union is vague and elusive (Costa, 2006). As a union that recently ‘‘jumped scale” to global organizing in cleaning, catering and security, how is the SEIU articulating its global strategy? What role is the J4J playing in the union’s turn to global partnership for organizing? And, how holistically is this model enfolding? We address these questions below.

in 44 countries (Herod and Aguiar, 2006, p. 6) and employs over 200,000 workers worldwide (Lerner, 2007, p. 29). The combined gross annual income in the property services industry – including cleaning and security – for 2007, was $170 billion (Lerner, 2007, p. 29). Moreover, ‘‘substantial specialization of cleaning work has [occurred as] companies have focused upon particular economic sectors (offices versus factories, healthcare facilities versus banks), with the result that firms such as the Danish cleaning giant ISS now typically market themselves as having specific expertise in a host of arenas, [. . .] [requiring] quite different and unique sets of cleaning skills” (Sogaard et al., 2006, p. 580). This ‘‘specialization” has increased the workforce and in some cases re-defined their occupational titles to ‘‘sanitation engineers” as the industry modernizes (Herod and Aguiar, 2006, pp. 4–7). Because cleaning skills go largely unrecognized and unrewarded (Herod and Aguiar, 2006), and cleaning work cannot move, employers prefer to rely on Global South migrants to take up jobs with deteriorating working conditions and labor rights (Lerner, 2007; Milkman, 2006). Hence the global cleaning workforce exhibits common social characteristics (e.g. gender and culture), labor market insecurities and poor union protection (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2004; Puech, 2004). The industry is still composed largely of ‘‘mom and pop” businesses. In Australia 80% of companies employ less than 10 cleaners per outfit, and barely 2% of firms employ 100 or more workers but ‘‘generate 52% of industry income” (Ryan and Herod, 2006, p. 492). The situation in cleaning is similar in France: 75% of companies employ 9 workers or less, while just 5% employ over 100 workers but control 75% of the industry’s business (Meilland and Dufour, 2001, p. 371, ftn 20). Cleaners endure growing work intensification in the public and private sphere and an entrenched gender division of labor (Puech, 2004). While cleaning companies show great mobility in moving their business and exercising economic power around the globe – buying new contracts, contractors, ‘‘diversifying” their tasks – cleaning work itself stays put. Unlike garment work buildings cannot relocate to be cleaned, and so building managers cannot take advantage of cheaper wages and un-enforced labor legislation in the Global South. But the fact that buildings cannot move does not mean that cleaning companies are immobile or lack business strategies. Instead, they subcontract to cut costs, relieve themselves of managerial tasks, and turn to migrant workers (documented and undocumented) to clean buildings (Bacon, 2008). The fact that building cleaners are not threatened with the loss of their job through re-location, aids those unions trying to organize them. This is an advantage unions in other sectors of the economy do not have. Still, the fragmentation of the industry and its ‘‘invisible” characteristics (e.g. workers laboring through the night in empty corridors and office, etc.) makes it difficult for unions to know exactly how many cleaners work for a particular building/company. This hinders organizing prospects since unions are reluctant to spend money and resources to secure a minimal number of workers. The SEIU has inserted itself in this milieu of fragmentation and consolidation in the global cleaning industry with the J4J model as an important component in the union’s global partnerships for organizing in this industry.

3. The global cleaning industry 4. The SEIU The cleaning industry in the European Union employs ‘‘nearly three million full-and part-time cleaners (95% of whom are women)” [in] private companies, governments and local authorities (Sogaard et al., 2006, p. 150). The industry is characterized by fragmentation and consolidation. In the last 20 years there has been a centralization of ownership in the industry whereby fewer companies dominate the global cleaning market. For instance, Integrated Service Solutions (ISS) operates cleaning outfits

Almost single-handedly the SEIU is credited with increasing the visibility of unions in the media and for gaining greater influence in mainstream American politics (Milkman, 2006). It is also responsible for re-inventing contemporary strategies for organizing new workers – especially in the service economy – and expanding the ranks of union membership (Aguiar, 2007; Moody, 2007; Milkman, 2006; Savage, 1998, 2006). With a membership of 1.8 million

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workers, it is the fastest-growing trade union in North America. Most of this growth began in the 1980s, a period of concessions, retreat and temerity for most unions in the US and the Global North (Phelan, 2006). Yet, it is precisely in this era of neoliberal bullying that the SEIU grew by 339,000 new members, while most other American unions were hemorrhaging members. The SEIU’s growth came through new organizing, absorptions and affiliations with other unions (Moody, 2007, p. 115). For instance, from 1985 to 1994 there were 46 mergers in the American Labor Movement. The SEIU was involved in 9 of these (Moody, 2007, p. 114). This upswing began with John Sweeney and continued under President Andy Stern. Stern is leaving his own mark on the union and the Labor Movement more generally. For instance, in 2005 he (along with five other labor leaders) pulled the SEIU out of the AFL–CIO and spear-headed the formation of the Change to Win (CtW) labor federation. Its goals include: devoting more funds to organizing, reestablishing union jurisdictions for the purpose of organizing (and servicing members) better; and merging unions in order to have fewer but larger and more powerful unions capable of going toe-to-toe with global corporations (Milkman and Voss, 2005).1 Stern increased the political profile and clout of the SEIU while at the same time alienating many rank-and-file members within his own union and various other leaders in unions across the US (Greenhouse, 2009; Moody, 2007; Savage, 2006).2 Perhaps more controversial are the internal changes Stern has brought about during his reign. According to one account, Stern has turned the SEIU into a type of ‘‘bureaucratic corporate union” with his top-down organizing style, emphasis on trusteeship (Stern has trusteed more than 40 locals (Kirkland, 2006)), centralizing union structures, and increasingly partnering with capital (Moody, 2007) in pursuit of a vague and elusive concept of ‘‘responsible competitiveness” (Stern, 2006). Another report concludes that Stern aims to remake the Labor Movement ‘‘by shedding its old adversarial image and creating more labor-management partnerships” (Maher, 2007). Stern says: ‘‘The old idea that business and labor cannot work together for the common good is as outdated as lifetime jobs” (Kirkland, 2006). Perhaps more damaging to the SEIU is the name calling; Stern is known by some as the ‘‘Darth Vader” of the American Labor Movement (Greenhouse, 2009, p. B9).

5. ‘Ramping up’ to the global scale: the SEIU’s global partnership strategy The ‘‘SEIU is ramping up to operate on a global stage; we are learning the pitfalls and exploring the opportunities” (Stern, 2006, p. 112). ‘‘Ramping up”. . . ‘‘operat[ing] on a global stage” is not very clear, though it does suggest an urgency to ‘‘jump scale” to the globe as a landscape of organizing. Global alliances, however, do not rely on permanent infrastructure but rather on ad hoc, short term, single issue joining of union forces (Tattersall, 2006). This is no longer helpful in the global economy (Lambert and Webster, 2006). Stern insists that several factors are leading to the maturing of the SEIU as a global union, including ‘‘the growing consolidation of corporations and the budding solidarity among unions within sectors, accelerated in part by employers resisting union relationships” (Stern, 2006, p. 113). Stern’s discussion is vague and contains little empirical reference on how the SEIU’s global version actually works. 1

Recently, the UNITE-HERE union announced that it was leaving the CtW and rejoining the AFL–CIO (MacGillis, 2009). 2 For a brief summary of the recent fights in which the SEIU is involved both inside its own union and with the broader Labor Movement, see Clawson (2009) and Greenhouse (2009).

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Lerner (2007), the SEIU executive credited with developing the J4J, is more precise on the constitution of the union’s global makeup. He states that global unions are the ‘‘solution to labor’s worldwide decline” and argues that global unions’ vision will ‘‘give workers real power in the 21st century” (Lerner, 2007, p. 23). In his view, global labor solidarity is failing due to shifting global corporations and declining state powers. Global corporations are undermining struggles for workers’ justice as national governments surrender power, national unions stagnate in unfriendly political environments, ‘‘and government institutions develop[. . .] to facilitate and regulate globalization” (Lerner, 2007, p. 24). Under these conditions, rather than argue for better, deeper understandings of coalitions and scale, Lerner proposes that the antidote to global corporations is global unions. The formation of global unions is inevitable as their growth is ‘‘facilitated” by the rise of global cities (Sassen, 1991) and the industries of Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) especially in ‘‘some forty global cities” (Lerner, 2007, p. 28). Lerner (2007, p. 28) writes: The economic hubs directly depend on those service jobs, dramatically increasing the potential power of these workers. It is among the most invisible and seemingly powerless workers that we can build a global movement, reinvigorate trade unions, and face global corporations with genuinely countervailing power sufficiently strong to ensure that workers have the chance to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty. What better way to ascribe agency to cleaners than by saying they are key to the global economy and that it is they who will lead the struggle? Cleaners are the new vanguard! (Wills, 2008). Lerner continues: ‘‘[i]ncreasingly, the building owners are global, the investment capital is global, the contractors are global, and the workers are global” (Lerner, 2007, p. 29). Cleaners as migrants move to global cities to take up immobile jobs and face the same working conditions as their brothers and sisters in other cities. The impact of globalization on cleaners also means that ‘‘nowhere is the prospects for organizing better” (Lerner, 2007, p. 29). But global unions need not be everywhere to transform these prospects into union membership with real economic gains. To expect a global union everywhere is unrealistic. Instead, what is required is a ‘‘discriminating” global union able to discern the minimum number of countries/global cities needed to exercise maximum pressure and influence ‘‘over specific corporations and the industry as a whole” (Lerner, 2007, p. 29). Lerner distinguishes between global and international unions with international unions focusing on policy, development, and solidarity work, information sharing, and legislative and sectoral employer relations at the international scale, as capitalism globalizes and the role of national governments wane. Global unions fill the gap left by government and:  Focus on growth: ‘‘use the strength of a national union or multiple unions to win organizing rights for workers in other countries who share common employers”;  ‘‘coordinate activity in multiple countries to both organize workers and pressure global corporations to allow workers to form unions”; and  ‘‘dedicate the financial resources, staff or other resources to assist the campaigns” (Lerner, 2007, p. 32). Lerner by-passes the role of national governments in enacting policies beneficial to workers as a result of pressure exerted by their sympathizers and supporters. Instead he aims to tackle global corporations with global unions head on. Whom will ensure the stability of workers’ gains via global union work? Can these

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gains be entrusted to labor-capital agreements only? Is there no apparatus beyond these two factions to cement gains for the long-term? Has the role of the nation-state been abdicated in this? Lerner under-appreciates the national state by marginalizing it as a viable scale for making and ensuring political change (Cohen, 2006; Rowbotham, 2006). We suspect that his position stems from his location in the United States where unions have traditionally had little success in influencing and maintaining progressive labor law change at the national scale. A more comprehensive approach would be multiscalar, having the ability to identify different points of weaknesses which a union can use to influence change within the industry or a specific company. In other words, jumping scale to the global should not risk a politics of scale bending for the purpose of achieving the best results (Brenner, 2001; Smith, 2004). The SEIU’s push to global union formation actually began in the late 1990s when Tom Balaroff was elected chair of one of Union Network International’s (UNI) industry sectors – the property services sector, more precisely cleaning and security work (Stern, 2006). This first move was followed by a second when the union’s delegates voted at the SEIU’s 2004 convention to build a global union identity. Subsequently, staff were assigned to Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom, India, France, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, South America and Africa to ‘‘discuss new forms of alliances and relationships in many sectors,” though cleaning and private building security were by far the most prominent (Stern, 2006, p. 112). The SEIU ‘‘invested several million dollars on organizing campaigns that targeted international food service, cleaning, and security employers.” (Stern, 2006, p. 112). The union believes that it can achieve global strength by partnering with other unions as it ascends to the global scale for organizing cleaners (and security guards) (Tattersall, 2006, p. 11). This positioning stems from SEIU internal forces to grow the union internationally, organize new members and harmonize conditions for cleaners everywhere (Stern, 2006). This is also based on the realization that ‘‘previous global work tended to involve one-sided requests, asking for short term favors from local unions rather than building infrastructure and capacity for sustained global campaigning” (Tattersall, 2006, p. 13) ‘‘Building infrastructure [for] capacity [to] sustain global campaigning” (Tattersall, 2006, p. 13) is a key phrase and the SEIU has begun this process by appointing Debbie Schneider as the Head of its global partnership division, and Michael Crosby as Director of SEIU’s operations in the Asia–Pacific region. In addition, Nick Allen and Valery Alzaga were assigned to France and The Netherlands, respectively, charged with developing relationships with the Confederation General du Travail (CGT) and the FNV Bondgenoten regarding the prospects of organizing cleaners and the viability of implementing the Justice for Janitors model in both countries (Bhullar, email 6 November 2007; Alzaga, interview 16 March 2008). These appointments stem from the union’s ambition to move beyond supporting international organizing campaigns to fundamentally overhauling ‘‘the architecture of international trade unions” (Anderson, 2008, p. 19). An example of this is the creation of the Global Organizing Alliance which Stern set afoot as a result of the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) leadership reluctance to move quickly on this idea. Needless to say, this modus operandi is potentially a political minefield for all concerned given the SEIU’s style. Anderson puts it in perspective when he says ‘‘the diversity of trade union traditions represents a landscape of blockages, openings, potential flows, and connections that cannot be sensed remotely. To this end, the SEIU has invested considerable resources in feeling out the opportunities for transnational co-operation through face to face contact and experimental initiatives and campaigns” (Anderson, 2008, p. 19). How global

strategy is being implemented through the J4J model in Canada and Australia is discussed next.

6. The J4J in Canada Unlike elsewhere, the SEIU in Canada is not so much in partnership with a cleaning union as it is the de facto cleaning union in the country.3 The SEIU Canada is an offspring of the SEIU parent in the United Sates and has been representing workers (not just cleaners) in Canada since the 1940s. The history of the SEIU in Canada reveals a branch union that has not always followed the approach and path of the parent organization (Hearn, 1988). Our discussion of the J4J model in Canada is only the most recent example of this occasional divergence, and sometimes opposition to the larger SEIU organization. However, we would not want to overstate this divergence since there is also evidence of the centralizing approach of the parent SEIU upon a local’s governance. The SEIU Canada is not an independent labor organization as are other partners in the SEIU’s global organizing partnerships. This is because the Canadian Labor Movement, for the longest time, was a branch plant organization for the American Labor Movement. Consider, in 1960 72% of Canadian union members (1,051,997 workers) were affiliated to ‘‘International” (American) unions, and only 22% (320,118) to Canadian unions. By 1997, this pattern had almost reversed so that 65% (2,663,000) were now affiliated with Canadian unions and 30% (1,217,000 workers) remain members of international unions (Glenday, 2001, p. 18, Table 1.2). The SEIU (originally the Building Service Employees International Union) moved into Canada in the 1940s in an attempt to cover with contracts the expanding continental labor market (Heron, 1996). As a result, it established several locals across the country to organize members, provide services, and collect dues in return (Hearn, 1988). Over the years the SEIU has faced stiff criticism for being ‘‘foreign usurpers” (Hearn, 1998, p. 29) of Canadian members’ dues, and so has tried to appease Canadian nationalism by creating vicepresident posts within the union. This, so writes a former SEIU Canada official and union historian, has not always been enough to address ‘‘charges of foreign exploitation” in the Canadian union landscape (Hearn, 1988, p. 29). Over the years union leaders in Quebec pressed the union for changes to respond to the forces within the Labor Movement for an independent Quebec (Hearn, 1988, p. 52). The SEIU has not been alone in facing some of these charges and continued to resist them to this day (Heron, 1996, pp. 135–140; Palmer, 1992). The Toronto SEIU Local 204 was charted in 1944; only Local 244 in Vancouver is older having been established a year earlier (Hearn, 1988, p. 58). In Toronto the SEIU has been representing building cleaners since at least 1960s (Hearn, 1988). Initially ‘‘office cleaners were mostly native-born Canadian women or immigrants from Great Britain” (Hearn, 1988, p. 10). Today it represents about 90,000 culturally diverse Canadian workers, making it the tenth largest union in Canada (Murray, 2004, p. 93, Table 4.7). While researching campaigns to unionize cleaners in Toronto in the mid 1990s, and interviewing Labor Movement people then, we heard complaints that Local 204 was not American enough! Research participants lamented the local’s lack of dynamism and reluctance to innovate and change to better organize service workers and cleaners. The Toronto local discarded innovations and gains made by the J4J in the American West Coast and remained stuck with an aging and conservative leadership making little progress in the office building sector in Toronto (Interview with SEIU organizer, 25 July 1995). Local 204 officials interviewed at the time 3 The Laborers’ International Union and the Canadian Autoworkers Union also represent a significant number of cleaners in Canada.

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commented that the local was re-focusing its organizing plan from cleaners to the expanding home care industrial sector (Interview with SEIU organizer, 25 July 1995).4 The local seemed to defer (unofficially, of course) organizing cleaners to other unions (e.g. Laborers’ International Union) in downtown Toronto buildings. During these same interviews, SEIU union representatives remarked that the J4J model was based on ‘‘guerilla tactics,” which they distrusted and felt unnecessary in Canada with its better labor laws and balanced labor relations regime (Interview with SEIU organizer, 25 July 1995). [And in terms of the Ontario SEIU local] If you are looking for a statement policy from the union stating where we stand. . .They had this Justice for Janitors where they went in and they really did a good campaign. But what I can guarantee right now, it would not work here. It will never work here. In terms of the union [the SEIU] having a plan to go and get numbers, there is not (Interview with SEIU organizer, 25 July 1995). Organizing new workers in Ontario became more difficult in the late 1990s as neoliberal labor policies attacked workers at both ends – by complicating the organizing of workers and by facilitating de-certification campaigns in labor legislation (Aguiar, 2004, p. 110). For instance, ‘‘[i]n Ontario, more than 30,000 workers were organized into unions in 1994–1995 after passage of new labor laws by the New Democratic Party (NDP) government, but the total had fallen back to 14,000 by 2002–2003 under new Conservative government laws” (Jackson, 2005, p. 178). So, even when the J4J was having major successes in the US, the Canadian branch of the SEIU did not apply the model to organizing cleaners here. This reluctance was due to an old-guard, conservative leadership resistant to innovative organizing strategies and preferring to rely on labor law changes at the provincial scale for unionization purposes. But labor legislation got worse and cleaners suffered the consequences. For instance, when the Conservative government of Mike Harris gained power in Ontario in the mid 1990s, and introduced a new labor bill known as Bill 7, ‘‘the number of applications for union certification [dropped by] 51%, the number of new unionized workers [. . .] also [dropped by] 56%, and the number of unions that have been decertified [grew] by 116%” (Schenk, 1997 in Aguiar, 2000, p. 82). More recently a renewed and reinvigorated SEIU restructured the local and put the adoption of the J4J model as a key component to this change. And so the local changed significantly as a result of the SEIU’s current vision of union work. The SEIU has not just been innovative in developing and mounting campaigns such as the J4J across the United States. It has couched the J4J within a restructuring and re-thinking by the union itself since at least the John Sweeney years at the helm of the union. The SEIU has put in place three crucial initiatives often in active resistance from locals’ officials. First, it is organizing locals along industry lines in order to house in the same local members that work in the same industry and can benefit from the union’s expertise in that area of work. Second, the SEIU actively pursues mergers and consolidations of locals representing workers (e.g. cleaners) in the same city (Lerner quoted in Milkman and Voss, 2005, p. 19) and indeed the same state as in the case of California (Savage, 2006). Third, the union has shifted to an organizing model, and devotes increasing amounts of money to organizing so that in 2006 alone, it spent $30 million dollars on union drives in the building services property industry alone (Lerner quoted in Milkman and Voss, 2005). Not all, including within the union itself, see the benefits of this internal restructuring. For instance, Bronfenbrenner (quoted in Milkman and Voss, 2005) argues that the 4

See Lopez (2004) for an example of a larger shift in this direction.

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revitalization of the (American) Labor Movement cannot be solely based on organizing. It also needs to be, about developing power in collective bargaining in order to get good contracts and develop a vision that workers can believe in and take on the necessary struggle to make that vision a reality. She is especially concerned about the issue of ownership of the struggle to unionize and the lack of a role for many workers in organizing their own union under the SEIU’s approach to organizing. Savage (2006) points out creating mega-locals raises serious concerns about democratic processes, participation and ownership of one’s local. Some of the restructuring of the SEIU is evident in the recent transitions in Local 204, as are the criticisms about the union’s strategy to gain new members and solidify its position in the building services industry (Clawson, 2009; Moody, 2007). What seems clear from the research and discussion is that the implementation of the J4J is not a solo act. In fact, fundamental structural changes within a local are made to accommodate, amongst other things, the J4J. The recent history of Local 204 has been quite tumultuous. Local 204 exists no more. It is now, along with five other locals, ‘‘Local 1. on” as of 2007. This was a result of the SEIU merging six locals into one mega-local of 40,000 members in Ontario. The objections to the merger were so fierce that it drove 14,000 members (in 180 bargaining units) from the Ontario local and into the ranks of the Canadian Auto Workers Unions (CAW). In some instances the ‘‘encouragement” to dis-affiliate from one union and affiliate with another has been interpreted as raiding and can bring sanctions from the Canadian Labour Congress on the union seen to be encouraging the shift in union membership (Heron, 1996; Palmer, 1992). The SEIU’s global strategy assigns key personnel in strategic locations to explore the potential for organizing cleaners under the J4J model. In Canada, this key person is Tom Galivan who has taken over Local 2 (born out of splitting Local 1. on into a local comprised by members in the health care industry and another by members in the building services property division) in Toronto.5 In late 2006, SEIU Local 2 began a campaign to organize cleaners in Toronto and as of August 2009, more than 2000 cleaners had been organized by SEIU Local 2 in the Toronto campaign. Partnerships with other unions who represent cleaners have developed and this initiative has led to citywide agreements with four of the five largest cleaning companies in the Toronto market (Bhullar, interview 6 November 2007). Maya Bhullar (SEIU researcher) says that the introduction of the J4J has brought something distinct to the Canadian organizing landscape. Most fundamentally, it has changed the approach to organizing workers. In the past the picking of organizing targets was largely reliant on incoming ‘‘hot” calls to the local’s office, which the staff interpreted as a significant lead (or not) to pursue for organizing purposes. Under the J4J model, it is the union that picks the target for organizing. That is, through sectoral research and mapping the companies in the industry, Local 2 sets about to identify companies’ vulnerable spots to use as leverage when organizing geographical chunks of the industry. This may range from soliciting the assistance of office tenants to support the cleaners’ cause, to pin-pointing key real estate investors to pressure them to ‘‘do the right thing” by supporting, or at least standing by, while the union organizes cleaners (Bhullar, interview 6 November 2007). The SEIU’s basic organizing principle is to ‘‘seek control over all key players in a local labor market, with the goal of taking labor costs out of competition” (Moody, 2007, p. 187). This kind of ‘‘organizing devote[s] extensive resources to researching the power structure of the target industries in order to identify pressure 5 In 2006 the Brewery Workers Union left the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) and merged with all the non-healthcare SEIU members in Ontario to become SEIU Local 2. The local has members in gaming and casinos, in breweries and the industrial sector and in security and in other diverse sectors.

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points where union leverage can be exercised to win direct recognition from employers” (Milkman, 2006, p. 23). Further, the SEIU combines industry with geography to organize cleaners not workplace by workplace but across entire regions where cleaning takes place. This form of organizing is still untypical in Canada as unions continue to organize at the scale of the enterprise and seek government legislative change to facilitate this approach at this most local of scales. But researching and mapping the industry is insufficient to achieve the SEIU’s goal of organizing cleaners. Also key is building community support for campaigns via the establishment of community-union committees; targeting key sympathetic politicians for assistance; and developing creative ways to attract media attention to gain public support (Milkman, 2006, p. 23). And while the success of the J4J approach needs the approval of the local president to give the go ahead to the campaign, it is equally important to get the staff on-board with the idea since it is they who need to be enthusiastic and believe in the potential success of the campaign (Bhullar, interview 6 November 2007). But critics point out that the SEIU to 0 readily imposes trusteeships6 on locals who do not quickly enough follow the national union’s vision (Clawson, 2009). Still, Milkman’s research on SEIU successful organizing drives in Los Angeles shows that the keys to success are a combination of ‘‘top-down” direction with ‘‘bottom-up” mobilizing. It is not the case of one substituting the other but of articulating and coordinating an approach that contains both strategies. Nothing short of this is a recipe for defeat (Milkman, 2006). Local 2 has had some success with this approach and has recently signed a master agreement with several companies in Toronto. There is little in the way of historical writings on Vancouver’s SEIU local 244. However, the material available alludes to political purges by the national union on the local on the account that a faction of the leadership was suspected communists (Hearn, 1988, p. 19). ‘‘Stalwarts” from the national union were dispatched to the Vancouver local to set its political line ‘‘straight” (Hearn, 1988). In order to do so, an ‘‘investigation” was undertaken and the ‘‘local was placed in trusteeship” (Hearn, 1988, p. 18). The trusteeship was lifted after a few years, but ‘‘this would not be the end of troubles for the Vancouver local” (Hearn, 1988, p. 19). In fact, the local ‘‘flounder[ed] with political problems” for years (Hearn, 1988, p. 29). Hearn (1988, p. 24) adds that though the elimination of ‘‘communists” from positions of influence within unions had been achieved, it was ‘‘at a heavy cost in labor unity” (Hearn, 1988, p. 24). The J4J model in Vancouver has a longer history than in Toronto. In the early 1990s, the J4J model was brought into the Vancouver local via a quasi-trusteeship. The national union, from their office in Washington, DC, re-assigned key people to the Vancouver local in order to bring it on-board with the new organizing style of the union. This was, however, resisted and the local’s staff resented the aggressive way union headquarters pushed the model’s adoption. According to the lead organizer of the SEIU in Vancouver, the local’s personnel resented the imposition of the J4J model claiming that the orchestrations of such a move failed to recognize the peculiarities of the local labor market and ignored Canadian organizing histories and differences from those of the US (Aguiar, 2004). Contrary to Local 204 in Toronto, this local resisted on nationalistic grounds. After some debate and struggle, the model was abandoned in Vancouver, only to be revived in a selective form at the beginning of this century. In Vancouver today the SEIU local

6 Trusteeship is a mechanism by which a parent union ‘‘can take over a local union for reasons such as malfeasance, theft, or a breakdown in constitutional order” (Fletcher and Gapasin, 2008, p. 256 fn 6). Moody (2007) argues that the SEIU often used trusteeships to impose the national union’s programme on ‘‘uncooperative” local union branches.

follows the J4J manual to organize cleaners in downtown’s business district. But the local’s leadership borrows selectively from the manual so that ‘‘guerilla tactics” are not part of the campaigns. The SEIU in Canada, in addition to selectively applying features of the J4J campaigns – mapping the big employers in the downtown; identifying pension fund trusts holders for moral pressure – are also lobbying for labor legislation change, in particular successor rights. Tom Galivan, organizing director for Local 2, directs the organizing strategies of the Vancouver local from his Toronto headquarters. The day-to-day organizing team is coordinated out of Vancouver. It remains to be seen how this is working out and how both the local and the cleaners are moving towards accepting a J4J model of organizing. It is also not clear how it is organizing community support where community links have been weak (to all unions), and according to a union leader from another union, social groups are not as tuned into the Labor Movement as they are, for example, in Toronto (Aguiar, 2001). In the Canadian case the J4J was resisted at the scale of the local and only structural changes orchestrated by the national (American parent) SEIU aligned the locals with the national union’s vision. 7. The J4J in Australia Australia was ‘‘ready” for a J4J type campaign, although evidence suggests that the strategies and tactics of the J4J campaigns had been in use for some time as a result of the close links between the SEIU and the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers’ Union (LHMU) (Ryan and Herod, 2006). The situation facing cleaning in Australia is one of declining union membership, a long legacy of an anti-union government, declining collective bargaining and employer use of individual agreements in some states. This has given rise to inequity between cleaners and other workers and coupled with the fiercely competitive state of the Australian cleaning industry, has led to a regime of increasingly precarious employment (Ryan and Herod, 2006). Against this background it has become increasingly clear that the issues confronting the cleaning industry could only be confronted at an industry level and by a coordinated multi-state regional campaign. In Australia the ‘‘strategy used is pure J4J” says Michael Crosby, the SEIU’s Regional Organizing Director for Asia–Pacific, though the campaign goes by the title of ‘‘Clean Start” (Crosby, email 7 September 2007). When asked to elaborate on what he meant by ‘‘pure J4J”, Crosby wrote: I mean that the strategy being used by Clean Start borrows heavily from J4J. The owner piece is similar – as is the contractor part of it. The pressure tactics we use are similar. We do not go on strike as we do not have the strength to do that – and we have to adapt the signing up process as we are open shop. We get neutrality from the employer and then use that to get a 30 min meeting with every worker and ask them there to sign up to the union. In that way we get between 70% and 80% joining the union (Crosby, email 25 September 2007). While Crosby enthusiastically describes Clean Start as ‘‘pure J4J”, the reality of a global and multiscalar model of organization is that it will be subject to local variation. The case of Australia suggests that J4J is not necessarily a top-down model directed by the SEIU, but one that is subject to interpretation and renewal within place. The J4J is under constant evaluation and review. Commenting on the changes within Australian unions Crosby noted ‘‘the marvelous irony in the whole thing is that we have invited the SEIU to send out some of their local union leaders to have a look at some of the best union branches in the country, because we have taken their work just a bit further” (Lewis, 2005). So, Clean Start is not so

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much ‘‘pure J4J” but rather that it is particular to the neoliberal processes that it is contesting. The campaign is regional and national, with the Aotearoa/New Zealand Service and Food Workers’ Union an integral Clean Start partner. In Australia the SEIU works principally with the LHMU to organize cleaners. It sent organizers and researchers to Australia (and Aotearoa/New Zealand) and hired 30 organizers and five researchers. In all about 52 staff were hired to organize cleaners in what has come to be the largest organizing campaign in the history of the Australian union movement. This has been underpinned by a massive financial investment of the SEIU to the tune of $1AU million over 3–4 years as part of an on-going long-term organizing program within the LHMU (Interview with LHMU officials 26 November 2007). Clean Start is a multi-faceted and multi-level campaign. When it was launched on 26 April 2006 it began with a ‘‘ten Cities” campaign – taking Clean Start to eight major Australian and two major Aotearoa/New Zealand cities. This investment in Australasia raises a number of questions that require further research: What is the SEIU’s return from this investment? When we suggested to the director that he seem to imply, in his email, that in other countries ‘‘pure J4J” might not be possible, he replied: ‘‘No[,] J4J will work everywhere that owners have power. But it will depend on local circumstances whether local unions in each country pursue that strategy” (Crosby, email 25 September 2007). This demonstrates that while the SEIU has a global strategy for organizing workers, regional officials highlight that the local still matters in the implementation of the J4J model (Castree, 2000). The variant of the J4J campaign enacted in Australia is formally known as ‘‘Clean Start – A Fair Deal for Cleaners”. Commonly referred to as ‘‘Clean Start” the campaign title cleverly harks back to the long-held Australian ethos of egalitarianism and a ‘‘fair go” for all. The discourse of ‘‘fairness” has come to dominate the campaign and is used in union publications and press releases, drawing on dominant Australian values (Gough, 2006). In order to overcome the challenges facing the industry in terms of staff turnover, low profit margins and the quality of cleaning, the LHMU proposed ‘‘7 Fair Solutions to fix the industry” (see Table 1 below). These ideas are embodied in the LHMU’s ‘‘Responsible Contractors Policies” (RCP). In short, the LHMU defines a ‘‘responsible contractor” as one ‘‘capable of meeting its on-going obligations to workers”. Included in this definition is fair treatment and ‘‘good, rather than throw-away jobs” (LHMU, 2006a, p. 12). A novel aspect of the campaign has been the efforts of the LHMU to extend the notion of fairness to cleaning contractors and speak on their behalf in an attempt to address key challenges facing the industry – staff turnover and low profitability. Here, the LHMU is aiming to achieve what the cleaning contractors have been unable to – a fair price. In the union’s view, a fair price is one where building owners and managers engage cleaning firms on contracts at prices that enable them to act as a responsible employer and enjoy some profit margin. While a number of cleaning firms have signed the RCP, the largest organization representing cleaning contractors, the Building Service Contractors Association of Australia (BSCAA) has not. The

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BSCAA response was a revised Industry Code of Practice (Inclean Oct/Nov 2006) arguing that the ‘‘LHMU is manipulating the RCP to grant them greater powers than those afforded to them under new legislation” (Workplace Relations Amendment [Work Choices] Act 2005), and that the RCP is nothing more than an attempt to extend collective bargaining within the industry (BSCAA, 2007). Despite BSCAA hostility, and with support of the SEIU, the LHMU has managed to secure the commitment of one of the international contractors to the RCP. The union has also been at pains to present itself as working in the interests of the cleaning contractors and building owners. For the contractors, support of the RCP will guarantee them a commitment from the LHMU to ‘‘playing a part in ensuring the stability and certainty for the property industry.” This could be achieved through a period of phasing in, commitment to cooperative dispute settlement and union participation in training and development (LHMU, 2006a, p. 13). Clean Start is as much an attempt to come to terms with the hostile Howard Liberal/National government and its determination to erode collective bargaining and minimize union power in the workplace, and the fear that further changes in legislation would continue to erode the pay and conditions of cleaners (LHMU, 2006b). One of the most important pieces of legislation the Howard government passed was the 1996 Workplace Relations Act which limited the ability of Australian Industrial Relations Commission to establish awards (collective agreements) and to standardize minimum conditions of employment and wages within an industry. The 1996 Act also allowed for individualized employment contracts – known as Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) – between employers and employees which, like collective bargaining agreements, can (with some exceptions) override existing award conditions. Significantly, whereas enterprise agreements could only result in wages and conditions which were better than any particular award, AWAs can reduce wages and conditions below an award (Ryan and Herod, 2006). AWAs have been used aggressively by cleaning employers in the states of Victoria and Western Australia (Creed, 2005). Some within the Howard government thought that the 1996 legislation did not go far enough and a new piece of legislation was introduced in 2005 aimed at curtailing union activity even further. The 2005 Work Choices Amendment Act was presented as giving workers ‘‘choice” and of ‘‘simplifying” industrial agreements by seeking to abolish the various state systems of industrial relations and replacing them with a national system of industrial relations. More significantly, the Act abolished unfair dismissal restrictions on small and medium-sized firms and reduced the number of pay and conditions standards protected under the award system from twenty to just five (covering a minimum hourly wage rate, sick, parental and annual leave, and maximum weekly working hours). The LHMU and other unions have become increasingly concerned that the Work Choices Act is simply a way to encourage the adoption of AWAs so as to undermine employment and collective agreements and reduce the minimum wage (Ryan and Herod, 2006). The LHMU fears that when awards and collective agreements expire, cleaners would be pushed onto individual agreements as experienced in Western Australia.

Table 1 Clean start’s 7 fair solutions. 7 Fair solutions Fair hours Fair workloads Fair pay Fair job security Fair treatment Fair leave Fair rights Source: LHMU (nd) Cleaning Industry in Crisis.

Minimum shift of 4 hours Introduce responsible and transparent contracting practices that ensure reasonable workloads Annual pay increases and establishment of a national minimum rate Protection of jobs and entitlements when contracts change hands Secure respect for cleaners and improvements in training and occupational health and safety Introduction of portable long-service leave Establish dispute resolution procedures and ensure right to union representation

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It is no coincidence that the Clean Start campaign began shortly after the introduction of Work Choices. In an interview Jeff Lawrence, the then national secretary of the LHMU, and now president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) ‘‘noted until relatively recently, the LHMU operated largely as individual statebased organizations – in line with state awards. Now, with the Work Choice [industrial relations] environment, the need for a national program is paramount” (Alan’s Blog 15 April 2006. http:// www.incleanmag.com.au). Work Choices may be short lived as the election of the Rudd Labor government (the LHMU played a prominent role in gathering support for the Labor Party and articulating the rights of workers) in November 2007 has seen Labor gain control of the commonwealth and all state and territory governments. Rudd has announced a partial roll-back of Work Choices, including a prohibition on new AWAs after March 2008, but will not guarantee unions right of entry to workplaces. The ascendancy of the Labor Party may lead to increased LHMU leverage at the political level as it has major links with the Labor Party and a significant presence in state, territory and commonwealth parliaments and each of the state/territory governments are, in their own right, a major purchaser of cleaning services. The history of the adoption of the organizing model of unionism in Australia has been addressed in detail elsewhere (Cooper, 2000, 2003; Griffin and Moors, 2002). We argue that Clean Start is the logical outcome of work laid by the ACTU in 1994 when it established the ‘‘Organizing Works” (1994) and ‘‘Unions@Work” (1999) programs to encourage union organizing based on member involvement and workplace activity. These programs were the culmination of ACTU delegations to the USA, Belgium, Britain, Canada and Ireland with much of the early impetus arising from a visit to the AFL–CIO organizing institute. A lack of practical Australian organizing models meant that organizing activity would ‘‘borrow heavily from US models” (Widenor and Feekin, 2001, p. 11 quoted in Griffin and Moors, 2002, p. 10). Since the establishment of these programs, organizing has become the dominant theme within the ACTU (Griffin and Moors, 2002, pp. 14–15). Despite this significant achievement, organizing as a philosophy has yet to cement itself as the dominant paradigm within all Australian unions. Griffin and Moors explain that leadership and crisis within union branches are keys to transformation and effective organizing (2002, pp. 19–20). Within the LHMU a change of leadership at the national and branch levels as well as a crisis in membership can be seen as a significant impetus behind Clean Start. The membership crisis is endemic to Australian unions with density around 24% (Cooper, 2003). Clean Start has been precipitated by a decline in union membership. One year after the launch of the Clean Start campaign the LHMU claimed that 70% of major Central Business District (CBD) offices were cleaned by contractors who have adopted Clean Start Responsible Contracting Principles and union membership among cleaners has increased (Interview with LHMU officials 26 November 2007). According to the LHMU (2007) the campaign has seen some success in organising employers with all but one of the major Australia–wide contractors and key contractors in Western Australia refusing to sign the RCP. A key aspect of Clean Start has been the leadership exhibited within the LHMU. The LHMU secured the services of Michael Crosby who had been director of the ACTU Organising Centre from 1995 to 2005, bringing to the campaign considerable experience and sometimes challenging and controversial organizing ideas (see Crosby, 2005). At the national and state level there have been changes in key personnel and appointment of those supportive of organizing models of unionism. National secretary, Louise Tarrant, spent much time with the SEIU and has been instrumental in promoting organizing within Australian unions and member activism within the LHMU (Crosby, 2005, p. 6). Other LHMU officials have spent considerable time with the SEIU and have experienced first-

hand organizing and community activism in the US. In response to concerns that the level of SEIU involvement in Australia might lead to disunity along the lines of the AFL–CIO split, Crosby argued: The SEIU has a really good track record in Australia. They have been completely selfless in helping our movement. They have hosted lead organisers for months at a time, run seminars for senior leaders, and taken time to explain their strategy to anyone who asked. Any speakers we wanted in this country, no matter how senior, they sent them. None of it cost us a cent and no return was expected. I think people have got to trust their bona fides. The support they give will continue – not just support to the Global Alliance unions, LHMU and Transport Workers Union – but to probably over a dozen unions in this country. They have made it very clear to me that they want to do whatever they can to help build power in this part of the world. What’s there to fear about that? (Lewis, 2005). Clean Start is the ‘‘scaling up” of a ‘‘small victories” approach to organizing. This approach has been very successful but is often undermined by turnover of contracts and contractors removing activists to another building (Ryan, 2007). The LHMU as an ‘‘organizing union” has been at the forefront of union renewal and rebuilding in Australia. However, the union has not always been able to resource campaigns and employ organizers with language skills to match the diversity of the wider non-English speaking membership (Interview with LHMU official 4 April 2003). A characteristic of the Clean Start campaign is that the LHMU has drawn upon the diversity of its membership and has appointed organizers to reflect the nature of the variety of membership comprising the union across Australia. It has also seen the development of street campaigns and actions designed to target individuals in the spirit of guerilla tactics. Rebecca Reilly, New South Wales Organizing Coordinator explains: We need to do research; we need to dedicate resources to researching employers – what they care about, not necessarily about their business. So instead of campaigning around the boss’s business particularly, maybe focus on where their personal interests lie. It might be in the art galleries or the horses that they own, or the opera . . . Let’s take our struggles to things that they care about. So we that we are in their faces everywhere that they actually turn and we involve people in our struggle and become more strategic about how we do this . . . (The Guardian 29 November 2006). It is too early to evaluate the success of Clean Start in Australia. Results thus far seem impressive, but questions remain. One of the difficulties faced by the LHMU in the past is that they have generally only been successful in penetrating large building sites and organizing amongst medium and large cleaning firms. To date the majority of signatories to the RCP have been large contractors. It will be interesting to see whether or not Clean Start represents an industry level of organization that draws in all contractors. Despite being a regional Australasian campaign, the level of support and penetration among the contractors has been uneven. In Western Australia employers (mainly local and state-based firms) have not rushed to sign to the RCP and contractor support in Aotearoa/ New Zealand has been uneven. Despite this, significant local victories have been achieved. In Western Australia, where cleaners’ wages have been eroded through the use of the AWAs an agreement between the LHMU, the state Labor government and the largest cleaning contractor has delivered a 20% pay rise for cleaners when they clean building owned or leased by state government agencies and departments (LHMU, 2008a).7 7 It will be interesting to see whether or not this agreement remains as the Labor government was replaced by a Liberal-National minority government in September 2008.

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Further challenges lie in whether or not the campaign can deliver results and lift wages and improve working conditions. Will support from contractors and parties to the RCP result in real improvement when contract prices are determined by property owners and their managing agents? Despite securing widespread support from employers for the RCP, it has taken two years to sign up the first employer to the LHMU Clean Start collective agreement, with a major employer ‘‘firmly rejecting the Collective Agreement process” (LHMU, 2008b). At one level, Clean Start is very much in the J4J mould and reflects Lerner’s strategy for the Global Property Service division of the SEIU and articulates the language of partnership and co-operation with employers. At another, it may be that the LHMU has managed to deal with the difficulty of reconciling top-down organizing with bottom-up mobilizing.

8. Conclusion Is the J4J the future of global organizing? There is of course much to be admired with respect to this model and the commitment it demands from its proponents and supporters. Unfortunately, we are yet unable to fully appreciate its full global potential as insufficient research has been done. This paper has attempted to address this lacuna through an examination of the SEIU’s global vision and how this has been translated and enacted in two specific spaces – Canada and Australia. We have argued that the global SEIU has a model of organizing cleaners and this is the J4J. However, this model is flexible and a work in progress contingent on the path dependencies of national unions. In the case of Canada and Australia J4J spatial scale is a critical mediator of the J4J model (Rutherford and Gertler, 2002, p. 198). Our brief analysis of the SEIU and the J4J suggests that rather than being ‘‘global,” the SEIU is selectively global since it seeks to identify key cities in the global economy to organize. Our examination of the J4J model in Canada and Australia demonstrates that the model is open to interpretation and embedding into the local. We have argued that the geography of the J4J is more selective than anticipated and the integrity of the model’s applicability is predicated on the negotiations of different unions. Our analysis suggests that the future of the union movement is one that is multi-scaled and fraught with a number of inherent challenges and contradictions. While we understand and are sympathetic to a critique that warns unions – including the SEIU – about the perils of being globalization-dependent for its strategies and thus ignoring different scales of organizing and action, we feel too that some of this criticism fails to explore the fact that unions are operating at different scales and/or that somehow the scale of organizing ought to be left to the last moment when workers and their unions are in the thralls of the struggle. Perhaps the best option is for unions to be ‘‘multiscalar” in their strategies as Castree (2000) and others (Milkman, 2006; Savage, 2006) have argued. The case of J4J in Canada and Clean Start in Australia suggests the possibilities of union perusing a multiscalar strategy. Finally, we have raised more questions that we have been able to answer. That the International Labor Movement is in the midst of serious and comprehensive re-imagination and re-invention may be obvious. What is not so obvious is the direction of this re-imagination and the scale and scope of the re-invention. There are arguments for the local and regional re-thinking of the movement as well as calls for the national re-orientation of the focus and strategies of the movement (Fairbrother and Yates, 2003; Kumar and Schenk, 2006; Turner and Cornfield, 2007). These strategies have been somewhat successful in easing the loss of members and for incursions into new sectors for organizing workers (Milkman, 2006). Still, what of national unions and issues? Is

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going global skirting more important and immediate issues within the national scale of workers, their unions and employers? To what extent does this new formation articulate national issues about race and gender? To what extent can global unions address national issues? And, how is space implicated in this? Our examination of the J4J in Canada and Australia seems to reaffirm Rutherford and Gertler’s (2002, p. 195) point that ‘‘the nation-state remains a key space for organized labor” but opens up opportunities for a rethinking of the global.

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