Mobilizing Protest: Insights from Two Factory Closures
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2012.00906.x |
| Author | Paul Blyton,Jean Jenkins |
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
Mobilizing Protest: Insights from Two
Factory Closures
Paul Blyton and Jean Jenkins
Abstract
This article draws on investigations of worker response to two factory closures
to develop recent discussions around mobilization theory. With many shared
characteristics between the factories, both located in the garment manufactur-
ing sector, and with similar workforces and union organization, certain key
distinguishing features between the two provide insights into why worker protest
became effectively mobilized and sustained in one case but failed to materialize
in the other. The findings point to the value of assigning greater weight in studies
of worker mobilization to the impact of prior existing social structures within a
population, and the interaction between that population, its leaders and wider
society.
1. Introduction
In the study of worker protest, much recent discussion has focused on mobi-
lization theory: how workers acquire a collective definition of their interests,
and organize and take action in response to a perceived injustice committed
by their employer. John Kelly (1998) has usefully contributed to this discus-
sion by developing various strands of earlier arguments on mobilization to
identify the processes involved in how injustices are defined by social groups,
and how this sense of injustice is translated, under certain conditions, into
collective action. Outside industrial relations (IR), sociologists and political
scientists have made important contributions to this analysis, including
Benford and Snow (2000) in their analysis of how social movements come to
‘frame’ a particular issue in terms of injustice, and Levi and Olson (2000),
who examine the ways in which commonly held resentments can generate
coalitions of social protest.
However, it is in the study of IR in general, and trade union activity in
particular, that much of the attention on mobilization theory has been
Paul Blyton and Jean Jenkins are at Cardiff University.
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British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2012.00906.x
51:4 December 2013 0007–1080 pp. 733–753
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2012. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
focused since Kelly’s influential publication. Within IR, research directed
towards mobilization theory has focused particularly on the role of union
organizers and leaders in turning a collective sense of grievance or injustice
into union involvement and collective action. Studies in various national
contexts (the UK, Australia and the USA, for example) have reinforced this
significance given to union activity as a means of building group cohesion,
stimulating member union involvement and mobilizing workers to take
action (Badigannavar and Kelly 2005; Brown Johnson and Jarley 2004;
Buttigieg et al. 2008; Cregan et al. 2009). While each of these studies
acknowledges the importance of the different stages in the mobilization
process — the development of a collective sense of injustice, the identification
of the employer as the cause of that injustice (rather than some abstract cause
such as ‘globalisation’), a view that collective action could rectify the injus-
tice, and a leadership ‘willing and able to mobilise members for actions’
(Badigannavar and Kelly 2005: 520) — it is this last aspect that Kelly and
these subsequent studies have placed a particular emphasis upon. Union
organizers and officers are, thus, viewed as having a key and driving role to
play in the worker mobilization process.
This view has been subject to some recent challenge. For example, Atzeni
(2009: 5–8) argues the need for mobilization to be seen as a more complex
and contradictory feature and outcome of contemporary global capitalism,
rather than as a more linear phenomenon. In particular, he raises questions
as to the suitability of mobilization theory (as defined by Kelly 1998) for
analyzing instances of spontaneous collective action where no leaders or
organization may be apparent. However, if we return to the body of theory
developed by Tilly (1978), McAdam (1988) and others, which Kelly drew on
in synthesizing his model of mobilization, we see that an appreciation of the
evolution of the relationships among expanding political opportunity, chang-
ing aspects of collective organization and the growth of social movements
became central to their analysis (see McAdam et al. 1996: 9). Thus, while
highly competitive labour markets may make analysis of mobilization more
complex, the evidence suggests that to try to separate ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-
down’ approaches to mobilization is a false and unhelpful dichotomy
(Milkman 2006: 153).
In this article, we contribute to this debate by drawing on a close compari-
son of two garment factories where workers faced closure decisions. With
many features shared in common between the two plants, the comparison
allows us to examine the significance of certain key variables that distin-
guished them, as one workforce mobilized against closure, while the other did
not. Within the analytical framework of mobilization theory (Kelly 1998), we
focus on the interaction between social networks in the workplace and
sources of influence and leverage in the external environment. The nature
of this relationship is crucial to the element of ‘opportunity’ for effective
mobilization, and is, we argue, particularly pertinent for the organization of
workers in low-skilled but highly competitive international markets that lack
‘industrial muscle’ and may experience a ‘disconnect’ between their local
734 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2012.
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