The trade unions membership dynamics and union members’ trajectories

This text presents an analysis of aggregated membership’s dynamics for Spanish trade unions, using ECVT data, as well as union memberships’ trajectories, or members’ decisions about joining the organization, permanency and responsibilities, and subsequent attrition. For the analysis of trajectories we make use of information of the records of actual memberships and the record of quitting of CCOO, and of a survey-questionnaire to a sample of leavers of the same union. This study allows us to confirm a linkage between the decision and motivations to become union member, to participate in union activities, the time of permanency, and the motives to quit the organization. We also identify five types of union members’ trajectories, indicating that, far from views that assert a monolithic structure, unions are complex organizations.

Respuestas sindicales ante el desafío de la empresa-red: sector petroquímico y nuclear

El modelo de empresa-red constituye un desafío para los sistemas de relaciones laborales. Dicho modelo cuestiona el papel de las instituciones colectivas de trabajo, concebidas históricamente en el marco de una organización integrada verticalmente según el modelo fordista. En efecto, la empresa dispersa o el recurso a la subcontratación son contextos cada vez más habituales, en los cuales la organización del trabajo se encuentra disociada de la empresa en sentido jurídico y patrimonial, y donde se establecen relaciones de trabajo triangulares de facto entre empresa principal, empresa de servicios y trabajadores. La búsqueda de respuestas a esta problemática apunta a la reconstrucción de solidaridades entre los trabajadores, pasando por la acción de los representantes de los trabajadores. A partir de un estudio de casos llevado a cabo en dos industrias de flujo, la industria nuclear y la petroquímica, este artículo se propone analizar los efectos de la triangulación de la relación salarial a nivel de planta, y dos procesos experimentales de organización sindical y de negociación colectiva territorial que buscan dar respuesta a la problemática de la subcontratación. El artículo analiza los resultados y límites de dichas experiencias para reconstruir una “comunidad de trabajo” inclusiva de los trabajadores subcontratistas.

The Affordable Care Act and the Transformation of US Health Care

The neoliberal period was accompanied by a momentous transformation within the US health care system.  As the result of a number of political and historical dynamics, the healthcare law signed by President Barack Obama in 2010 ‑the Affordable Care Act (ACA)‑ drew less on universal models from abroad than it did on earlier conservative healthcare reform proposals. This was in part the result of the influence of powerful corporate healthcare interests. While the ACA expands healthcare coverage, it does so incompletely and unevenly, with persistent uninsurance and disparities in access based on insurance status. Additionally, the law accommodates an overall shift towards a consumerist model of care characterized by high cost sharing at time of use. Finally, the law encourages the further consolidation of the healthcare sector, for instance into units named “Accountable Care Organizations” that closely resemble the health maintenance organizations favored by managed care advocates. The overall effect has been to maintain a fragmented system that is neither equitable nor efficient. A single payer universal system would, in contrast, help transform healthcare into a social right.

Immigration in Spain: Integration with Feet of Clay?

The aim of the paper is to analyze the impact of the economic crisis on the integration of the immigrant population in Spain. The Spanish case is singular because during the years of intense immigration achieved a remarkable degree of socio-cultural integration. The paper argues that such integration it has been the result of the confluence of exceptional factors rather than the result of the policy making. From a mixed methodology approach, it shows that, during the period of expansion, two factors of the immigration contribute to their coexistence with native population: finding job and access to public services. But the economic crisis, with its impact in terms of job losses and austerity policies, expose the weaknesses of the Spanish model of integration.

Crisis Económica en África Occidental: el caso de Dakar, 1929-1939

En este artículo se explora el impacto socio-económico de la crisis internacional de 1929 en Senegal y más concretamente en la ciudad-puerto de Dakar. Se analizan las consecuencias de la dependencia externa y la extroversión económica que caracterizaba a las estructuras productivas coloniales, destacando también la respuesta organizada de los movimientos sociales africanos. Por otra parte, se estudia la evolución de las infraestructuras y actividad portuaria, observando la metropolización regional de Dakar durante este periodo.