Building Power Resources: Local Organising, Transnational Union Networks and the Regulation of the Shipbreaking Industry

The power resources approach has been used as interpretive lens in labour studies to understand the potential for unions to mobilise different forms of power and their combination and interaction. Many studies that use this approach have focused on the use of power resources to support organising in local workplace or industry contexts but there have been few studies that have conceptualised the supranational interaction of power resources. In this study we utilise the power resources approach to interpret multi-scalar worker organising and representation in a specific industry, employment, and geographic context: precariously employed workers engaged in shipbreaking in India and other South Asian nations. We seek to explain: 1) the relational interaction between local unions and unions at other geographic resolutions, most especially global unions; 2) the combination and mobilisation of power resources, especially associational, ideational, and institutional power; across geographic scale 3) the need for a dynamic rather than a static conceptualisation of union repertories of action and access to power resources over time. Our study focuses on sustained and coordinated work by local and global unions over several decades to combine and deploy power resources, with associated repertoires of action, to improve working conditions and rights in this most precarious and dangerous of industries. In particular, we show how these efforts have supported local union organising and impactful health and safety interventions, most especially in India. The formation and resourcing of regional and global union networks has also supported local unions but also provided organisational and campaign platforms to influence national and global authorities on the design and implementation of the regulation of the industry and its working conditions.