Can Outsourced Workers Organize? a Case Study from the Philippines

This presentation will detail an attempt by outsourced workers in the Philippines to form a labor union.  These workers are in the "knowledge process outsourcing" sector, meaning that they possess significant human capital and do skilled tasks for firms of the Global North.  The case immediately presents two puzzles.  First, given the many structural barriers known to impede unionization by outsourced workers in the Global South, how did a union campaign emerge?  Second, why did this unionization attempt ultimately fail?  My ethnographic research inside the outsourcing facility provides answers to these questions.  Representation struggles were initiated by highly-skilled workers and in response to new, driving tactics on the part of local management.   The latter were reacting to pressures put upon them by their Western clients.  The unionization campaign appeared to have caught local managers by surprise, and throughout it they were very concerned to keep news of it from reaching the government, the press, and Western clients.  In short, employees possessed significant structural and workplace power in their attempt to gain recognition.  Ultimately, however, it was local management’s ability to harness greater associational power that led to the defeat of the union.  One general implication is that studies of labor in global supply chains should theorize and examine empirically the vendor-client relationship.  In these supply chains, vendor firms and client firms have different interests and resources.