Legal Mobilisations, Trade Unions and Radical Social Change: A Case Study of the IWGB
通过研究英国独立工人工会(IWGB)的法律动员案例,分析新型工会如何利用法律追求激进社会变革,并揭示其法律实践中的局限。
Abstract In recent years, a number of new style trade unions have emerged which are said to exhibit a more ‘radical’ orientation to social change than more ‘traditional’ trade unions. This has raised questions as to the significance of the willingness of these new style trade unions to mobilise the law in pursuit of that change, and in particular, to engage in so-called ‘strategic litigation’. Through a case study of some of the legal mobilisations of one of the more well-known new style trade unions in the UK, the Independent Workers of Great Britain union (IWGB), drawing on insights from the literature on legal mobilisation, and supplementing this with insights from the Marxist theory of the legal form, this paper will highlight the distinctiveness of these new style trade unions and explain the basis of their radical potential, before showing how that potential is limited, or negated, by the particular way in which they engage with law in practice. The paper will conclude with some observation as to what a more radical orientation to the law might look like for social organisations and trade unions in practice.