Labour and livelihoods

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. Proyecto Tequisquiapan (PT) provides protective microfinance services in a small region of rural Mexico, including, importantly, open access deposit facilities. The authors report on new research which examined PT's record in enabling people with different degrees of vulnerability to build assets and protect themselves from both sudden shocks and more predictable demands for lump sums of cash. PT was found to be relatively more useful for the most vulnerable households.

Participatory research approaches are increasingly popular with scientists working for poverty alleviation, sustainable rural development, and social change. This introduction offers an overview of the special issue of Development in Practice journal on the theme of 'operationalising participatory research and gender analysis'. The purpose of the special issue is to add value to the discussion of methodological, practical, philosophical, political, and institutional issues involved in using gender-sensitive participatory methods.

Conceived by nurses in the hospital of a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, and inspired by Norwegian People's Aid, the international aid agency of the Australian trade unions was designed to give a genuine material base to solidarity with national liberation struggles.

Founded in 1951, War on Want is a UK-based NGO committed to the alleviation of poverty with strong roots in the labour movement. War on Want's programme on The Global Workplace provides trade unionists with a range of practical skills and knowledge about international development issues. Part of the programme involves a `Global Workers' Forum', which takes grassroots trade union activists from the UK to a similar sector or even a plant owned by the same employer in the South.

This paper argues that the NGO position on global labour rights is mistaken. NGOs' concerns over race and gender inequalities and their rejection of the primacy of class in today's global, capitalist economy have frustrated the project of incorporating labour rights into the global free trade regime. Trade unions, meanwhile, are one of the few agencies dedicated to dissolving class inequalities, especially between workers in the North and the South. Until NGOs rethink their position on class, trade unions are the only agency capable of pushing the labour rights agenda forward.

This article considers the problems of organisational survival, innovation, and inter-organisational partnerships for unions and for immigrant community-based organisations. The analysis focuses on the Citizenship Project, a project for assisting and organising Mexican immigrants, launched in 1995 by Teamsters Local 890 in response to the assault on immigrant rights in California.

In the early 1980s, support for trade unions was a significant component of Oxfam GB's programmes in various parts of the world, most notably Central America and South Africa. In Central America, this was motivated both because organised labour played an important role in popular movements that were pressing for equitable political settlements to the wars ravaging the region, and because unions as such, as well as their members and leaders, were the targets of repression and political violence.

Between 1991 and 2002, the international anti-sweatshop movement experienced significant growth. A series of interconnecting international networks developed, involving trade unions and NGOs in campaigns to persuade particular transnational corporations (TNCs) to ensure that labour rights are respected in the production of their goods. While the loose, networked form of organisation that characterises the movement has helped it to grow and progress despite its diverse constituency, arguably a lack of coordination has undermined its ability to achieve policy change.