Solidarity Or Colonialism The Polemic Of Labor Colonialism In Puerto Rico

Leaders of American-based labor organizations in Puerto Rico aggressively supported a collective bargaining rights bill for public sector workers in 1998 because, so they argued, the new law would help organize the public sector. However, almost ten years after the approval of that bill, it has become patently clear that the law did not lead to new organizing in Puerto Rico. Rather, the law changed the institutional makeup of labor relations in Puerto Rico by providing American-based labor organizations an opportunity to raid existing Puerto Rican labor organizations and become the exclusive representatives of public sector workers. Therefore, since the law was approved, a war between some American-based unions and some Puerto Rico-based labor organizations has ensued, one where the Puerto Rican unions accuse U.S. unions of being “labor colonialists,” while American-based labor unions deny the accusations and label their critics as ultra leftists, splintering the labor movement and making it an ineffective defender of working class interests. Hence, the new law, far from delivering the hundreds of thousands of new union members that union leaders promised, has created a political nightmare for labor organizations in Puerto Rico. U.S. labor unions are at fault for contributing to the current divisions in the Puerto Rican labor movement, but all unions, including independent Puerto Rican unions, must find a way out of the deadlock to concentrate on their most important goal - represent their members and become effective leaders for the Puerto Rican working class.

A collection of essays exposing and attacking misconceptions and ignorance regarding the role of the U.S. and other local issues in the context of the broader Puerto Rican struggle for self-determination.

Challenges the framing of Puerto Rican cultural politics as a dichotomy between nationalism and colonialism. Discussions of Puerto Rican cultural politics usually fall into one of two categories, nationalist or colonialist. Puerto Rican Jam moves beyond this narrow dichotomy, elaborating alternatives to dominant postcolonial theories, and includes essays written from the perspectives of groups that are not usually represented, such as gays and lesbians, youth, blacks, and women. Among the topics discussed are the limitations of nationalism as a transformative and democratizing political discourse, the contradictory impact of American colonialism, language politics, and the 1928 U.S. congressional hearings on women's suffrage in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico, one of the last and most populated colonial territories in the world, occupies a relatively unique position. Its lengthy interaction with the United States has resulted in the long-term acquisition of expanded legal rights and relative political stability. At the same time, that interaction has simultaneously seen political intolerance and the denial of basic rights, particularly toward those who have challenged colonialism. In Puerto Rico under Colonial Rule, academics and intellectuals from the fields of political science, history, sociology, and law examine three themes: evidence of state-sponsored political persecution in the twentieth century, contemporary issues, and the case of Vieques.

A provocative, breath-taking, and concise relational history of colonialism over the past 500 years, from the dawn of the New World to the twenty-first century.

The gig economy, precarious work, and nonstandard employment have forced labor law scholars to rethink their discipline. Classical remedies for unequal power, capabilities approaches, "third way" market regulation, and laissez-faire all now vie for attention - at least in English. Despite a deep history of labor activism, Latin American scholarship has had scant presence in these debates. This book introduces to an English-language audience another approach: principled labor law, based on Latin American perspectives, using a jurisprudential method focused on worker protection. The authors apply this methodology to the least likely case of labor-protective jurisprudence in the industrialized world: the United States. In doing so, Gamonal and Rosado focus on the Thirteenth Amendment as a labor-protective constitutional provision, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. This book shows how principled labor law can provide a clear and simple method for consistent, labor-protective jurisprudence in the United States and beyond.

Leading scholars demonstrate how colonial subjects, national liberation movements, and empires mobilized human rights language to contest self-determination during decolonization.