“We Can’t Just Wrap Ourselves in the Flag:” Labour Nationalism, Global Solidarity, and the 2016 Fight to Save gm Oshawa

Abstract

Global labour studies scholarship has increasingly recognized the importance of building global solidarity of workers and their unions in response to globalization. Despite this, the labour movement’s embrace of global solidarity as a response to globalization has been incomplete, and at times contradictory. The more common response to globalization has been labour nationalism, which has commanded far less attention in the literature. This paper considers labour nationalism from the perspective of emerging theories of global solidarity, offering a 2016 rank-and-file-driven campaign to save a General Motors plant in Ontario as a case study in labour nationalism. Although nationalism continues to be a relatively effective mobilizing device, Unifor Local 222 has had very little success ‘keeping good jobs in Canada.’ Instead, the union has entrenched a collective action frame that makes space for more xenophobic and racist expressions of nationalism and undermines the prospects of building solidarity abroad and, paradoxically, at home.