The title of my paper contains an assortment of words relevant to current labor studies – networks, struggle, unions – but one word, or more aptly, one concept, will certainly stand out as peculiar: work-well-fare. What is this concept? What does it mean? I argue that work-well-fare is a tendency towards a renewed class compromise for America; a meeting point for capital and labor to renegotiate balance in politics, in the economy and in social discourse. Coupled with changes in the geography of capitalism and in identity politics, work-well-fare offers new possibilities for progressive social change. And though my paper deals specifically on what this all means for organized labor, this presentation will focus on this concept of work-well-fare and try to present a convincing argument for its emergence.

But first, some background. This paper emerged out of a policy seminar last spring, and my intent was to both directly and indirectly grapple with the literature seeking to periodize modern capitalism. Concrete and relatively short periods or epochs are valuable heuristically, but I felt that they tend to take on a life of their own. This paper, then, in abstract terms, is an attempt to reconcile my apprehensiveness. I was especially attracted to the works of Regulation School thinkers such as Bob Jessop, Alain Lipietz and David Harvey – specifically the twin concepts of regime of accumulation and mode of regulation.

This theory in simplest form posits that every regime of stable capital accumulation requires a set of norms, customs, laws and regulations to both legitimate and enable it. Crises in capitalism push these two out of synch, and both must change until a new cohesion can be found – leading to a new “period”. The first portion of my paper outlines the transition from one period to another - Fordism to Post-Fordism – focusing specifically on the detrimental effects for organized labor. But a major question I had, perhaps over-optimistically framed, revolved around whether or not Post-Fordism is, or ever was, actually stable. If it were actually in crisis, what might emerge to replace it? And what might this mean for social struggles, specifically for laborers that had been so adversely affected by Post-Fordism?

Before I try to answer that question, I should note here what work-well-fare isn’t. My paper and my presentation deal specifically with the United States. Although I would point to a few recent promising incidents around the world – the end of the John Howard regime in Australia, a subtle shift in Japanese politics away from the intense nationalism and neoliberal reforms of the Koizumi days – this is currently not a shift affecting all of the so-called ‘developed’ nations. Work-well-fare is a concept with contextually specific applicability, not a theory.

Moreover, I would actually argue against the idea that work-well-fare is something that currently exists in the United States in terms of tangible policy frameworks or organized lobbying capacities, though I think both are slowly emerging. Mostly, work-well-fare is a discursive tendency that certain social actors can seize upon to reclaim a segment of social power long-held by certain capital interests.

And this is what this is really about. I won’t give a genealogy of the transition from Fordism to Post-Fordism, for I’m sure they are known to many of you in all too real terms. Suffice to say, as David Harvey has convincingly demonstrated, that despite the trend towards economism in social discourse dictating otherwise, the class war is alive and well, whether we like it or not. This transition was part of a strategy both conscious and unconscious by a minority of elites to restore bourgeois class power as dominant, and redistribute the fruit of that power – wealth – from the working and middle classes to a select group of economic overlords.

In the best language of neoliberalism, all of the changes that made Post-Fordism so different from its predecessor depended on choices made by real people, not on abstractions like ‘globalization’ or on a fatalistic path dependency barring future actions. If choices got us to where we are now, then choices can get us somewhere better – in terms of wage and tax burden inequality, state social service provision and budgetary prioritization, and collective bargaining agreement regimes, among many more.
In criticism of Margaret Thatcher, there are always alternatives and possibilities and realizing this is the first step in achieving them.

And this is what work-well-fare is: a realization. I think the realization that there are alternatives to economism is slowly and collectively happening across the United States. A growing disjuncture between the massive wealth accumulated in the United States and the highly uneven distribution and redistribution of this wealth has exacerbated social tensions to the point that powerful people – even the gatekeepers of capitalism so to speak - are beginning to question our current regime. As regulation theory might predict, the social regulation and the regime simply do not match up. Today, work remains the dominant social value in America, and as this idea is diffused into the psyches of a new generation of workers, and more deeply into the older generation, it is likely to remain so for some while. However, notions of ‘work’ and accompanying sub-values of competitiveness, efficiency, and productivity, are increasingly being linked to social concerns such as healthy, educated, and reasonably wealthy citizenry. To quote Mitt Romney, speaking at the California Republican debate on Jan. 30th, “Education, healthcare, economic development - they’re all tied together”.

Now, you may say that this is not necessarily new, and I agree. Bill Clinton, for example, was keen in utilizing this rhetoric during his presidency as a way of managing his political identity, and did pass some significant legislation such as the Family and Medical Leave Act (1993) and an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (1993). Still, I argue that much more has changed than a half-hearted political will to improve the life of constituents. Factors such as the composition of congress, recession, and mismatched rhetoric and reality for most Americans are making more impactful legislation and a discourse more conducive to the left increasingly possible.

Despite work-well-fare being a mainly discursive tendency, materially, we have already begun to see strategic investments in social services work to boost the competitiveness of capital. Yet alongside this, more recently we have seen an increasing concern placed on the vibrancy of communities, families and individuals beyond their immediate market functions. Thus, we have seen minimum wage legislation back on the table again – as recently as two weeks ago Hillary Clinton claimed she would provide a minimum wage of $9.50 if elected. And living wage campaigns are gaining momentum nationwide with some significant success.

Let me offer some evidence for these broad claims now using the examples of the governors of New York and California, Eliot Spitzer and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I chose these to reflect Republican and Democrat, East and West, and different capital and demographic interests. Here is a quote from Spitzer’s inaugural address:

“Today we stand in the midst of a global revolution that has transformed the way we live and the way we work…We must embrace a progressive vision of government once more – a vision that upholds the values of individuality and community; of entrepreneurship and opportunity; of responsibility and fairness. No one any longer believes in government as a heavy hand that can cure all our ills, but rather we see it as a lean and responsive force that can make possible the pursuit of prosperity and opportunity for all – by softening life’s blows, leveling its playing field and making possible the pursuit of happiness that is our god given right.”

Here we see Spitzer uphold the interests of both capital and laborer, although the order of his words is telling – individual before community, entrepreneurship before opportunity, responsibility before fairness. As if the matter had already been settled, he sets the tone for government to operate as a mediator, or manager, of social life, yet a manager that at least on the surface has concern for all employees.

In California, Governor Schwarzenegger is not so eloquent regarding his overall plan for the state, yet he too seems to be towing a similar line. The California state legislature approved another minimum wage increase in August of 2006 that will reach $8.00 in two years (DIR, 2006), as well as massive increases in education spending, but in the mind of Schwarzenegger, these all serve the instrumental purpose of improving competitiveness. That they also do benefit working people is emblematic of an uneven fusion between economic competitiveness and social sustainability; of workfare and welfare.

What makes this rhetoric and these policy changes more than just temporary, is the unity around the notion that the Post-Fordist regime of capital accumulation is in crisis. Even capitalists such as Klaus Schwab are increasingly worried about the future, arguing that “we need to devise a way to address the social impact of globalization, which is neither the mechanical expansion of welfare programs nor the fatalistic acceptance that the divide will grow wider…”. Lou Dobbs captures this sentiment in a much more current and culturally accurate way: “No one believes in democracy and free enterprise more than I do, and capitalism. But if we allow unfettered capitalism…” to reign free, then a crisis will be the least of our worries. (Feb. 9th, 2008).

This cursory discourse analysis demonstrates that even finance capitalists at the helm of the World Economic Forum and reactionary nationalists, though they do not buy into work-well-fare as I would hope to see it come to fruition, are concerned about what unchecked Post-Fordist capitalism will result in. Everywhere you look in America, and nowhere is this clearer than in the recent primary campaigns, people are looking for social and political unity and reconnection with one another, and with an America that has long been dormant.

My paper goes on to describe some additional transformations that I argue are significant in renewing concern for increasing class balance. If work-well-fare is a far from ideal compromise to rejig American political negotiation, changing geographies of capitalism and shifting identity politics signify opportunities to push the interests of labor even more.

Geographically, the spatial fix of work-well-fare is not significantly different from that of the Post-Fordist era. The restructuring of the role of the national state and the bifurcation of social relations remain staple features in the landscape of contemporary capitalism. However, what first appeared as ‘scale relativization’, which Bob Jessop defines as “intense competition among different economic and political spaces to become the new anchorage point of accumulation around which the remaining scale levels (however many, however identified) can be organized in order to produce a suitable degree of structured coherence”^{[1] 1}), I argue, is actually ‘scale stasis’ – the countervailing balance between multiple scales, forming a multi-structured scalar coherence. The decline of a single dominant scale does not necessarily signify chaos. After all, humans have always lived on multiple scales simultaneously despite perception to the otherwise. Instead, the rise of multiple scales operating together represents the increased dynamism of social life that new technologies make possible.

This dynamism means new possibilities for organization, for communication, for the ability to shift discourse and for new politics. And as the final segment of my paper describes – possibilities for union renewal. The ability for online communities operating on the virtual scale to affect tangible policy outcomes at the state or federal level represents huge possibilities, as does the ability to share strategies, ideas and other informational resources. Scale stasis, just like the dominance of any single scale, means the potential opening of space for capital interests to attempt to capture the reigns of power. This is always a threat that labor must always content with. Yet it also signifies opportunity, and it is this opportunity that makes the potential for work-well-fare to emerge as a new period of capitalism something that we can be optimistic about.

I think that the social regulation of identity is changing as well. The social vacuum left by the ultra-liberal 80s and 90s has led to a yearning for community, but on terms that flow from the liberal past. The explosion of online communities (e.g.: Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, Amazon, Youtube) that integrate the ability to self-represent and express ‘individuality’ with the collective regulating gaze of social peers, employers and the state is emblematic of this. One interesting example of this is the Facebook group “Rock the Vote”, which has over 31,000 members. Only 1500 people have made “wall posts”, and there are only a few thousand discussion board posts, many contributed by the same people no doubt. Still, people who might otherwise not participate in a social movement have the ability to do so in ways that do not come into conflict with other aspects of their identity. This strengthening of communities, despite their virtual character or their triviality for broader social struggle is a necessary precondition for progressive social change. Just like the shifting terrain of social relations presents opportunity for renewed class compromise, the way people view themselves in relation to society also presents opportunities: Opportunities for collective action, and ultimately for the joining of both the militant and complacent particularisms of disparate communities.

In conclusion, work-well-fare is not the next stage in an inevitable trajectory of neoliberal capitalism. Nor, except for some of the recent developments I have discussed, is it a “reality” in the United States, in the sense that it is a system of concrete policies, processes and established discourses. Above all, it is a potentiality – one of many alternatives to a life of increased income inequality, higher tax burden on the poorest, declining state social services, and a belligerent discourse aimed at crushing society itself. It is up to us all to realize this potential.

Twelve minutes is not long to cut across so many aspects of American social life, so let me finish with something quite current – though still far from an endorsement! Barack Obama perhaps signifies this tendency best. In a Texas rally on Feb. 19th, he stated “I believe in the free market…we don’t believe in government doing what we can do for ourselves. But when CEO’s make more in a day than we make in a year…then something has to change”. In a speech on the eve of the Potomac primaries in Wisconsin, amongst phrases outlining a plan of mutual reciprocity for education policy, he threw in the conspicuous phrase “there’s a moment in the life of every generation when its spirit has to come through if we are to make our mark on history. And this is our moment.” If his presidency lives up to his campaign, the spirit of the generation that he was hinting at, and its politics, albeit in a very different social and economic configuration, may be closer than we think.

1. Jessop (2002). The Future of the Capitalist State: 27-8 [[2] ↩]