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Activists face bureaucrats: the failure of the I sraeli social workers' campaign
Author(s) -
Preminger Jonathan
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
industrial relations journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.525
H-Index - 3
eISSN - 1468-2338
pISSN - 0019-8692
DOI - 10.1111/irj.12029
Subject(s) - hegemony , general partnership , fell , democracy , representation (politics) , political science , face (sociological concept) , political economy , collective bargaining , collective action , public administration , sociology , public relations , politics , law , social science , paleontology , biology
The I sraeli social workers' campaign of 2011 enjoyed widespread support, a groundswell of rank‐and‐file participation, and democratic representation through new organisations pushing for a protracted struggle, yet the collective agreement seemingly imposed by the H istadrut fell far short of expectations. This article explains this discrepancy by asserting that the new organisations' ‘radical’ organising approach threatened the labour federation's long history of social partnership and its main strategies for retaining its hegemony. Thus incompatibility between the social partnership approach and the more radical ‘organising’ approach may explain the failure of a collective campaign and shed light on cases where the union appears to be suppressing or neutralising the aspirations of the workers it claims to represent.