Joseph Mc Cartin est actuellement l’un des meilleurs spécialistes de l’histoire ouvrière aux États-Unis. Professeur à l’université Georgetown, il a publié deux ouvrages majeurs : l’un sur la naissance de la démocratie industrielle aux États-Unis ; l’autre sur la grève des contrôleurs aériens au début des années 1980. D’un point de vue théorique, il a cherché à renouveler les perspectives de l’histoire ouvrière en intégrant le droit et la sociologie des professions.
Il est invité dans le cadre du Programme Professeurs invités, sur proposition de Romain Huret (Mondes américains/CENA).
Les conférences seront en anglais.

Conférences

« The Unraveling of “Employee” and “Employer”: Financialization, “Fissuring,” and the Disintegration of Private-Sector Worker Bargaining Power »

Dans le cadre du séminaire de Romain Huret : « Célibataires, familles et société aux États-Unis à l'époque contemporaine ».

This lecture will look at how the categories of employee and employer both decomposed in the late 20^th century and how this decomposition accelerated the demise of private-sector collective bargaining in the United States.  It will look especially at how the process of financialization (which replaced managerial capitalism with management by the markets) drove the process of “fissuring” (the increasing separation of employee from controlling employer).  It will argue that the decomposition of these categories undermined worker bargaining power and opened the door to capital’s domination of work relations.

• Vendredi 10 mai 2019, de 14h à 16h – EHESS (salle 12) – 105 bd Raspail, 75006 Paris

« The Eclipse of American Industrial Democracy: The Unraveling of a Twentieth-Century Ideal »

Dans le cadre du séminaire collectif du Centre d’études nord-américains : « Recherches nord-américanistes ».

This lecture will trace the rise and decline of industrial democracy, the unrealized ideal that informed debates about U.S. labor relations for much of the 20^th century.  It will look at the ways in which this ideal was contained, emptied of much of its original promise, and then eclipsed by the rise of the “rights revolution.”  It will conclude with an assessment of the significance of the near total disappearance of references to deepening democracy as a goal of labor policy by the 1970s.

• Lundi 13 mai 2019, de 14h à 16h – EHESS (salle 12) – 105 bd Raspail, 75006 Paris

« From Collective Bargaining to Bargaining for the Common Good ? Reviving Worker Bargaining Power and Democracy in the 21st Century » 

Dans le cadre du séminaire de Romain Huret : « Célibataires, familles et société aux États-Unis à l'époque contemporaine ».

This will trace failed efforts to resuscitate the dying model of 20^th century model of labor relations, and the tentative emergence by the early 21^st century of efforts to radically rethink and re-envision collective bargaining to meet the needs of workers in this century in which financialization, the increasing fluidity of employee/employer relationship, and globalization have created a new form of capitalism.  It will trace the emergence of an initiative called Bargaining for the Common Good, which is attempting to rethink the participants, processes, and purposes of bargaining in ways that will revive both worker bargaining power and democracy.  It will assess the challenges that must be met if this or other efforts to re-empower workers and rebuild democracy in the 21^st century are to succeed.

• Vendredi 17 mai 2019, de 14h à 16h – EHESS (salle 12) – 105 bd Raspail, 75006 Paris

« Bargaining with the Neo-Liberal State: Privatization, Taxation, Financialization, and Public-Sector Workers »

Dans le cadre du séminaire « Histoire économique », organisé par Jérôme Bourdieu.

This lecture will look at how the vibrant movement of U.S. public-sector unionism which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s was increasingly tamed and marginalized by the early 21^st century.  It will focus on the ways in which privatization, tax cuts and tax subsidies, and the growing influence of financial interests over the public sector undercut public-sector collective bargaining, which itself had been built on a foundation that was too narrow to address these developments.

• Mercredi 22 mai 2019, de 12h30 à 14h – Paris School of Economics (salle R1-09) - Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris