ILPC 2027

          Fashion retail, one of the largest sectors in the service economy, displays marked union weakness across Western countries (Grugulis and Bozkurt 2011; Ikeler 2011 and 2016). This is unsurprising considering the typical features of retail jobs (low skills) and workers (young, temporary, often with an instrumental orientation), as well as the high flexibility present in the retail labour market. The union deficit in fashion retail has several causes and consequences, starting in class-based power unbalances - workers' low structural and associational power (Olin Wrigth 2000) - and resulting into a low-wage pattern of employment practices (Katz and Darbishire 1999). Against this backdrop, fashion retail constitutes a critical test for unions trying to regain relevance in Western 'postindustrial' countries.

          This paper focuses on union strategies for organising 'fast fashion' retail workers in Italy and the US, two very different national contexts which have been selected for their position in the literature on union revitalisation. On the one hand, while many scholars acknowledge the use of multiple strategies, they note that in these two countries union revitalisation has been pursued in opposite directions: social partnership in Italy and organising in US (Frege and Kelly 2004). On the other hand, scholars argue that if such revitalisation is to be effective, especially in challenging structural settings like frontline services, unions need to 'learn from each other' - that is, move towards institution-building for social movement unionism and grass-roots mobilisation for social partnership unionism (Heery 2001). To clarify this strategic crossroad, we analyse some campaigns and union initiatives in the fashion retail sector in two big cities - Milan and New York - since 2011. On the basis of interviews with union activists and retail workers, we examine different campaigns involving employees of the same multinational company on either side of the Atlantic, comparing the processes and outcomes of their divergent revitalisation strategies. Our results hint at an effective dynamic of mutual learning, with unions in Italy able to organise 'zero-hours contract' workers and unions in the US able to create an innovative channel of representation through a new 'institutional actor' (the Retail Action Project, a workers’ centre supported by the union).

         Our contribution to the literature is twofold. First, by comparing two countries with different institutional frameworks, we extend the application of 'institutional opportunities', a concept which combines insights from literatures on institutional change and on social movements (Turner 2009). Second, we link our evidence to broader changes in the structure of industrial relations, considering the extent to which pessimistic accounts about a neoliberal twist (Baccaro and Howell 2011; MacDonald 2014) apply to fashion retail, an under-explored sector that holds great promise and challenges for union renewal.