Kim Scipes

I am a former printer who is now a Professor of Sociology at Purdue University Northwest, a regional campus of Purdue University, in Westville, Indiana. I am a member of the American Sociological Association, with memberships in the Labor and Labor Movements, Collective Behavior and Social Movements, and Global and Transnational Sociology sections. Further, I'm a long-time member of RC 44, the Research Committee on Labor, of the International Sociological Association, and was elected and served on the Board of RC 44 from 2006-10. I am a member of the National Writers Union, and a long-time activist in the US labor movement. Additionally, I am a former Sergeant in the US Marine Corps (1969-73), who got politicized fighting racism in the Marine Corps, and fortunately stayed in the States all four years, turning around while on active duty.

I have worked in a number of jobs before entering academia. I worked as a printer for more than nine years, but have also worked as a high school teacher and office worker, so I bring experiences from the blue, white and pink color sectors of the US economy.

I have been writing on Labor-related issues primarily since 1984, although I have written on a number of connected issues as well. (For a list of my publications, organized by subject and linked wherever possible to on-line versions, go to http://faculty.pnw.edu/kim-scipes/publications/#August18 .) My 200+ articles have been published in the United States, and in 14 other countries--in hard copy, in hard copy and the Internet, and just on the Internet. My writing has included everything from theoretical writings to description/analysis to opinion pieces in local newspapers.

I have traveled around the world, and have done research in the Philippines, Venezuela, and South Africa. I have traveled extensively around Western Europe, particularly in England, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Germany. I teach in the summers at Ton Duc Thang University in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

I have been formally educated in excellent programs. I have a Master's Degree in Development Studies from The Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, The Netherlands (1991), and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Illinois at Chicago (2003).

I have published three books to date:

KMU: Building Genuine Trade Unionism in the Philippines, 1980-1994 (New Day Publishers, 1996) is an in-depth look at the development of the Kilusang Mayo Uno labor center, one of the most developed and dynamic labor movements in the world, and which was created during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. I look at how unions were developed in four different regional political economies--light manufacturing, plantation sugar, copper mining, and capitalist agriculture--and how they joined together nationally to create the KMU. Further, I provide an in-depth look at the Corazon Aquino government and it's war against the Filipino people from the perspective of militant labor: according to KMU leaders, there were more human rights abuses under democrat Aquino than under dictator Marcos!

AFL-CIO's Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage? (Lexington Books, 2010) is an in-depth look at the foreign policy program of the US Labor Movement. This foreign policy is done by a few, top-level leaders, behind the backs and without the knowledge of almost all union members and even most union leaders, but done in our name--and I have established that it is a program of "labor imperialism." In the book, I examine the origins of Labor's foreign policy under Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor, showing that this PRECEDED the Russian Revolution, opposition to which is generally used to justify these operations. I then cover this foreign policy under George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and John Sweeney, and provide case studies of AFL-CIO operations in Chile in the early 1970s, the Philippines in the mid- to late-1980s, and Venezuela in the early 2000s. I look at how labor activists have been challenging this foreign policy. I then look at how the US Government (under both Democrats and Republicans) have sought to incorporate Labor's operations to expand and maintain the US Empire.

My latest book is an edited collected titled "Building Global Labor Solidarity in a Time of Accelerating Globalization" (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016). In the introduction, I give a sophisticated discussion of globalization, recognizing both "top-down" and "bottom-up" forms of globalization. In my opening chapter, I theorize global labor solidarity. There are a number of excellent chapters in the book, which includes discussions from Canada, US and Mexico and El Salvador, Latin America, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Mexico and California, and a proposal for a new labor foreign policy.