Globalization And Third World Trade Unions

This study is the outcome of a series of investigations into the deep crisis in which the organized labour movement in the South finds itself as a result of changes in the global economy. The regional overviews and illustrative case studies from Asia, Latin America and Africa show how trade unions currently face a variety of difficult challenges. These include new management methods, the growing influence of the informal sector and casualization of labour, and the ever-growing participation of women workers who are not currently represented adaquately by trade unions. The volume concludes with an exploration of possible strategies for the future.

Intellectual fashion currently focuses on us as consumers, but the world of production and services still needs us as workers. While globalisation has, in part, been driven over the past two decades by the transnational corporations' search for cheap labour in new regions of the South, scholarly research and the mass media have paid remarkably little attention to the consequent changes that are happening in the world of work. This book is the first to deal comprehensively and analytically with labour's response to globalisation. It provides a critical overview of the main challenges facing workers and trade unions worldwide. Its author argues that what may be described as the national period in labour history is decisively over. Now the labour movement is itself acting increasingly in a transnational manner. This holds out the hope of its playing a major role in the social regulation of a global economic system which is largely out of control. The author explains how globalisation is foisting flexibilisation and feminisation on working people, but in the process also making them conscious of their transnational links. The 'old' internationalism of the trade union movement is now showing signs of developing into a 'new' internationalism where workers develop a sense of common interest and new ways of organizing that transcend national boundaries. Drawing his evidence from what is happening to workers and trade unions in a wide range of countries in both the industrialized North and the developing South, Professor Ronaldo Munck suggests that we may be on the brink of a new version of what Karl Polanyi, many years ago, strikingly called 'the great transformation'. The implications for workers, trade unions and their transnational corporate employers could be profound.

Bringing together papers from national and international experts from the Global Union Research Network (GURN), this book provides an overview of how trade unions around the world are responding to globalisation.Globalisation has proved a complex and multi-faceted process for workers, as are the strategies they must develop to face its challenges. The case studies in this volume demonstrate successful strategies undertaken by trade unions in Brazil, Bulgaria, the Caribbean, Colombia, India, Poland, the United Kingdom, Turkey as well as Southern and Eastern Africa. In the process, the contributors highlight issues crucial to trade unions in this period of fast-paced change, such as the struggle for transparent governance for a fairer globalisation, the implementation of labour standards, employment creation, social protection, poverty alleviation including meeting the UN's Millennium Development Goals and gender equality and more.It shows how trade unions are a key part in influencing the rules of globalisation to achieve a fairer globalisation, while also playing a role in implementing and enforcing these rules

It is often assumed that social movements, such as that of labour, will simply be overwhelmed by the changes brought about by globalisation. This volume points to this conclusion as at best premature and possibly also misguided.

As the world economy is liberalized, and national economies become more intertwined, the national decision making of states is also increasingly interdependent, and it has become vital for non-governmental organizations to create an international agenda. This title is an important study of what makes such organizations successful on an international level. The focus is on trade unions, as a key international group of NGOs. It asks whether a global system can be designed to stimulate countries to observe a set of minimum or core standards. It explores three important questions: how have unions attempted to influence the debate on the inclusion of minumum labour standards in the WTO agreement?; what accounts for their success or lack of success?; and what conclusions, with respect to the effective behaviour of trade unions in the construction of international policy, can be drawn from these experiences? In exploring these questions the text looks at social clause debates within a number of international bodies: the ILO, OECD and the EU, and within two countries: the USA and India.

Comprises two articles dealing with several aspects of the international trade union agenda which are being developed in response to the challenge of globalization. Explains and elaborates policies and position papers adopted by various international trade union centres, as well as arguments raised by representatives of the trade union movement in debates about globalization labour standards and full employment. Includes annexes.

This publication contains the reflections of trade unions, mainly in the Asian banking industry, on the emerging globalizaton of services in the world economy. The worldwide liberalization and globalization of the "trading in services", aided by the "new rules" under the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the GATS or the General Agreement on Trade in Services, are radically changing the face of the banking and other service industries and causing a great deal of anxieties and insecurities in the ranks of the service sector employees.

Analyses the response of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) to the challenges posed by structural adjustment programmes introduced since 1983. Reviews the attempts made by the TUC to influence economic policy through a critique of some of the reform measures and also by participating in the implementation of specific policies.