Labour and Globalisation: Results and Prospects

Abstract

Andrew Herod (ed.), Organizing the Landscape. Geographical Perspectives of Labor Unionism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998, £15.95, xix+372 pp.

Eric Lee, The Labour Movement and the Internet. The New Labour Internationalism, London: Pluto Press, 1997, £14.99, xi+212 pp.

Gregory Mantsios (ed.), A New Labour Movement for the New Century, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998, $24.00, xix+353 pp.

Kim Moody, Workers in a Lean World. Unions in the International Economy, London: Verso, 1997, £14.00, 342 pp.

Peter Waterman, Globalization, Social Movements and the New Internationalisms, London: Mansell, 1998, £55.00, 302 pp.

Torn by internationalization of finance and production, unable to adapt to networking of firms and individualization of work, and challenged by the degendering of employment, the labor movement fades away as a major source of social cohesion and workers' representation (Castells 1997: 354).

The new unionism

More or less all the books under review refer to a ‘new labour internationalism’ as a significant break from the dominant post-war trend of nation-statist unionism. Thus for Kim Moody, Workers in a Lean World, ‘If capitalism is now more global than ever, so too is the working class it begets’ (308). The transnational nature of contemporary capitalism is seen to point towards new international trade-union strategies but also the old notion of an international working class. In a similar vein, Edna Bonaich argues that ‘Rapidly globalizing capital obviously calls forth the need for a global labor movement’ (Journal of World Systems Research 1998: 3). In all of this we see a certain degree of inexorability with capitalism ‘begetting’ social classes, and an ‘obvious’ development of a global labour movement. We should probably recall an earlier debate in the late 1970s around the ‘new international division of labour’ and the call for workers' organisations to mirror the growing transnational corporations (TNCs). Then as now we cannot base our assumptions on any inevitabilisms. Having said that, this time around there does seem to be considerable pressure and more favourable disposition towards the creation of transnational labour strategies.