Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital Through Cross-Border Campaigns

To meet the challenges of globalization, unions must improve their understanding of the changing nature of corporate ownership structures and practices, and they must develop alliances and strategies appropriate to the new environment. Global Unions includes original research from scholars around the world on the range of innovative strategies that unions use to adapt to different circumstances, industries, countries, and corporations in taking on the challenge of mounting cross-border campaigns against global firms. This collection emerges from a landmark conference where unionists, academics, and representatives of nongovernmental organizations from the Global South and the Global North met to devise strategies for labor to use when confronting the most powerful corporations such as Wal-Mart and Exxon Mobil.

The workplaces discussed here include agriculture (bananas), maritime labor (dock workers), manufacturing (apparel, automobiles, medical supplies), food processing, and services (school bus drivers). Kate Bronfenbrenner's introduction sets the stage, followed by contributions describing specific examples from Asia, Latin America, and Europe. Bronfenbrenner's conclusion focuses on the key lessons for strengthening union power in relation to global capital

"The contributors to Global Unions address one of the most pressing questions facing labor and unions in the world today: How can unions confront and address the implications of globalization? The distinctive and original feature of this book is to show in a systematic and sustained way how cross-border campaigns are generated and how problems arise for unions that try to implement them. Kate Bronfenbrenner has set the standard for debate on the effectiveness of global unions."
-Peter Fairbrother, Cardiff University

"Global Unions sets a rigorous new standard for research on global union campaigns. It is historic, exciting, and a crucial text for readers in several disciplines such as labor studies, sociology, and political science who are grappling with the most important question of our era: global inequality and modes of collective action to advance democracy and justice ."
--Dorian T. Warren, Columbia University

Terry Boswell, Emory University Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University Henry J. Frundt, Ramapo College Samanthi Gunawardana, University of Melbourne Tom Juravich, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Kevin Kolben, Rutgers Business School Valeria Pulignano, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium Darryn Snell, Monash University Dimitris Stevis, Colorado State University Ashwini Sukthankar, International Commission for Labor Rights Amanda Tattersall, University of Sydney Peter Turnbull, Cardiff University Peter Wad, Copenhagen Business School