Unions, Internationalism, Globalisation

What can unions do to remake themselves in the world of work?

By ARCWS

A one day seminar held at Deakin University for unions presented some thoughtful papers on work and the international economy. Papers from the joint ACTU/ARCWS Seminar 13 July 2002

The paper more or less kicked off the Australian Research Centre on Work and Society that has started at Deakin Uni and is headed up by Carla Lipsig-Mumme, who was previously at the Canadian Research Centre on Work and Society. Great to see such an institution setting up in Australia.

The participants were here for the most part because of the International Sociology Conference held in Brisbane but they sought to contribute to a special seminar for unions.

Rob Lambert and Edward Webster spoke on "What is New in the New Labour internationalism". They noted that economic deregulation has intensified competion amongst workers with the consequences of huge work restructuring and reductions in public expenditures and financing at local levels especially. New social movements have sprung from this with the possibilities of these connecting with labour movements. Possibilities opened up despite the increased repression of labour include:

· activists interchange using the web and email

· multinational companies have to face up to multinational bargaining pressures with a co-ordinated labour movement

· emerging global norms in workplace rights especially the notion of core rights as set out by the ILO.

Labour has to rethink its strategies. In many African countries for example there are emerging organization of the "unorganised" workforce separate to traditional labour bodies who have a different approach to achieving decent living conditions. The informal sectors generate this with the many workers in very insecure employment conditions.

Webster and Carla Lipsig-Mumme elaborated on this later theme in another paper where they argued that the labour movements had been too Eurocentric and thus ignored innovative movements in semi-industrialised countries. These were more like what we in the West call social movements. Globalisation opens up new strategies for for labour movements where this wider view can be