Edited by Kate Bronfenbrenner

This collection of rich case studies backs up a simple but critical argument: international collaboration is crucial if the labour movement is to effectively combat global capital. The first chapter contributes a tidy model for understanding strategic corporate research and campaigns, but the book’s key strength is in its concrete examples of how real cross-border campaigns have unfolded.
These case studies cover a wide range of actors and strategies. The regional focus of many chapters is on struggles of Asian workers, but several cases also address the dynamics of European and American efforts to wage cross-border campaigns. One chapter outlines how workers in a Malaysian subsidiary company of Maersk mobilized support for their long-running organizing efforts from Danish trade unions. Another details how Sri Lankan EPZ garment workers used broad international support to pressure Nike to intervene and support their demands for a union in its supplier factory. Another compares different strategies used against major banana multinationals in Central America. Other chapters focus on Global Union Federations and International Framework Agreements, pan-European engagement with European companies using EU mechanisms and US-European efforts to combat common companies through a united union front.
Global Unions draws out not only the role that different levels of trade unions and international NGOs play in campaigns, but also the role played by different actors within multinational corporations (MNCs) and their supply chains. One point that the book makes clear is that many different pressure points exist within any MNC’s supply chain, and creative campaigns can exploit these to workers’ benefit. These include transport centres and warehouses that distribute goods, subsidiary & parent company relationships, shareholders, and the World Bank that finances overseas investment, among others. The book also touches on the challenges faced by certain trade unions and labour organizations that have tried to build transnational coalitions.
Global Unions reflects a thought-provoking array of strategies, well worth reading.
Cornell University Press, 2007

Price: US$25