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International Trade, Labor Relations, and Bargaining Power: International Strawberry Commodity Networks examines power in the commercial food system through the history of always available strawberries. Applying an interdisciplinary approach to case studies on strawberry production and sales in Mexico, Spain, and the United States, the author untangles the symbiotic relationships between the economic boom and labor strife in the sector. By comparing workers'struggles in the sector, he develops a novel model of workplace bargaining power in which the process of dignity catalyzes change.Since international trade in strawberries began three decades ago, the sector's growth has paralleled the rise of retailer dominance of food sales. Highlighting inequitable gains from the sales boom, workers have organized mass strikes, boycotts, and pressure campaigns. The divergent results ranged from ephemeral acknowledgments of workers'concerns to the establishment of union collective bargaining and steadily improving working conditions.Grounded in extensive research, the book provides fresh analytical approaches to understanding the social dimensions of international trade and workplace bargaining power. The book unpacks the relationship between poor working conditions and economic growth by applying a new method, international commodity network analysis, which builds on prior global supply chain approaches. It explains differences in workers'initiatives to improve employment conditions by identifying the process of dignity in the creation of solidarity.

The report brings together the usual three parts of the work of the Conference Committee, which examines the manner in which States fulfil their obligations deriving from Conventions and Recommendations. It also includes a list of observations on which governments are invited to provide information.

Over the years many transnational labor alliances have succeeded in improving conditions for workers, but many more have not. In The New Politics of Transnational Labor, Marissa Brookes explains why this dichotomy has occurred. Using the coordination and context-appropriate (CCAP) theory, she assesses this divergence, arguing that the success of transnational alliances hinges not only on effective coordination across borders and within workers'local organizations but also on their ability to exploit vulnerabilities in global value chains, invoke national and international institutions, and mobilize networks of stakeholders in ways that threaten employers'core, material interests.Brookes uses six comparative case studies spanning four industries, five countries, and fifteen years. From dockside labor disputes in Britain and Australia to service sector campaigns in the supermarket and private security industries to campaigns aimed at luxury hotels in Southeast Asia, Brookes creates her new theoretical framework and speaks to debates in international and comparative political economy on the politics of economic globalization, the viability of private governance, and the impact of organized labor on economic inequality. From this assessment, Brookes provides a vital update to the international relations literature on non-state actors and transnational activism and shows how we can understand the unique capacities labor has as a transnational actor.

Wie wandlungsfähig ist gewerkschaftliches Handeln? Diese Frage steht im Zentrum der durchgeführten komparativen Analyse nationaler Gewerkschaftspolitiken in Deutschland, Österreich und Slowenien. Dort unterliegen die Gewerkschaften vergleichbaren Handlungsbedingungen und entwickelten Gewerkschaftsidentitäten mit dem Fokus auf „Kooperation und Kompromiss“. Die 2008 einsetzende Wirtschafts- und Finanzkrise drohte diesen tradierten Mustern aber ihre politökonomische Grundlage zu entziehen. Im Rahmen der Studie erwiesen sich die nationalen Gewerkschaftsstrategien als wesentlich flexibler, als auf Grundlage der verinnerlichten Identitäten erwartet. Im Gesamtverlauf kam es dennoch nicht zu einer identitären Neuorientierung. Vielmehr war schließlich eine Revitalisierung der tradierten Handlungsimperative zu konstatieren.

Investigating the issue of employee representation in multinational companies (MNCs), this book sets out to systematically conceptualise the modes of articulation between different action fields. While previous studies have focused on forms of employee representation that have emerged throughout recent decades, rather little is known about the interaction and coordination of representational bodies and actors, such as trade unions and European or World Works Councils. Given the growing importance of transnational restructuring in MNCs, understanding the conditions under which employees are able to participate in company decision-making is a crucial issue. Based on empirical case studies and interviews with employee representatives from ten countries across Europe, the authors investigate the role of representational bodies in periods of company restructuring. Proposing a shift in perspectives in research on transnational labour relations and bringing new insights into structures and practices of employee representation in MNCs, this book will be a valuable read for both scholars and practitioners.

First published in 1998, illuminating the principles and practices which impelled British Labour's international attitudes, this book focuses on relationships between social democratic and communist organisations in the troubled scene of Europe between the wars. Peace and disarmament were the first priorities, giving way to the fight against fascism after 1933; the Spanish Civil War was the watershed when disarmament ceased to be a tenable option.Against this background, contacts made with the Labour and Socialist International and the International Federation of Trades Unions are considered and the distinctive approaches of women and young people are discussed. The history of these formal organisations is balanced by an account of the wide-ranging contacts of the broad Labour Movement in fields such as sport, education, Esperanto, music and art. Its protagonists'belief in international socialism is seen to be a faith which survived fascism and war, and continued to give hope for the future. This book will be of interest to students of Labour history and politics, as well as international and European studies.

The Industrial Workers of the World is a union unlike any other. Founded in 1905 in Chicago, it rapidly gained members across the world thanks to its revolutionary, internationalist outlook. By using powerful organising methods including direct-action and direct-democracy, it put power in the hands of workers. This philosophy is labeled as ‘revolutionary industrial unionism'and the members called, affectionately, ‘Wobblies'. This book is the first to look at the history of the IWW from an international perspective. Bringing together a group of leading scholars, it includes lively accounts from a number diverse countries including Australia, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden and Ireland, which reveal a fascinating story of global anarchism, syndicalism and socialism. Drawing on many important figures of the movements such as Tom Barker, Har Dayal, Joe Hill, James Larkin and William D.'Big Bill'Haywood, and exploring particular industries including shipping, mining, and agriculture, this book describes how the IWW and its ideals travelled around the world.

Con la adopción de la resolución de la OIT sobre una «transición justa para todos», es ahora necesario definir los elementos que componen un marco para esta transición justa. Esta edición del Boletín Internacional de Investigación Sindical estudia casos de ajustes económicos y de reestructuraciones en las diferentes regiones del mundo a fin de extraer lecciones aprendidas en el frente político y de utilizarlas para informar el marco de una transición justa.

Processes of neoliberal globalization have put national trade unions under pressure as the transnational organization of production puts these labour movements in competition with each other. The global economic crisis has intensified these pressures further. And yet, economic and political integration processes have also provided workers with new possibilities to organize resistance.Emphasizing the importance of agency, this book analyzes transnational labour action in times of crisis, historically and now. It draws on a variety of fascinating cases, across formal and informal collectives, in order to clarify which factors facilitate or block the formation of solidarity. Moving beyond empirical description of cases to an informed understanding of collective action across borders, the volume provides an insightful theorization of transnational action.

The International Journal of Labour Research is multidisciplinary and of interest to trade union researchers, labour ministries and academics in all the relevant disciplines worldwide – industrial relations, sociology, law, economics and political science. With the adoption of an ILO resolution on a “just transition for all” in 2013, there is now a need to better define the components of a just transition framework. This issue of the Journal examines past instances of economic adjustments and restructurings in different regions of the world to draw the lessons learned on the policy front and how they might inform a just transition framework.

Das Buch befasst sich mit den International Framework Agreements (IFA) – ein neueres Rechtsinstitut, mit dem sich transnationale Unternehmen gegenüber internationalen Gewerkschaften zur Einhaltung arbeitsrechtlicher Rahmenbedingungen verpflichten. Vor dem Hintergrund, dass ein internationales Arbeitsrecht fehlt, Unternehmen jedoch zunehmend global agieren, kommen Soft Law und nichtstaatlichen Vereinbarungen eine immer wichtigere Funktion zu. Die Autorin untersucht die derzeit gut 120 IFA hinsichtlich Rechtsnatur, international-privatrechtlicher Behandlung und Rechtswirkungen, insbesondere im Arbeits-, Kauf- und Lauterkeitsrecht. Neben der Bestandsaufnahme des jungen Instituts findet sich auch ein Ausblick auf die mutmaßliche weitere Entwicklung der IFA und ihrer Bedeutung im sozialen Dialog.

Fast 25 Jahre nach dem Abschluss der ersten Internationalen Rahmenvereinbarung bleibt die Frage offen, weshalb solche Vereinbarungen in Unternehmen mit Gewerkschaften geschlossen werden und inwieweit diese Erwerbsregulierung prägen. Veronika Dehnen untersucht den Einfluss von unterschiedlichen Akteuren und zeigt Kriterien auf, mit welchen der Nutzen der Vereinbarungen bewertet werden kann.

Galten Gewerkschaften lange Zeit als Reformbremsen, erfahren sie heute eine steigende Akzeptanz und sind zu gefragten Gesprächspartnern der Politik geworden. Die größte Einzelgewerkschaft IG Metall verzeichnet Mitgliedergewinne, stattliche Tarifabschlüsse führen zu Reallohnzuwächsen. Dieses Comeback der Gewerkschaften koinzidiert ausgerechnet mit der schwersten Wirtschaftskrise der Nachkriegszeit. Die Autoren erörtern die Frage, ob die gewerkschaftliche Erneuerung eine nachhaltige Entwicklung ist. Neben betrieblichen Praktiken betrachten sie die Wiederbelebung gewerkschaftlichen Interessenhandelns im internationalen Vergleich.

News about labor unions is usually pessimistic, focusing on declining membership and failed campaigns. But there are encouraging signs that the labor movement is evolving its strategies to benefit workers in rapidly changing global economic conditions. Global Unions, Local Power tells the story of the most successful and aggressive campaign ever waged by workers across national borders. It begins in the United States in 2007 as SEIU struggled to organize private security guards at G4S, a global security services company that is the second largest employer in the world. Failing in its bid, SEIU changed course and sought allies in other countries in which G4S operated. Its efforts resulted in wage gains, benefits increases, new union formations, and an end to management reprisals in many countries throughout the Global South, though close attention is focused on developments in South Africa and India.In this book, Jamie K. McCallum looks beyond these achievements to probe the meaning of some of the less visible aspects of the campaign. Based on more than two years of fieldwork in nine countries and historical research into labor movement trends since the late 1960s, McCallum's findings reveal several paradoxes. Although global unionism is typically concerned with creating parity and universal standards across borders, local context can both undermine and empower the intentions of global actors, creating varied and uneven results. At the same time, despite being generally regarded as weaker than their European counterparts, U.S. unions are in the process of remaking the global labor movement in their own image. McCallum suggests that changes in political economy have encouraged unions to develop new ways to organize workers. He calls these'governance struggles,'strategies that seek not to win worker rights but to make new rules of engagement with capital in order to establish a different terrain on which to organize.

The twenty-first century has posed serious challenges to workers − formal and informal, organized and unorganized − around the world. It has also brought to the fore extraordinarily creative responses, forcing us to think beyond our common understandings of “labour”, effective trade union strategies and forms of power. Challenging the global North's dominance in the literature, Labour in the Global South presents alternative approaches as well as creative responses to the challenges facing labour in the South, in countries such as Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, South Africa and Uruguay. The volume devotes particular attention to areas often neglected by organized labour: the relationship between ecology, climate change and jobs; unionizing service work; the dynamics of trade union−political party alliances; gender; and new forms of solidarity. It brings together a group of distinguished labour scholars and practitioners who make an important advance with their rich empirical case studies.

The Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations is an independent body of law experts from different geographic regions, legal systems and cultures. The Committee's role is to provide an impartial and technical evaluation of the application of international labour standards. This evaluation involves the Conference Committee on the Application of Standards, a permanent tripartite body of the International Labour Conference and an essential component of the ILO supervisory system. It functions in offering representatives of governments, employers and workers the opportunity to evaluate the manner in which States comply with Conventions and Recommendations adopted by the ILO. But what is the impact of the work of the Conference Committee and of its report? In the various countries concerned, what are the practical consequences of these annual discussions? As time passes, what tangible transformations have occurred in the various legal and political systems? On the occasion of the 100th Session of the International Labour Conference, and the 85th anniversary of the Conference Committee on the Application of Standards, it would appear to be important to emphasize the significance of the work carried out by this body.

This issue of the International Journal of Labour Research addresses a central issue, if not the key issue for the labour movement, that of wages and what has happened to them over the past three decades.

This book assesses the phenomenon of international framework agreements (IFAs), examining their implementation and impact around the world as well as their promotion of ILO standards. This volume includes contributions from fifteen international specialists to give a comprehensive discussion of the 80-plus IFAs that existed in July 2010.

L'évolution des conditions de travail et d'emploi dans le cadre de la mondialisation de la production et des échanges impose aux syndicats de recourir à de nouvelles stratégies, notamment au niveau international. Quelles sont donc les conditions d'émergence de nouvelles formes de collaboration intersyndicale et comment le syndicalisme international peut-il constituer un contre-pouvoir régulateur aux grandes firmes multinationales? Cet ouvrage renouvelle le débat sur le rôle et l'avenir du syndicalisme international.

The present study seeks to examine the genesis, development, and proliferation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) - in-built law-making mechanisms and processes of institutionalization - and their ad hoc treaty-based status and the issue of the legal personality of their secretariats. It provides legal understanding of the location of MEA secretariats within an existing international host institution, as well as discussion of the issue of relationship agreements and interpretation of the commonly used language that triggers such relationships. It places under scrutiny the standard MEA phrase'providing a secretariat', delegation of authority by the host institution to the head of the convention secretariat, possible conflict areas, host country agreement, and the workings of the relationship agreements. The book offers an authoritative account of the growing phenomenon in which an existing international institution provides a servicing base for MEA that, in turn, triggers a chain of legal implications involving the secretariat, the host institution, and the host country.

Globalisation has put national labour movements under severe pressure, due to the increasing transnationalisation of production, with the production of many goods being organised across borders, and the informalisation of the economy. Through a range of case studies, this volume examines the possibilities and obstacles to transnational solidarity of labour in a period of global restructuring and changing global political economy. It brings together a range of international and transnational case studies, examining successful and failed transnational solidarity covering inter-trade union co-operation as well as co-operation between trade unions and social movements within the formal and informal economy, and the public and private sector. It is structured in six parts and examines: Globalisation and the new challenges for transnational solidarity Inter trade union co-operation across borders. The dynamics of co-operation between trade unions and social movements across borders, looking at developing and developed countries. The struggles to defend the public sector against private service providers. The possible ways forward towards transnational solidarity of formal and informal labour in the global economy. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of International Political Economy, International Relations, Industrial Relation, Globalisation, Geography and History.

International Journal of Labour Research is a new journal launched in Fall 2009 by the Bureau of Workers'Activities of the ILO. Its aim is to provide an overview of recent research on labour and social policies from trade union researchers and academics around the world. The journal is multidisciplinary and of interest to trade union researchers, labour ministries and academics of all relevant disciplines worldwide - industrial relations, sociology, law, economics and political science.

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, amidst an extraordinary international upsurge in strike action, the ideas of revolutionary syndicalism developed into a major influence within the world wide trade union movement. Committed to destroying capitalism through direct industrial action and revolutionary trade union struggle, the movement raised fundamental questions about the need for new and democratic forms of power through which workers could collectively manage industry and society.This study provides an all-embracing comparative analysis of the dynamics and trajectory of the syndicalist movement in six specific countries: France, Spain, Italy, America, Britain and Ireland. This is achieved through an examination of the philosophy of syndicalism and the varied forms that syndicalist organisations assumed; the distinctive economic, social and political context in which they emerged; the extent to which syndicalism influenced wider politics; and the reasons for its subsequent demise.The volume also provides the first ever systematic examination of the relationship between syndicalism and communism, focusing on the ideological and political conversion to communism undertaken by some of the syndicalist movement's leading figures and the degree of synthesis between the two traditions within the new communist parties that emerged in the early 1920s.

This book critically examines the responses of the working classes of the world to the challenges posed by the neoliberal restructuring of the global economy. Neoliberal globalisation, the book argues, has created new forms of polarisation in the world. A renewal of working class internationalism must address the situation of both the more privileged segments of the working class and the more impoverished ones. The study identifies new or renewed labour responses among formalised core workers as well as those on the periphery, including street-traders, homeworkers and other'informal sector'workers. The book contains ten country studies, including India, China, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Canada, South Africa, Argentina and Brazil. It argues that workers and trade unions, through intensive collaboration with other social forces across the world, can challenge the logic of neoliberal globalization.

This report seeks to examine how, within a decent work perspective, countries can develop their skills base so as to increase both the quantity and the productivity of labour employed in the economy. It analyses how strategies to upgrade and enhance the relevance of skills training and to improve access to skills for more women and men can instead help countries move to a virtuous circle of higher productivity, employment and incomes growth, and development.This report also examines the challenges faced by countries at different levels of development and their policy options.