Building Transnational Coordinative Unionism

In the face of increasing corporate internationalism, and the implications for movement of production, capital, and jobs from one country to another, the union movement has increasingly faced changes to the nature of the worker-management relationship. Central to the changing relationship is the productivity motive. Job loss potential induces labour into 'productivity alliances' with management that may be seen as contradictory to labour's ideology. A recent article by Don Wells identifies these contradictions, the shift toward a more transnational approach to unionism, and the essential changes to intra-national unionism if labour is to respond effectively to 'borderless capital.' Wells looks at the required changes to North American labour unionism and the European works councils, and considers the effectiveness of various components of coordinative unionism (international trade secretariats, international codes of conduct).