2007-01-03

The Birth of the World's First Super Union


"British, American and German unions are to forge a pact to challenge the power of global capitalism in a move towards creating an international union with more than 6 million members.
(...)
The move, to be announced this week, is seen by union leaders as the first step towards creating a single union that can present a united front to multinational companies.
(...)
Simpson added that multinational companies 'trade off countries and workforces against each other' and that forging such solidarity agreements as have been signed with German and US unions is the best way to combat such practices."

READ FULL GUARDIAN ARTICLE HERE

This is an interesting and encouraging devellopment in the labour movement. Trade Unions are realizing that they can't fight for greater wages, conditions, retirement plans and insurance for themselves and their families without challenging global corporate power.

I think this is a first necessary step in relaizing that the ultimate goal of the labour movement is not just about getting better conditions for their membership but they must also propose macro-economic as well as micro-economic alternatives.

Maybe, the US and the UK branches of the new Super Union will be influenced by some of the German branch's self-management practices. Maybe, the Scandinavian Unions will join the Super Union and they can bring their ideas of Labour Funds owning a portion of the Multinational corporation's shares. Hopefully, the Canadians will get on board and the US unions will reach out to Latin America, who will provide a much needed radical boost to an international labour movement.

This can be an important step for an Economic Democracy movement at a global level.

I think, this is encouraging news and should be monitored and supported.

Any ideas?




T1: Work and production / Travail et production | Tom Vouloumanos



COMMENTAIRES

If they where talking about the workers collectively owning the means of production through this new super-union, that would be interesting.

However, so long as they intend to simply negotiate wages with Capital, while Capital retains the Product and the right to name it's price, only the structure and not the level of wages can change.

Thus, they can only make gains against other workers, not against Capital.

See Daniel Bell's classic essay "the Subversion of Collective Bargaining" for more detail.

Par Dmytri Kleiner le 2007-01-06 07:26

I like it. Unfortunately, so long as the alliance is limited to unions in the industrialized West, it doesn't do much about the bargaining chip of threatening capital flight to the Third World. What I'd really like to see them do is undertake widespread, energetic propagandizing of Third World labor forces (e.g., Spanish or Mandarin translations of "How to Fire Your Boss: A Worker's Guide to Direct Action on the Job"). While they're at it, they might encourage workers here in the land of Taft-Hartley to give up on Wagner and the NLRB, and start fighting by our own rules instead of the bosses'.

Dmytri, I think anything that increases the bargaining power of labor (e.g., increasing the agency costs of supervising a disgruntled workforce) will increase workers' collective power against capital and reduce the rate of profit, even if enterprises remain nominally capitalist-owned.

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