Global Restructuring, Labour and the Challenges for Transnational Solidarity

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.

Andreas Bieler is Professor of Political Economy and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) in the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham/UK. His research is predominantly focused on understanding the current struggle over the future economic-political model of the European Union (EU) and the possibilities to resist neo-liberal restructuring. He is author of Globalisation and Enlargement of the European Union (Routledge, 2000) as well as The Struggle for a Social Europe: Trade unions and EMU in times of global restructuring (Manchester University Press, 2006).

Ingemar Lindberg is a former Researcher and Social Policy Adviser to the Confederation of Swedish Trade Unions (LO) where he was responsible for the Social Justice Project 1991 – 95 and the main report to the 1996 LO Convention. He has written many books and articles, the latest being Den globala kapiutalismen och det nya motstandet (Global capitalism and the new resistance, Atlas 2005).