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- Title
Is There a New Trade Union Internationalism? The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions' Response to Globalization, 1996-2002.
- Authors
Hodkinson, Stuart
- Abstract
Since the end of the Cold War and the consolidation of neoliberal globalization, trade unions have been forced to think and act outside the confines of the nation-state. Recent literature argues that in response, a 'new labour internationalism' (NLI) is emerging across the global economy. Drawing on a case study of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions' (ICFTU) campaign for a social clause in the World Trade Organization (WTO), this article argues that notions of a NLI within the official structures of international trade unionism are premature. It finds that the ICFTU has undergone a difficult process of political, financial, and organizational retrenchment, reorganization and modernization, and has partially opened up its decision-making structures to greater internal scrutiny and democratic participation. Beneath the surface, however, the ICFTU's new symbolic orientation to alliance building and membership mobilization is a largely strategic manoeuvre to cope with its weakened status within both the international corridors of power and the radical contours of the 'global justice movement'. Overall, the ICFTU remains embedded in the core ideology and methodology of the 'old labour internationalism' (OLI).
- Subjects
INTERNATIONAL trade; INTERNATIONALISM; COLD War, 1945-1991; LABOR unions; COMMERCIAL policy; GLOBALIZATION; INTERNATIONAL relations; INTELLECTUAL cooperation
- Publication
Labour, Capital & Society / Travail, capital et société, 2005, Vol 38, Issue 1/2, p36
- ISSN
0706-1706
- Publication type
Article